Ebay Timewasters

If you've used ebay, I'm sure your aware that it is awash with timewasters. In the past couple of weeks, I've had bad experiences on both the buying and selling side that although extremely annoying are not strictly against the rules of ebay and as such, there's nothing I can do about them.... apart from moan about it on here...


On the buying side, the gearbox on my car went recently, and it wasn't worth shelling out for a new gearbox as its an old car that is probably worth less than a new gearbox. So, onto ebay I go to find some reconditioned ones, I find one 5 minutes drive away. Brilliant, I arrange a lift down there with my mechanic mate to pick it up, after sending three emails and making two phone calls to confirm it was the right gearbox, (all of which produce positive responses), I call up before I'm about to go down there to again confirm it's the right one, and all of a sudden he's not sure and doesn't want to sell it to me. He says he will remove it from ebay immediately, but it stays on there for another week before he finally does. No doubt prompted by someone else calling up about it.

Seeing as though I'd arranged to get a lift to a gearbox this morning and need the car for work ASAP, this forces me to look for another one, which is a hour's drive away in Luton. After phoning the man, and confirming with him every last little detail to make sure it's the right one, we get half way up the M1 only to receive a call saying that it isn't the right one after all. Idiot. 

Artist impression of an ebay timewaster...

On the selling side, I'm currently selling some speakers, the bidding ended, they reached the reserve (just) and the winning bidder was a reputation 0, tedious, but we'll see I thought. I contact him to arrange the payment and pick up, and after 3 days, he informs me that he is currently on holiday, is unable to afford to pay for the item for a week (as he has just purchased some jean paul gautier perfume...) and unable to collect for a month. I told him I'm not his personal storage company and not to bid on items that he has no intention of collecting within a reasonable time.

The same speakers get relisted (costing me more money) and I had someone contact me directly stating they would like to make me an offer outside of the auction. After some haggling we settled on a price we were both happy with and arranged this Sunday for the pickup. I re-arranged my whole weekend to accommodate this, however, he decided not to reply to any other emails I sent him Saturday or Sunday trying to confirm the time. So he got an abusive "don't waste my time email this morning aswell."

Unfortunately none of these are bootable offences in the eyes of ebay, they're just an accepted annoyance of the faceless selling on ebay. Well, all except maybe the abusive emails I've been sending to timewasters, they're probably a bootable offence...