eBay stock sell off

eBay announced another change the others day, and again not in the Sellers best interest. They are no longer going to permit the Sellers to accept money orders, cash, checks or cashiers checks, ONLY PayPal. Get this: eBay *owns* PayPal! This means when you list an item, they are guaranteed basically double commissions, because eBay charges 5% and PayPal gets 3%!!! Now, on one hand I prefer PayPal over money orders, especially for small items, but when I list an expensive item like I have in the past, say a $4000 game, why should I be FORCED to pay an additional $120 to have Big Brother eBay launder the money? In this case, it's only better for eBay, not the Buyer, not the Seller. This doesn't mean the Buyer has to have a PayPal account either, they can use a credit card and it's filtered to the Seller via their PayPal account, still with the same fees. I can tell you this isn't great. A customer of mine didn't recognize my name that showed up on their credit card statement, and thus they filed a dispute, my money was seized instantly. I do mean wham bam gone. $93 in limbo. When I emailed the customer, they realized the mistake and retracted the dispute, but here it is almost 30 days later and it's still pending, PayPal says it can take up to 90 days. They blame the credit card company.

Bull SHIT people!! You should put my money back as fast as you took it.

Just another example folks. I'm getting out. eBay can stick it up their ass.

Gimmee Dat STICK!

Super shorty, Abby got the stick. Last month in the heat in the Truckee River. RRrrrrrrroooooooowwww

There are some good customers....

A number of weeks ago, I sold a dish receiver on eBay.... for 99 cents. Yippee. It was a normal transaction, I got paid, I shipped, that was it. Then I got the weird feedback:

"WILL SEND $20 MORE. EMAIL MAILING ADDRESS TO @NETZERO.COM. THANKS"

Huh? Describing what I thought is hard to put in to words, but I just smelled some sort of scam. I mean, the person could contact me in a variety of ways, why through feedback. Curiosity got the better of me, I emailed back asking what was the comment, and the reply was in essence, they expected to pay more, so they'd like to send me more money.

Yeah right!!!

I was very surprised when I did get a check for $20 in the mail a few days later. Thanks Kris, very cool. I guess there are some decent people out there!

Sidewalk project

Here's the next project, in compacted form. This below you is a flagstone sidewalk. It's 3.5 tons, yes tons, of rock, that I get the pleasure to move and lay out in my already rock and dirt covered yard. Why? I'm not sure. And I paid for this! Oh, and those are peppers.

Barky Dog, Episode IV

We've turned in paperwork and met with the Animal Control officer, and the neighbors gave statements, one which was KILLER, see below (click to enlarge):


See? It's just not us! Thanks Rod.

Things are changing for the better, finally a little silence when we're outside watering or have the windows open or pleasantly taking a morning dump. The Animal control people seem to act quick, and this has been observed at least twice to my knowledge:


That's Officer Heidi's (she's about 4' 9") truck. Go get 'em Heidi!! Amy the mail lady has been spying for me :)

The only other thing to mention is that last Saturday, while watering on the hill, a dog was yipping on the OTHER side of the Yippee Dog's house. The Teacher Beacher was out there and saw Tracy on the hill and yelled over (but actually nicely): "I just want you to know that's not *MY* dog that's been barking!!"

Yeah, we know. Amazing you can tell the difference though, ain't it? Why can't you hear your own dog bothering the neighborhood!?

PS: Did anyone catch the Star Wars reference?

Lawsuit coming?

Well, after more than a year, Gr. Moving has laid down the line and given us until the end of the month to pay them an additional $3900. We've bantered back and forth in emails and while never agreeing 100% with our logic, they've backed down from $6100 due to mistakes they made. We finally time-lined it out and put some figures down and without getting nit picky, we feel they owe us $2400. What's so frickin' frustrating about this whole debacle are a number of things:

1. I made the mistake of thinking that the branch manager was a friend of mine, he has never returned my calls.
2. I made the mistake of trusting the verbal and handshake contract.
3. The blame is often laid on me, I said this, wouldn't do that, wanted this, moved more than I said. All lies.
4. The amount of money we paid already is double the initial estimates, with money paid to Gr. Moving and PODS.
   
5. And lastly that this has caused a lot of stress and sleepless nights for the both of us.

Will I move again? You bet! Will I ever hire a moving company? Not likely. I've learned a lot, but the biggest thing I learned was it doesn't cost $30,000 to move.