I think eBay is one of the greatest Internet-era inventions in history - it leverages the power of a world-wide market of sellers with an equally large pool of buyers, connecting in ways that no previous market ever could. When eBay works, it works very well - but when it works poorly, boy can it get ugly. eBay relies on the individual integrity of buyers and sellers, but when the integrity of a buyer collides with that of an ethically bereft seller, it’s usually the buyer that gets burned if he’s not expecting it - which unfortunately is what happened to me. Allow me an early morning rant…

My wife Ashley was looking for a new flat iron - I’m mostly ignorant about such things (my hair takes 30 seconds to “do” in the mornings), but apparently there are flat irons that get hot, and flat irons that get really hot. She had the former, but wanted the latter to tame her unruly hair. Local sources for the type of extra-hot flat iron that she wanted were charging over $250 CAD (about $240 USD) so naturally I turned to the greatest marketplace on earth to find a better deal: eBay. I found a seller, Majeeda Haaq (who sellers under the name wickedly-whimsical with a store called Wickedly Whimsical Witches and Cats), who was selling a Paul Brown Hawaii Ceramic Flat Iron for $100 USD. The shipping charges were steep at $25.68 USD, but I assumed this was because the box was fairly big and I’m always willing to pay what it costs to ship to Canada. It was still a good deal overall, so I used the Buy It Now feature and paid $125.68 USD for it on August the 2nd. I received an automated response to my message stating my payment had been received. I never heard back from the seller, but I assumed the package would be on its way soon enough, and I’d see it within two weeks - that’s on the long side of how long it normally takes to get a package from the US to Canada. (more…)