In an effort to not be banned from the great website that is EBAY I will tell this tell in generalities with the hope that I can capture the story in a manner that doesn’t take away from it. Names in this story have been changed to protect the identies…
So…I have this “friend” that went to a baseball game this week where they handed out a pretty cool freebie to the first 10,000 fans. My “friend” was fortunate enough to get there early enough that he and his wife each got one of these awesome giveaways that would no doubt warrant interest from perspective buyers though the fan.
So, my friends watched the game and kept their souvernirs in a bag that they had brought along with them under neath their seats at the park. It was raining and cold so the blankets from the bag were covering them leaving just the boxes that housed the items in a canvas bag sitting on the ground. The game ends, the team wins, my friends go home happy to not only watch a great game but to have two fun give aways.
The next day, my friend went online to be shocked that the give aways from the night before were going for around 35.00 each through ebay. So, not wanted to miss out on this opportunity to make a few bucks, decided that he too, would sell one of two items he had received just the night before. Having never sold anything on Ebay, this would be his first auction ever. (He had bought several times, just never sold)
He basically “borrowed” a photo from another auction of the box and item since he had the same thing at home. He posted the auction and within hours his item was already up to 30 bucks. Excited he goes home and pulls out the bag that housed the two items. To his horror, both boxes were essentially destroyed by what my friend would guess was some dumbasses behind him that were spilling beer as the two fans sat in the bleachers. It was raining, and the boxes had dried, but apparently the cardboard used for these boxes was not top quality, causing them to have an adverse reaction to beer, causing the boxes to fall apart in serval places.
My friend, knowing that this being his first EBay auction and not wanting to ship something out that wasn’t “as advertised” began to panice wondering how on earth he could tell the buyer upon the competion of the auction that the item is fine, but the box is destroyed. Would my friend offer free shipping? If it were my friend, he would have been pissed if he ordered this collectible and received a box that was destroyed. The last thing he wanted was to have negative feedback on his first ever auction. What to do…what to do…
So, my friend decided that it would be best to have someone else that he knew go online and outbid everyone with the knowledge that the friend knows that he will not be actually buying it and no money would be trading hands. So the friend did being a good friend.
Little did my friend know that upon the auction completion, Ebay charges around 10% of the final auction price. Apparently that’s how they roll. So, for his first auction experience, not only did he not sell his item, but the whole process ended up costing him nearly five dollars.
Absolutely insane weekend ahead of me. Between tonight and Sunday night, I have 6 different events that I will be entertaining at. Wouldn’t be so bad other than the fact that I started coming down with some sort of cold/flu thingy yesterday. The last time I did two events while being sick, it was a pretty traumatic experience, much less doing it 6 times in a little more than 48 hours. Hopefully I’ll be like the New Kids on the Block and be hanging tough. Yep, I just used a NKOB reference. I’ll end it on that note. Have a great weekend!
Filed under: Ebay, balloon, friend, stupid, train wreck, weekend
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