Bent Corner

I read over on the Consumerist that the bloated Internet auction giant eBay will be switching over to a PayPal or credit card only auction site. What this means is that if you win an auction, you have to pay for the item with either PayPal or a credit card. A credit card can be used only if the seller is set up to take credit card payments.

You can’t use a money order, a check, or even cash.

A part of me doesn’t really care since I’ve pretty much stopped using eBay entirely. I used to use it a lot. I even named this very blog after an eBay auction that went south. I had bid on and “won” an Alfonso Soriano baseball card that was advertised as being in mint condition. When I got it in the mail, I discovered it wasn’t quite in mint condition. It had a bent corner. I tried getting the seller to agree to take it back and refund my money, but he wasn’t having any part of it. This was right around the time that I was thinking about getting into blogging. I decided that I would try to extract something positive out of an experience that at the time I perceived to be negative.

EBay has just become too much of a hassle. No matter how simple the item up for auction is, it usually includes a plethora of rules and conditions. Then there is the whole feedback thing. I’ve kind of moved past caring about leaving or receiving feedback. I cared about it in the late 90’s, but not so much anymore. I purchased something off eBay a few months ago and the seller has been sending me an email at least once a telling me to leave feedback and he will do the same. Who cares? I just looked and he has a feedback of 317. I have a feedback of 437. Why should it be important to either one of us? I sure know it’s not important to me.

As it stands now, the only reason I buy something off eBay is when I can’t get it anywhere else. I would happily pay more for something if it meant I didn’t have to deal with eBay. [eBay]

From the AP (via Yahoo!)

A college student claimed it was all a joke when he put his vote in this fall’s presidential election up for sale on the Web auction site eBay. But prosecutors didn’t see the humor.

University of Minnesota student Max P. Sanders, 19, was charged with a felony Thursday in Hennepin County District Court after allegedly asking for a minimum of $10 in exchange for voting for the bidder’s preferred candidate.

“Good luck!” Sanders wrote under the eBay handle zepdrummer612. “You’re (sic) country depends on You!”

Sanders was charged with one count of bribery, treating and soliciting under an 1893 state law that makes it a crime to offer to buy or sell a vote.

I’m with the prosecutors on this one. I don’t see the humor either.

It never occurred to Max Sanders that buying and selling votes was maybe prohibited by law? I have about as much patience for this type of tomfoolery as I do with the people that get a credit card for their springer spaniel. The difference being that nobody died for the right to apply for a credit card. People actually suffered and died so that rest of us can have the right to vote.

One doesn’t have to go far in the annals of history to find examples of what I am talking about. Harold Ickes, former deputy White House Chief of Staff for Bill Clinton and campaign strategist for Hillary Clinton, only has one kidney. While working as a volunteer in Louisiana during the civil rights movement, he received such a severe beating from a gang of rednecks that he lost a kidney.

He lost a major organ so people could vote.

It’s bad enough that we rarely — if ever — have anyone on the ballot really worth voting for. People like Max Sanders should treat it with just a skosh bit more respect. They shouldn’t be listing it on eBay like its a potato that kind of looks like Jesus.

John Donahoe, a muckety-muck over at Ebay, wants to do a major overhaul to the site so that it can shed the fleamarket stink eBay has developed lately.

I wish him the best of luck with that.

EBay used to be a great place to go to find stuff. It used to be a place where people went to unload their stuff to other people that wanted their stuff. Stuff was always sold in the timed auction format. You knew exactly how long something would remain up for auction. You could bid on stuff you wanted and then wait to see if you were the high bidder. It was actually a lot of fun.

Something happened to eBay a long the way. It became less of an auction site and more of a place for professional junk peddlers to sell their crap. They don’t use the auction format. They list things using a set sale price.

In other words, a fleamarket.

If John Donahoe truly wants to clear the fleamarket stink from eBay, he will find a way to clear the merchants and their eBay storefronts from the site. Return it to the timed auction format where regular people go to bid on stuff from other regular people.

Like I stated earlier, I wish him the best of luck with that.

It turns out Seung-Hui Cho bought ammunition clips for one of his two handguns on eBay. Clips he undoubtedly used the day he killed 32 unarmed people at Virginia Tech. On eBay he went by the user name blazers5505. He had a feedback rating of 64.

He also used the email address of “Blazers5505@hotmail.com”.

Looking at this eBay history, be both bought and sold on eBay. He recently sold two tickets to the Peach Bowl. It looks as though he sold tickets to other Virginia Tech sporting events too. He recently sold two tickets to a Virginia Tech Hokies vs Coppin State Eagles basketball game.

He also sold a Texas Instruments TI-83 Plus scientific calculator. He claimed that it was barely used because he dropped the class he needed it for.

He also sold textbooks on Half.com which is owned by eBay. His current seller page shows that he is “on vacation”. Yes, in Hell. Past books he sold include Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film by Carol J. Clover and The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre.

Is that how he got money to buy both guns and ammo? By selling junk on eBay? He didn’t have a job. His parents don’t seem to be very well off.

I’ve wondered since the day of the massacre how he was able to buy handguns. Not because of his apparent mental problems. How did he come up with the money? Often the price of a gun alone keeps them out of the hands of people that have no business owning them. Like Seung-Hui Cho. How did he get a credit card with enough available credit to purchase expensive, top-end firearms? He had no job or any other source of income. The guns he purchased were not cheap pieces of junk.

Link

Ben Popken from The Consumerist has discovered that some of Wal-Mart’s Nazi t-shirts are now being listed on eBay. I have to think that the eBay seller who listed them knows the significance of the Nazi skull since he lists them as being Totenkopf in the listing’s title.

The seller made sure to also list them in the Militaria/WW II (1939-45)/Germany/Medals, Pins, Ribbons catagory. I’m guessing that’s where one goes when they want to find Nazi stuff on eBay. When you cannot simply run out to your local Wal-Mart.

Totenkopf Shirts On Ebay [The Consumerist]