eBay away

Every day, since the start of the Iron Man Blogging Competition, there has been a "Topic of the Day." For whatever reason, I have not blogged about any of the TotDs, but today's Topic was one that I couldn't resist.

TotD: Strangest thing you bought on eBay? Strangest thing you've sold on eBay?

I'm gonna change up the TotD slightly, and talk about one item that took four attempts to sell on eBay. The story about this cursed cell phone can be read, in its entirely, at these two links:

The Cursed Cell Phone
The Cursed Cell Phone, part 2

(note: I wrote these back in 2003, not caring about grammar, spelling, sentence structure, etc.)

The Cliffs' Notes version of the story goes like this:

- I put my Samsung SGH-N625 cell phone on eBay, after upgrading my contract and getting a new phone. It sold, but the buyer NPBed (Non-Paying Bidder; in other words, he won my auction and never paid me for the item).
- I put my phone back up on eBay, and sold it again...or so I thought. The buyer this time NPBed as well.
- Third time's the charm? Hell no. It turns out I was dealing with a would-be scammer.
- On the fourth attempt, I actually got payment and sent out the phone, Unfortunately, the buyer had trouble getting the phone to work. After my last email, I never did hear back from the guy; hopefully he finally got the phone to work for him.

As if all that wasn't bad enough, the beginning of my contract with Crapular...er...Cingular started like this (Alert! The link contains overly dramatic dialogue between myself and Cingular Customer Service Representatives! You have been warned.)

Cliffs:

- Cingular's system overcharged me like crazy
- CSRs said they were not at fault
- Oh wait, I did get overcharged!
- I got credited $10/mo for three months for the inconvenience.

For some crazy reason, I stuck with Cingular until 2006. Only recently did I kick Cingular to the curb, switching to Sprint, and I have not looked back. Of course, it's hard to beat Sprint's SERO plan: $30/month, 500 minutes, and Vision (internet).

Actually, I do remember one really strange item I sold on eBay. A few years back, a bunch of people won free Cybikos (the classic edition, not the Xtreme one pictured). The toy intrigued me for all of five seconds, before I decided to sell it on eBay. At the time, most people were getting $20-25 for their Cybikos.

I threw it up on eBay, and it was bid up to around $15 with about five minutes to go in the auction. All of a sudden, the eBay snipers came out of the woodwork, and somehow, the auction ended at $41 + shipping!!! Needless to say, I was VERY happy with that result.

(Tangent: great...yet another stupid Mac v PC commercial just aired)

A couple quick sports-related thoughts:

- The Clippers actually beat the Suns! Too bad Dallas played only one starter--Jason Terry--and Golden State beat them. Now the Clips have to win their last game and have GS lose their last one to get into the playoffs.

- The Dodgers won again, but Jason Schmidt was placed on the DL. I would have wagered that Brad Penny would have been the first Dodger starting pitcher to hit the DL. Oh well.

By the way, I realize this blog entry makes seven entries in a row that were NOT sports-dominated! I have no idea what is going on!

Until next time, happy blogging!