Bleh!

This year is starting off so crappy. Been sick for a couple months and so many various annoyances with eBay. I've been watching all of My Little Pony just to keep my spirits up, but generally I'm good for a couple hours and then I'm so weak. I slowly get better but then I relapse and have to rework at getting better. The only thing that helps is to drink a ton. I guess I'm getting too dehydrated from very low indoor humidity and possibly indoor and food allergies. Lately it seems everything I eat triggers some allergy. Basically I've been producing non-stop phlegm which keeps going into my lungs and it's causing me to either cough all the time to expel it or I get an infection in my lungs from it. A nightmare! Laying down seems to help a ton as it stops it from going down my lungs.

So anyway, a buyer bought 11 items from me though two packages and is a scammer. They claimed it was an unauthorized purchase but I can tell that it wasn't. The kicker is that they even emailed me saying that they never got the second package, which was hours after they filed a claim for the first package for unauthorized purchase. The nerve! I didn't even bother to email them back as it would have been a total waste of my time. At that point just go though the process system and don't even acknowledge the buyer as nothing you can say will stop their scamming nor make it any better. I've tired in years past and learned my lesson.

I can tell it was a scammer as they had a newly opened account and bought at least 83 items from sellers according to feedback. I'm sure it was way more than that as a lot of people don't bother with feedback leaving. So either this person got a load of fake credit cards and is running them, or they are doing some type of scam with their CC company on their own card. Or perhaps a child used their parents card and bought a crap load of stuff. I'll never know the truth.

So I keep getting case after case filed against me via Paypal (because they bought the items one by one instead of altogether!) where I have to fill in the details and wait. I win the Paypal cases because of the rule where if it shows delivery, then I win, but then it soon gets reversed and a new case is opened against me and I have to wait even longer for them to "negotiate" with the credit card about whatever BS they need to do.

I know it's all automated and no humans really looks at these things (unless you call them to) but the second time around makes it linger for 75 days on my account until it automatically drops from my account. It's annoying, but better than what they used to do. In the old days, they used to HOLD the money but a few months ago they decided to let good sellers have access to that money for whatever reason. I guess it's because most of the sellers they deal with are not going anywhere anyway and now there is so much competition just like Paypal out there that they need to give a little more or else sellers will indeed go elsewhere. Personally, with Ebay going to be their own payment processor sometime this year, I doubt I'll be using Paypal for much either a year from now. PP is good for websites you don't trust, but I don't usually buy much online to worry about it.

Something that does annoy me is that it's taking WAY longer to get through to them on the phone. Over 50 minutes the two times I had to call them! I think they are going the ebay route and starting to have shitty customer service as it was just a few months ago that I usually got to someone right away, or in under 5 minutes. Bleh!

Anyway, what I really wanted to write about today is that someone about a week ago bought something from me though a reshipper.  Apparently he was a new buyer to reshippers and of course he didn't realize how expensive it would be as there is no way to see what you totally owe until the reshipper get the item.

So I guess what happened is that he was shown a total of $90ish and he had assumed that was all that he had to pay. The website he bought from mentions it's $20 per kilogram and it was a 3.5 pound package, which was about $60 in reshipping cost! So when the reshipper got it, he was told to pay $150ish. He had a fit and demanded the item to be returned. I laughed at that as I knew from experiences with other reshippers (according to what my customers tell me) is that they don't do that, they will charge the card automatically and you must accept the package and charge.

So today I got a claim to return the item. T_T;;;;  I'm guessing they probably couldn't get the money from the guy or something and they are trying to reclaim their losses? Whatever. I've never seen a reshipper do this.

So fortunately it seems I only have to refund the $50 for the item and someone (the buyer...the middleman reshipper?) is going to eat the $25 shipping to them cost and the $25 shipping it back to me cost.  I'm hoping that buyer does get charged for that!  This just happened so I don't know either way and I'll probably never know, but I'm expecting I'll be hearing from him soon if he has to pay $50 for "nothing."

I've seen this several times where people paying for "nothing" (such as the cost to return a package which they decided they didn't want) gets them outraged. And I'm sure they will charge him a "return fee" too as they have their fees too to worry about as well!

What sucks is that ebay took away our right to charge return fees sometime last year. Actually I wouldn't be at all surprised if they force us to accept free returns in one of this years seller's updates. I know this is "industry standard" but come on eBay, you are dealing with small sellers who cannot afford BS from customers like that. We are not Amazon or Walmart who can eat millions of dollars in free returns.

So whatever...the saddest part is that I will be out a chunk of money for ebay fees which I cannot get back (I think about $8 dollars?) and I expect the item to be trashed as they won't take good care in returning it as I did in packing and sending it. 

Oh well. I'll be surprised if I do get it back honestly I still believe that reshippers will not return items back just because the buyer made a mistake.  I have a friend that bought from Yahoo Japan about two months ago and he was stuck with $300+ in reshipping fees. No way in hell they are going to return the items back because he made this same mistake.

Sadly, I hear this happens a lot with reshippers which is why I never do it for anyone that asks me if I can get X for them from Japan. Just too expensive for people and then you get stuck with crap that you cannot get your money back on.

I do feel for these reshippers as no matter how many times you say it on the website people just won't read. That happens to me at least 5 times a year with people buying my stuff. They don't read, they blame me, and eBay/Paypal is so easy to get your money back on if you know how to correctly abuse the system.

Anyway, I'm hoping for a better rest of the month. Just taking it day by day so far!

Update, wouldn't you know it. Within 40 minutes of finishing this article, I twisted my ankle, but somehow I flipped over on my back like a professional wrestler which softened the blow, but I landed right on a bag of cat waste that I was carrying down. UGGGH! I had a massive panic attack or perhaps shock. I knew everything was OK, but I couldn't stop shivering and breathing fast. First time that's ever happened. Lasted about 10 mins.

So I hobbled around, got my packages ready and to the post office and wouldn't you know it, today is a fucking postal holiday. >.> Seriously, no one cares about Martin Luther's Birthday. It's like President's Day, a holiday that just embarrasses the hell out of anyone trying to get into a bank or post office. What tricked me is that my Nest Hello alarm went off as it shown a mailman opening my door to deliver a package. Like WTF, these package guys works holidays, so why not keep the post office open?! Whatever.

So like a fool I was wobbling in pain with a large crate of packages only to see that they were closed. Yeah, I wasn't kidding when I that said the year was very shitty so far. Now to rest my ankle. It's a big pop too, not one of my little twists which happens often enough, so I hope it's not one of those 3 weeks to heal jobbers. T_T;