There are more than 5 million new listings on ebay EVERY DAY. Does anyone actually in real life think that you can report the listing to ebay and have them close the auction because someone may have misused an incredibly subjective word like “vintage”?
Or that in real life the auction would be “null and voided” (a new verb) because someone assumes an item they can’t find simply MUST have been stolen rather than lost?
You’re “shocked that ebay hasn’t done anything”?
REALLY?
Do you think there’s an ebay employee that sits there and looks at all 5 million auctions every day, finds this one and says “hmm, this pin is listed as vintage and from an estate, but the date is 04 and it doesn’t look old enough to be from 1904 because the hands aren’t flat, so I think this seller is a little fishy and I’m going to halt the auction until I can investigate further”?
OF COURSE ebay is often a “fence for stolen items”. Duh! But they’re only required to show some due diligence – they’re not going to pull auctions from a powerseller with 99.6% positive feedback just based on an email with a sad story.
OK, I know it’s not advisable to smack a hornets’ nests with a stick... but I’m gonna because I’m skeptical by nature. For instance, I get this weird “spidey-sense” thing whenever I smell a troll or something sounds urband-legendy. Now this is clearly neither a troll nor an urban legend, but I still have that nagging feeling. Something here doesn’t sound right.
So I’m reading the thread and my very first thought was: “Wow, she sure showed up fast – in fact, just as soon as the other ladies found out through the directory whose badge it really was. I wonder if she was afraid she’d be outed for pawning her own badge”.
But then I figured nah I’m just paranoid and kind of an asshole, so I kept reading. She posts to GC at 3:44pm, the auction doesn’t end until 7:47pm, 4 hours later, and the price stays very low, but she doesn’t bid. Odd. She’s talking to ebay but gets a phone call that makes her angry so she can’t continue. Oy. She tried to email the seller but can’t send email from her ebay account. OK, can’t remember ever not being able to send an ebay message from my account, and it seems like this would be easily fixed, but whatever.
Now, I know very little about women. The ones in my life tell me that women in general don’t react to crises in the way that most men and I would consider “rational”, and that I need to keep that in mind. So I’m trying to. I guess it explains all the head-in-sand wishful-thinking ebay-bashing above, but...
Especially with only 4 hours to do something, wouldn’t you just place an outrageously high bid for it and then work it out later? Obviously the seller is going to be a lot more responsive to the person that just won the auction for like $100, than to the person that emails them (or rather, has her message board friends email them) reporting it stolen. Obviously ebay is going to be a lot more responsive to a bidder that is potentially defaulting on a $100 bid, than to someone (or again, someone’s message board friends) who is making an unsupported claim of stolen property.
I know what I would do if I saw my badge for sale on ebay, and by contrast it just doesn’t seem like she wants it back all that much.
But I know you’ll find this whole insinuation terribly insulting, and there’ll be gasps of horror and how-dare-yous and the like, so I’ll digress.
“The buyer has no shame”, what a crock! Do you ladies realize how many emails the typical ebay badge seller or badge buyer gets that claim (among other things) that the item is stolen? If they’re not responding to you, it’s not necessarily that they’re a horrible person. More likely they’ve been scammed in the past and now won’t reply to ANYONE without a copy of a police report.
By the way, why do you assume the successful bidder is a badge collector (and a male) when a quick 30 day search of their bidding history shows they bid exclusively on ADPi items? If it turns out to be an ADPi, will you still say they have no shame?
***EDIT 2/27/08: I see that the winning bidder "jjdogface" is now on your GC list of known ADPi ebay bidders. Interesting...
And finally... I am, as ever, totally amazed - and disgusted - at how in an effort to preserve the badge, the symbol of all the noble and wonderful sparkly high ideals we represent, we somehow feel it appropriate to insult and threaten and lie to innocent strangers. Smashing! Bravissima!
Some practical advice, because believe it or not I am truly interested in making sure people get back badges that are rightfully theirs... If this situation comes up again, even if you DO have a police report: PLACE A BID. Ebay is a huge bureaucracy, it will take time for them to process anything. Buyers and sellers are highly skeptical of any email you send them, they’re jaded by experience and chances are almost nil that they’ll help you. Resist the urge to spam them or mass email them, that never works and only reinforces their suspicion that you’re a scammer. Place a bid. Work it out later.
Worst case, even if ebay and the seller never take any action, you would have paid probably $50 to win this badge. Twice what it’s worth on the market, but only a small fraction of its alleged symbolic and sentimental value. I can’t believe no one gave you this advice back on page 2 when there was still time to save it.
Meantime, everyone be nice! This ebay powerseller almost certainly didn’t steal the badge. For sure the auction winner didn’t steal it. And of course, neither of them lost it or gave it up in the first place.
Honeychile I think is taking the right approach by trying to bargain for it. But... I would find a way to email the seller YOURSELF and offer them twice what they paid for it. If that doesn’t work, offer them 3 times what they paid for it. IF you want it back, that is.
OK, gotta go, apparently the police are here and they want to put me in jail because the L’il Tykes plastic playhouse I bought through the Pennysaver ad turned out to be stolen.
wptw
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