Man, have I mentioned lately how much I HATE eBay?

[anarky]

So there's this book I've been looking for for a damned long time. It's called Yoshitsune, and it's printed through a university press. The list price is $88.00.

The fucking libraries here are totally fucking worthless. If it's not the fucking DaVinci Code, they don't have it, and look at you blankly. If I still lived where I went to college, I could check it out from either my alma mater, or from a couple of other schools in the area. But around here, "civilians" can't check out jackshit from the college libraries. Well, except for one that charges $70 per year for the service and is two hours away.

Yeah, I need the damned thing for some research I'm doing, but $90 is a fucking huge price for a 367-page book with no cool pictures. We're not talking the fucking Star Wars Chronicles here.

So the cheapest used copy I can find for straight-up sale is $32 + $4 shipping. Most copies online are first editions, and go for like $100+.

So I almost shat myself when I found a copy for auction two days ago, with a starting bid of $9.90. I put in a bid for close to the max I wanted to pay ($26.00). Two other people put in bids that were still considerably lower than that.

Up to literally three seconds to go, I'm the highest bidder with a great deal of leeway. Then (and I'm constantly refreshing, because I know all these assholes like to wait until the last minute to bid), and with two seconds left, it shows I've been outbid by some new douchebag by one fucking penny. Not enough time to enter another bid, so I lose it.

And, in the three minutes I was watching the end of the auction, the fucking copy on amazon sells. So now I can not get it at all, buy it new for almost $90, or get the next cheapest copy, which is described as being in pretty shitty condition and is $60 + shipping.

I'm a bit pissed. If you want to pay more than I'm willing to, fine. But to totally stay out of it until literally the last second, where there's no chance to be outbid, and beat out the high bidder by a fucking penny? No need to be a prick about it. God damn, I wish I could find that dude and kick his fucking nuts.

If everyone used eBay like it was designed to be used, with everyone entering their highest maximum price when they find the item, it would be awesome. But I honestly think that 99% of the users buy a lot of shit they don't really want for more than they should just for the thrill of beating someone else out.

Fuck it; I just found out the college where one of my brothers-in-law is a grad student has it in stock. I'll get him to check it out and I'll photocopy the motherfucker.

[Eternal Padawan]

I hate ebay snipers.

I think 90% of the times I've been outbid it was because I couldn't refresh in time.

They should put some kind of code in effect that pushes the auction another ten minutes for the last two bidders if somebody bids with under a minute to go. Just like a real auction. Sellers would ultimately make more money if you had two guys going back and forth over something tey really wanted.

[anarky]

No kidding.

If they're going to allow the sniping, there should be a stipulation that you can't bid with less than two minutes to go if you've not previously bid.

[vynsane]

heh... i have to admit, i'm a sniper and proud of it. but really, proxy bidding balances things out - if i bid with a couple of seconds left and my bid is less than your maximum, i don't have enough time to re-bid and you win it. but we're just different creatures, i suppose. i can't understand someone who bids with a day left. just wait another day!!! for that matter, i can't understand someone who bids with over a minute left.

[anarky]

i have to admit, i'm a sniper and proud of it.

Remind me to never try to purchase any Spider-Man comics or tampons used by Rue McClanahan on eBay.

[jjreason]

What they should do is extend the time of the auction by 2 minutes every time a bid is entered. That way, sniping would be pretty much eliminated, and the joy snipers would be shit out of luck. Easy.

[Eternal Padawan]

What they should do is extend the time of the auction by 2 minutes every time a bid is entered. That way, sniping would be pretty much eliminated, and the joy snipers would be shit out of luck. Easy.

Then, even if it went over your price range, you could make the other guy pay way more then he planned on! Easy!

[jjreason]

Yeah, but danger lurks - I've put in "vengeance bids" before, only to wind up holding the bag. Shitty.

[anarky]

Dammit.

I found out the entire Frank Zappa back catalog is out of print. Some sort of dispute between Rykodisc, their new owners Warner Bros, and the Zappa Family Trust. The ZFT has stated they will not make his works available for download, since he was such a stickler for sound quality. Given that he released 60+ albums when alive and about 30 more have come out since he died, it's a shit-ton of stuff. I don't know if anyone has it all. I'm not sure anyone wants it.

I'd been picking up an album here and there on CD, since the original agreement between Zappa (when he was alive) and Rykodisc was that they would never delete any of his albums and they would remain in print forever. (This was apparently part of why he hated WB; they would stop making his older albums when they stopped selling large enough numbers.) So I never thought there'd be an issue with getting the ones I want. And I discovered yesterday, oops, apparently some sort of bad blood put a stop to that, and no one is talking. Not sure if they're not allowed to talk, or just aren't. Aside from the shitty-quality "Beat the Boots" series (where they took bootleg tapes of concerts, slapped album art on them, and sold them as legitimate releases so they'd get the money instead of bootleggers), there is not a single Frank Zappa album available new, unless you get lucky and happen across one in a store (probably one of the ones only the hardest of the hardcore want).

Anyway, enough background info. There are three Zappa albums that I thought, "Hmm, don't want to compromise on these three and say I'll never need them." I looked around on eBay and found one (the one I want most--a double live album that features covers of "Whipping Post" and "Stairway to Heaven") for a reasonable price. Cheap price, in fact; used, described as perfect condition, for what the new CD set cost when it was available. Oh, and free shipping. The auction ended in four days. No bids. No Buy It Now option. I check various other sites where people like to sell stuff. Can't find any copy of the CD shipping from the same state. Look at his page to see if there's other bargains, and it looks like he's selling random shit from his house, mostly opened Revell model boats.

Not wanting to bid on it yet, I put it on my watch list. Which I just pulled up a few minutes ago.

"Auction Ended."

WTF? How did an auction with four days left and no Buy It Now end?

I click around and get to the page. The auction ended because the item is no longer available.

So why the fuck did you put it on eBay?

There really ought to be a way to leave negative feedback for this bullshit.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

I've heard of people PMing the seller and arranging a "backdoor transaction" so they don't have to pay the eBay fees. And I've had a seller offer me the same deal. It seemed hinky, so I told him I'd rather do it "legitimately". I didn't say it was because if the product was shit, I wanted the eBay and Paypal recourses to recover my money.

Anyway, if they agree, the seller removes the auction, and YOU get fucked.