My girlfriend and I were talking the other day and she, in the kindest way possible, says that I am a people-pleaser.
This may explain my attitude on eBay which is almost (but not quite) one of, "You're trying to screw me? Wait, let me do it myself."
I used to frequently undercharge shipping costs, for example, as a gesture of good faith and my little silent protest against those idiots who overcharge. That hit me doubly-hard a few years ago when Canada Post switched to some new "volumetric" calculation of package shipping costs, which was all doublespeak to say that they'd doubled or tripled our shipping costs. Ouch.
There was the one time I sent a video mixer to Texas. The buyer left me positive feedback, saying it looked great, and thank you very much... I thought everything was happy until about two months later, PayPal informed me that he had filed a chargeback claim, saying that the unit had never worked from day one. But, PayPal said, since it has been longer than 30 days since the transaction took place, I was under no obligation to do anything. Damn right! But me being the nice guy that I am, I gave this guy a call. He screamed in my ear for 10 minutes about how it had never worked, and he had shipped it to a repair center out of state, who quoted him hundreds of dollars in repairs, and it still didn't work, and if only he had known what a piece of junk this was and how much he would have to spend to fix it up, he would have bought a brand new one, and on and on ...
I offered him a token $50 refund just to shut him up.
Then there was the time some guy kept claiming to have sent me a money order, and was strangely unavailable by email unless the emails I sent him would make some passing reference to reporting him as a non-payer. Then, suddenly, he would respond within 20 minutes, insisting yet again that he did send the money order, please be patient, it must be on its way, or maybe it got lost in the mail and I should file a claim?
After about 3 weeks and 3 rounds of these emails, I just went ahead and sent the package. It was a DVD movie, so I was only out by about $10 or so. I sent him an email spelling out that I didn't buy his crap about the money order and I think he was being a deadbeat. That I had better things to do than to waste my time with guys like him, and so he could take the damn DVD and get out of my life. Oh, and if I had misjudged and there indeed was a money order on the way, an apology would be due.
Of course, it never came.
But you never know. There was the one time I bid on a used Powerbook and sent a cheque to the address he gave me... 3 times. Each time the envelope came back "Address Unknown - Return to Sender". Each time I asked him to please double-check the address he gave me - and each time he insisted it was correct. HE was startign to give ME attitude about non-payment, and I finally offered him a scan of the marked-up envelope. By this time had found a local buyer for his laptop so we parted ways, amicably, but frustrated.
Then there was the guy who bid on an item I had, and went on vacation for two weeks just as the auction closed. I left email after email, I left phone messages.. I did get one vague call from a coworker at his office saying he would get to me. I finally lost my patience and reported him as a non-paying bidder, left negative feedback, and got on with my life. A month later, the guy leaves me a retaliatory negative (and my ONLY negative feedback on eBay), saying I ruined his first-time eBay experience. Well, duh...
I've developed a bit of a thicker skin over the years, but I still feel that my time and my dignity are too valuable to be drawn out in a fight against some lowlife trying to make a quick buck.
