So, in Romania we have this term… called “teapa” … which translates literally as “spike”… and we use it in sentences like “You got spiked”… which is slang for “you were tricked, or robbed”
so… how i got spiked….
I wanted to buy a laptop… a nice sony 11″ 2lb, 10hr battery life vaio… off ebay. I’ve bought and sold roughtly 200 items on Ebay up to this point, most of which were in the $100 to $500 range… never any real problems… usually cause i thought i knew what i was looking for. Not this time……
So, i find this seller, 80 points rating… 99% score… selling the vaio i want. people are frantically bidding for this. i check up the other bidders… and most of them are people who buy a lot of electronics like me… so i figure its a fair gamble. i check out the seller’s other sales… most are actually clothes… but i see that they are from flushing Ny… well… if they are from manhatten, selling clothes… they may be fashionable… thus probably not too violent or rough with their electronics. not as good as a tech person… but i figure fair enough
sells for $1,300…. to me.
ok… so i make the payment.
1 week goes by. no email. 2 weeks go by. no email. no contact, nothing. so i start contacting the seller… 10 to 20 emails a day. nothing. do this for 3 days and i figure, i’m not getting the laptop. so i go to Paypal, who handles the banking payments for ebay and file a complaint… these transactions are guaranteed up to $2,000.
Next day buyer all of a sudden starts to contact me! now they listen, when the money is about to yankd out from their bank account!
They promise me to ship it the next morning ASAP. fine.
the next morning comes… they call me… and ask for my address!!!!
oh boy am i ticked. so i give the address… and they say “ok, i’m off to the post office”
“NOOO!!! DON’T YOU DARE GO TO THE POST OFFICE! THEY WILL PLAY SOCCER WITH THE LAPTOP!!!!”
“so where should i go??”
“what!?!??! UPS!? where else!?!?!?”
“Oh? Where is UPS? I never used it….”
“Are you kidding me???? you have sold 80 peices on Ebay and never used UPS????”
so i tell them the ups URL (www.ups.com) and they go… they find the local ups store… go and ship it. OVER night… as i’m bugging them to do so. I call them a bit later in the day to verify they shipped the item.
me : did you get insurance on the package?
her : what? why? do i need it? I thought they guarantee it will get there….
me : they do… but they don’t guarantee it to be in ONE PIECE!
her : oh… i’m sorry… what should i do?
me : nothing. too late. did you get the charger, battery, and laptop in the box?
her : yes. it’s all there
me : did you erase the harddrive?
her : yes
me : did you erase your passwords and internet history?
her : how do you do that?
me : never mind. I’ll take care of it. Let’s see when it comes
so… after all this… it does come.. sure enough the next day… 10 am. woo hoo.
guess what i forgot to ask?
DID YOU FRIGGIN PACKAGE THE DAMN THING!?!?!?!?
guess what? She didn’t. In fact, she took a BIG box… and just threw everything in one BIG pile. so guess how it got to me? well… it was in one peice all right. but SCRATCHED TO HIGH HEAVEN!!!!
You know… evil people are bad. if she would have resolved to steal from me, I could have collected from Paypal’s insurance. but instead, she was kind and honest and tried hard to please. she honestly didn’t know that people don’t like waiting for a month to receive packages. She also honestly didn’t know how postal people work! The problem with stupidity is how dangerous it can be to those around you.
so the moral of the lesson?
Wickedness is cruel… but stupidity is often more dangerous.