I both love and hate eBay. On one hand, you can buy anything there. ANYTHING. EBay makes it possible for people to collect absolutely anything that interests them, from anywhere in the world, which is kind of cool. You don’t have to have all the exact same stuff in your house that everyone else does anymore just because all you have in town is a Wal-Mart. And you also can spot high shipping fees before you even look at the auction. Other online stores often try to get you fill a shopping cart and three pages of order forms before you get to find out whether they intend to rape you on “shipping and handling.”
On the other hand, there’s the fakes, and the fakes, and the fakes (there’s a LOT of fakes), and eBay’s new(ish) slogan, “Don’t just buy it, win it!” Hahahaha. I hate bidding. It’s to the point that I usually won’t do it. It’s not just the snipers – since technically you are supposed to enter the absolutely most ridiculously high price you are willing to pay for something – it’s the simple fact that almost everyone has more money than you. If what you have your eye on is even remotely desirable, some fool will shell out more for it. Sometimes you can wait it out and get another one that you can afford (thus making the previous idiot look even more idiotic), and sometimes an auction just ends with no one else noticing it. So you have to bid and give it a shot if you really want it.
But then there are the e-mails. When you, almost inevitably, get outbid you get the e-mail from eBay shrieking that YOU HAVE BEEN OUTBID and BID AGAIN NOW!! DON’T LET IT GET AWAY!! AUGHHHHH YOU FOOL!!! And as if that weren’t enough, when the auction finally comes to an end, you get another soul-sucking “tsk tsk” e-mail from eBay to remind you that you lost.
So usually I just look for Buy-it-nows. What’s funny is that eBay then sends you the e-mail congratulating you for winning. Oh yes, I am quite the winner and that made my day. Don’t I feel like a worthy person. What a joke.
I hate eBay.