Fun with eBay

Whenever you plunge into the seething morass known as eBay, you run the risk of running into characters. If you're buying something, you may get that cool bargain you've had your heart set on, but there's always that outside chance of getting a joker that decides to jerk you around. The same is true for sellers. Lisa's up to her eyebrows right now with a nincompoop who's going ballistic because she hasn't received some children's clothes she won in auction a month ago, and she's blaming Lisa. Here's the kicker: The nincompoop registered a fake mailing address with both eBay and Paypal. Why? Well, no satisfactory explanation has come forth on that one. But that's the address Lisa was given, so that's the one the package was mailed to. The fact that the package hasn't reached the nincompoop because of her own stupidity hasn't sunk in. And she declined insurance as well. So now she's threatening to leave Lisa negative feedback. Go figure.

On the other hand, sometimes the people you encounter can surprise you. We auction off antler sheds regularly, and about a month ago we sold some red stag antlers to a fellow named Jim Boyd. When I went to mail them, the postage we'd quoted him using the eBay calculator was about triple the actual postage. There was no way we could justify that much of a markup for "handling charges," so Lisa refunded some of his money. Jim expressed his shock--and gratitude at the unexpected refund--by sending us this:



It's a pen he turned from those very same red stag antlers we'd sold him. Now Jim didn't know this beforehand, but I have a profound weakness for antler pens. Not approaching Neil Gaiman's obsession with fountain pens, but still. I simply love the texture and feel of the crafted antler in my hand. It simply feels good. So one good turn deserves another, deserves another, I recommend you good folks check out Jim's photo gallery, where a wide variety of pens crafted from exotic hardwoods and the like are on display. The man is quite talented, even if he's modest about it. Personally, I'm thinking we should refund postage more often if this is the end result...

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