Crazy

An update on that bad feedback leaver. Yeah, he's insane.

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Seriously, how can someone leave this much bad feedback and not get banned?

I'll wager part of the mystery formula they have to govern these things is if you are filing claims against sellers. I never got a claim filed against me from him. In fact, I'm not sure how he knew it was "scratched" as he wanted it sent to some relative and didn't want an invoice in with it. I think he probably runs a business buying and reselling DVD off the internet to local people and if they get bitchy about what they get then he gets bitchy and vengeful back to the sellers. Either way, I feel that ebay doesn't give a crap about negs unless you are costing them money by their loosing money over reversed fees due to refunds and as such won't take action against you for leaving a ton of bad feedbacks.

So I'm monitoring this to see if he'll ever get punished. Amazingly be bought over 300 items (from DVD sellers) in a month which is a bit suspicious as he's obviously not a normal buyer. He left a few dozen bad ones to one seller, which is some dedication as you have to do those manually one by one which probably took over a half an hour. The jerk even left someone else a bad feedback and then admitted it was a mistake. Whatever. He's definitely a throwback to some of the crazy people I used to get when ebay was fairly new and I'm glad a lot of them were shut down though various methods, but it's so amazing that he is still up and running.

Another bit of news is that I finally broke down and bought a JFJ Easy Pro CD buffering machine.

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The guy was rather down about the maching saying this:

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I think he never really experimented with it to get his "mirror finish" because I surely get them. But then again I did spend 6 hours straight trying every possible method to experiment to see what works the best for me. Ultimately the best for a mirrored shine is 4 little white creme dots on the disc, rub the creme around with your finger to cover the entire disc and then put it into the machine for 20 seconds. That gets them to that condition and removes most scratches. Some scratches are annoying though and may take 5 times of switching from the white and blue creme. It takes a LOT of effort to make perfect discs from some really though scratches, so I don't usually bother. The intention is to make a playable disc with very minor scuffs. Not perfection as I never list my stuff in "like new" condition as some jerk will always find something wrong and ding you for something amazingly minor and insignificant.

But ultimately it works extremely better than I had thought it would. I've used the $2000 machines at the CD store that I used to work at and it does better than those! I think it's mostly the technique though and the people there really didn't know how to use the machines correctly as they always end up with sloppy gooey machines which you shouldn't have if you are doing it correctly. Either way, I wished I had bought one years ago! I mean I had wanted to but I always thought $130ish was just too much especially as I rarely do CDs/DVD selling these days (they are generally not worth it). But that jerk above really done me in and the final straw was ANOTHER jerk a week later complaining as well. I was like WTF, I have enough money, I may as well bite the bullet and do it as I cannot put up with this crap. Honestly I think it's just a matter of some people being WAY too strict lately, so whatever I'll cave and cater to their whims. I'll polish stuff up to give off an appearance of a mint cd/dvd for you if that is what you want. It's what all the other dealers do it seems anyway. 99% of the time it absolutely does not matter if there is a minor scratch but whatever. It's my experience that people have unrealistic expectations and they never bother reading whatever you say in the listing. You pray that when you sell something that isn't "like new" that you don't get a jerk buyer buying it.

Anyway, what happened next was rather a shock. O_O! That Saturday was a church flea market. I wasn't expecting much as the last one I went to three or so years ago was terrible but I was so bored that day and so wanting to get out of the house just to do something entertaining. Winter blahs! Turns out that there were a ton of sellers with lots of decent stuff at prices which I could flip on ebay and make a nice profit! The best of which was this one guy who had 100s of CDs and DVDs for $1 each.

Generally CDs are dead and bad investments these days because 99% of the time they are often crappy bands that sold a billion copies but this was obviously some guys collection of all Metal CDs. O_O! Good stuff really and I knew I could flip them on ebay at a decent profit! So I had asked how much for the entire collection of CDs and he said $250. Sweet! He seemed a little regretful about selling them but honestly he probably didn't know how horrible these things are to carry around, try to sell at various shows all year around and he'll probably wouldn't make half of that by struggling with them. My father taught me long ago it's better to unload stuff fast and make some profit rather than to keep it forever to get every last possible cent you can make from it. He was an older guy too and obviously bought them from some stoner who sold him everything really cheaply, so I figure he should have been ecstatic that some fool bought them all off of him. LOL

I had wanted the DVDs too but they were all horror ones and I didn't think I could do as well with them as none that rare like the CDs. Plus he wanted a little more for them and I didn't feel I could make a huge profit like the CDs. He also had just a small few video games and books too which I picked up a few. I probably should have bought them all but I couldn't concentrate very well to remember which ones were good for flipping. So I ended up with probably 600+ cds and most were lightly scuffed and needing a buffing which luckily I now had a machine to do so. LOL! I was rather floored by the amazing luck that I just bought what I absolutely would need to clean up these discs.

So the past month I processed and sold them and I have about 55% of the collection left and done pretty well profit wise. There were some really rare discs and of course an entire section of them got wet from the guy who probably left snow on them while packing his van. T_T;;; Lost a little profit over wetness damage (especially on a very rare Prince bootleg set) but oh well.

The other interesting thing which had happened to me this past month is that on the 17th or so we had an epic snowfall! Over 30 inches in 24 hours. O_O; Actually it seemed like in 12 hours really. I snowblowed once in the afternoon (it was up to my knees) and 6 hours later it looked like nothing was done. I tried to snowblow AGAIN but it wouldn't start (I'll have to buy a new one this fall as it's just falling apart badly and needs probably too much in repairs to justify doing so, it would be cheaper to get a new one) so I had shovel snow which was again up to my knees but I had no where to put it. Took me THREE hours just to free my van...and I started at 10PM and stopped at 1AM. LOL I ended up dragging the snow and putting it on the part of my driveway that I never use. It was rather peaceful doing this in the dead of night with no one to bother me. It's two weeks later and it's down to about 10% of what it was. I didn't even bother to shovel the sidewalk (or 2/3rds of my driveway) as it would have killed me and I knew it would all melt in no time anyway.

This is what I woke up to at 10:30PM... 📷

This is what it looked like around noon the next day after my shoveling for 3 hours. 📷

A few days after that I got my mother's final taxes done, which was depressing as it's basically the last thing ever to do for her (I hope at least). I did get one final bill for her too (her last ambulance ride home) which oddly took forever to get processed and I was wondering if they would ever get around to billing me. They are odd because they could bill us weeks later or months later. It was over 6 months for this one and it's strange because the insurance paid them off ages ago on it. I remember this well because was part of the 3 claims that which I got forms from which I could submit to get some money back. I can get $12 back now if I press the issue but honestly I'm just done and fed up with it all. I consider all her legal affairs closed and over with, time to move on. I just have to unload her junk from the shed and garage (most are not worth anything at all to try to sell) and some huge items from the bedroom and that's basically it.

Done my personal taxes too, which put a lot of stress on me even though I already had most of it figured out way back in January. I was shocked at how long it took but I tried hard to ensure I didn't make any mistakes. Last year I was qualified for EIC credit which I didn't know about. I tired to figure it out this year, but dammit they make it so incredibly hard that no one could figure it out. Luckily they said you could write out EIC in the box and let them figure it out for you. I figure I'd get another $110 or whatever but I just couldn't figure out how they came up with that math to get there.

This past week I got my yearly inspection. Amazingly the day of the big snow drop I did try hard to get my ebay packages sent out (ebay is such dicks about that even in bad weather) and my local post office was already closed. I tried to get myself to the Utica post office as they never close early and they have longer hours but I only made it as far as the Utica OD newspaper building before I decided to turn back. Everyone was getting stuck and it was a nightmare out there! LOL

But what happened thanks to my determination to get packages out even in drastic conditions is that I had noticed that my heater wasn't working well anymore. I stopped after a while, which was bad because I was wet and cold. LOL! I guess it finally broke that day, which is good because it had happened before my yearly inspection. Meaning I could get two things done at once as I hate going to the mechanic. Ended up that this was a pretty serious issue if I neglected it! It probably would have damaged the motor in the summer as it controls the cooling and other stuff. This is what had happened to my first car but I didn't know any better, I just went without heat because I had figured it was like going without AC and it was ok to ignore but it doesn't work like that at all. Luckily I now have the internet to check these things out to understand about car mechanics.

And that's about it for the month really. Most of the rest of time I was depressed, lonely, exhausted, busy with work or whatever as usual, which is why I never blog about it but this past month was pretty eventful for me. And it's only a couple more weeks until the proper start of the garage sale season. HURRAH! I can do a proper buying season this year as I am not limited by range or hours that I need to return (thanks to my mother). I'm hoping for a prosperous one! I am aiming once again to get quality stuff rather than quantity. I have loads of stuff to sell right now, but it's better to stick to the higher priced ones as I don't really always have the time and patience to work hard for the cheaper stuff. It's just getting the better stuff and making a killer profit tends to be pretty hard when everyone is doing the same thing I am but buying just about anything to make a dollar profit. It's really tough in my area like that.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this but I found a dollar the way home walking from the mechanic in the morning. It was a two mile walk or so and easily missed as it was behind on a blind side of a bridge behind a metal guard rail. I'm assuming it was probably tossed around quite a bit by snow plows during that snow storm week and probably freed up a few days ago but no one had noticed it as it wasn't in a location that was all that safe to walk though even during good weather. Anyway, I was aiming to find just a penny for good luck. It's something I do to keep me from being so bored from walking and I was amazed to find a dollar like that. Actually a little further down next to the Burger King I found a can of unopened beer! I left it though as I don't drink and I didn't know anybody I could give it to. It was probably still good but meh. I've actually drank some forgotten juice from a sealed plastic bottle just like this a couple years ago. LOL! I was nervous about it but it turned out to be perfectly fine. Not too tasty though as it was one of those Gatoraid flavors which I don't care much for but it did taste as it should.

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