is this crazy?

[n6hcm]

this is one of my auctions. (http://www.ebay.com/itm/181006984708) it's for a handheld scanner that's maybe ten years old and is obsolete in many markets. i thought it might go for $40 or so and, with an hour left to go, it's over $90 ...

(even more concerned about another auction, where the high bidders have all been people with 0 feedback ... )

[NQ6U]

Crazy, yes. But for you, a good kind of crazy.

[KG4CGC]

If you don't trust the bidder then block them. $250 is what the market price is for that rig. Well, it was last year. I haven't kept up with that particular rig since last year. They've really been pushing the 750. As for the scanner, eh, pretty good for a soft market.

[n6hcm]

well, i should have blocked it earlier--the auction on that ends tomorrow ... if there's goofiness in the payment then i'll cancel the bids and, if necessary, reauction. i already had some ridiculousness on the scanner (someone who wanted me to end the auction so he could "buy it from me today" for some ridiculous amount ... you know how that usually ends up. oddly, ebay makes it not so easy to report people like that.

[WX7P]

Henry: I just went through about 8 months of ebay, and I'm glad to be done with it. It was helpful to sell some specialty items, like my license plate collection but overall it's been a PITA. I'm not sure who is worse, hams or license plate collectors. They all bitch about the shipping costs and expect their stuff the day after the auction ends even if they live in Maine. Ebay has this new rating system where they use a survey to "rate" your performance. If you get over 3 lower than average ratings, they hold your money until the buyers have the items for 3 days. It's bullshit. It's all tilted toward the buyers and the small sellers be damned. I always shipped on the Monday after the end of the auctions on Sunday, yet there were STILL people who bitched about the time frame or the shipping costs. For smaller items, ebay isn't worth the time. I did sell my Yaesu FT-767GX with the modules for far more than I would have gotten for it locally, but even that transaction was rocky, as the guy didn't have a clue as to how to use the radio, so therefore it was "defective". The radio wasn't defective, the guy was just stupid and needed to RTFM. License plate collectors are really bad. You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. I shipped my plates in priority boxes with peanuts so there would be no damage. Naturally, it costs more. A lot of these guys want a $150 plate sent between two pieces of cardboard so they can save $2. Not happening, and I have the low shipping ratings to show for it. So, ebay will hold my money because 5 guys thought they paid a dollar too much for shipping. It's ridiculous.

[n6hcm]

last year i pushed out a few thousand dollars of silver coinage with only two unfortunate events: one user was pissed off that the stuff he was complaining about was clearly shown in the item's photo (so he gave me a positive rating but the text isn't so positive) and one item was lost in transit to germany and german ebay picked up the liability ... but this was all before some of the rules you complain about came into force.

[N2CHX]

I just had a guy buy a vintage piece of gear that is chock full of socketed TTL logic IC's. It was bench tested before it went out the door and worked fine, but anyone who knows vintage electronics knows that socketed IC's and shipping don't mix well. So a week after he gets it, he wants to return it because he says it's "not as described" and "not even worth trying to fix" and qualifies that by saying he has 25 years as an engineer and 50 awards, yada yada. I ask him what exactly it's doing and he says one of the outputs is low and one side of the balanced output is dead, and it exhibits feedback when you turn up, of all things, the feedback loop lol. I told him to return it if he really insists on it but had he considered the possibility that IC's had come loose in shipping. He hadn't. So he re-seats all the IC's and suddenly it works fine. Go figure lol. I haven't heard back from him in two days so I assume he has decided to keep it lol.

[KK4AMI]

I just had a guy buy a vintage piece of gear that is chock full of socketed TTL logic IC's. It was bench tested before it went out the door and worked fine, but anyone who knows vintage electronics knows that socketed IC's and shipping don't mix well. So a week after he gets it, he wants to return it because he says it's "not as described" and "not even worth trying to fix" and qualifies that by saying he has 25 years as an engineer and 50 awards, yada yada. I ask him what exactly it's doing and he says one of the outputs is low and one side of the balanced output is dead, and it exhibits feedback when you turn up, of all things, the feedback loop lol. I told him to return it if he really insists on it but had he considered the possibility that IC's had come loose in shipping. He hadn't. So he re-seats all the IC's and suddenly it works fine. Go figure lol. I haven't heard back from him in two days so I assume he has decided to keep it lol.

I don't think that is too unusual. Most Engineers have very little practical bench time when it comes to building and repairing. I'm am speaking from my history. It always amazed me that parts never shook loose in circuit emulation software or design schematics.

[WØTKX]

Or problems with the wire wrap right after the prototype gets built. ;)