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I just attract crazy, or something.
May. 3rd, 2007 12:52 pmA fun little drama is unfolding through e-mail just now. You see I maintain the unofficial Windstone dealer's black list. This is a list of people who've done things like selling stuff from a smoking home as "mint, never displayed" and shipping things badly packed without insurance when the buyer bought insurance, that kind of thing. It's not meant as a "do not ever buy from" list so much as a "buy with caution" list.
There's a gal on it whose ebay name is penny0745 (and I make that public quite deliberately, I suggest you never buy from her, despite her decent feedback rating, because if nothing goes wrong you're fine, but if something does, you'll have a total psycho on your hands.) Anyhow, this penny person sold a Windstone dinosaur on ebay. She listed it incorrectly, that is without the Windstone name in the auction title. This is what we call a "hidden" auction, and they usually go cheap because nobody sees them. Finding a hidden auction is something of a collector's coup, and takes massive effort. (Just try finding one item, that may or may not be there at all, when the only search term you have to use is "dragon." Go ahead, try it!) Anyhow, after getting a bid on her dino from one of the forum collectors, she apparently realized why she wasn't getting much action, and took the auction down, and relisted it with "Windstone" in the title. This slightly ticked off the person who'd found her hidden auction, but there's nothing actually wrong with it, so okay.
But of course that's not the end of the story. Oh no. Somebody won the auction, and paid her for it. And she contacted them saying that she couldn't find the dinosaur. She suspects her son (of a toddling sort of age) stole it, and she can't figure out what he did with it. So instead of a refund, she offers a totally different figure in its place! Well the buyer's having none of that, and insists on a refund. Then penny finds the dino, in her son's toybox, and offers it again. Knowing that it's been played with by a toddler, and suspecting that it is no longer in particularly good condition, the buyer turns down the offer and insists on a refund. Penny does give a refund, and gets given neutral feedback for this.
Which I consider pretty fair. I had more or less the same thing happen to me recently (buyer sold item not actually in buyer's posession) and I gave a neutral feedback. The whole thing was such a bad experience for the buyer though that she contacted me and said that I probably should put this name on the black list. I agreed and did so. The black list is not just a list, as it includes the actual nature of the problem, so you can know if somebody is an outright cheat or just a bad packer, or in this case just crazy.
And I thought that was the end of that, but yesterday this penny person found the list. How she found it I'm not sure. It's not linked to directly from any official Windstone anything anymore, for legal reasons the official site has nothing to do with it. You have to PM me on the forums to get the address, and this penny person certainly never did. But however she found it, she found it. And she totally flipped out. Her first letter said I was "printing garbage" and told me to kiss her ass. Very nice of her.
Now if she'd contacted me and said "hey, this person got their refund, I wasn't being dishonest, could you please take my name off the list?" I would have done it! Just like that. But "@#$%@$## I never did anything wrong here's my life story woe is me you garbage person, KMA!!!!!!!1111oneelleventy!" No freaking way. I wrote back, told her to please calm down and quit being so rude. She replied with more of the same, and I said yet again that I wasn't going to respond to insults, please quit being rude.
Well she fired back a letter today that threatens me! She says if I lived in Michigan, she'd come over here and beat me up, or words to that effect. And also that she knows somebody who makes web pages, and *gasp!!!!* she's going to have them make a web page about me, how do I like that?! Then she says that she's 56, and I'm being immature. And that if I want to meet her halfway, she'll hop a plane and we can fight. I rather suspect that I'm not the immature one here.
And she's not being terribly smart. This is supposed to make me admit she's an honest Windstone seller and take her name off the list? Ha! Her entry now says that she harasses people by e-mail and threatens them with violence. *grin*
( The actual exchange of letters, for anybody interested. )
I tell you. I get all the crazies! If her threat was a little more explicit I'd report her to the police. I'm tempted to anyhow. I have her real name, phone number, and address now. (Isn't Google great?)
There's a gal on it whose ebay name is penny0745 (and I make that public quite deliberately, I suggest you never buy from her, despite her decent feedback rating, because if nothing goes wrong you're fine, but if something does, you'll have a total psycho on your hands.) Anyhow, this penny person sold a Windstone dinosaur on ebay. She listed it incorrectly, that is without the Windstone name in the auction title. This is what we call a "hidden" auction, and they usually go cheap because nobody sees them. Finding a hidden auction is something of a collector's coup, and takes massive effort. (Just try finding one item, that may or may not be there at all, when the only search term you have to use is "dragon." Go ahead, try it!) Anyhow, after getting a bid on her dino from one of the forum collectors, she apparently realized why she wasn't getting much action, and took the auction down, and relisted it with "Windstone" in the title. This slightly ticked off the person who'd found her hidden auction, but there's nothing actually wrong with it, so okay.
But of course that's not the end of the story. Oh no. Somebody won the auction, and paid her for it. And she contacted them saying that she couldn't find the dinosaur. She suspects her son (of a toddling sort of age) stole it, and she can't figure out what he did with it. So instead of a refund, she offers a totally different figure in its place! Well the buyer's having none of that, and insists on a refund. Then penny finds the dino, in her son's toybox, and offers it again. Knowing that it's been played with by a toddler, and suspecting that it is no longer in particularly good condition, the buyer turns down the offer and insists on a refund. Penny does give a refund, and gets given neutral feedback for this.
Which I consider pretty fair. I had more or less the same thing happen to me recently (buyer sold item not actually in buyer's posession) and I gave a neutral feedback. The whole thing was such a bad experience for the buyer though that she contacted me and said that I probably should put this name on the black list. I agreed and did so. The black list is not just a list, as it includes the actual nature of the problem, so you can know if somebody is an outright cheat or just a bad packer, or in this case just crazy.
And I thought that was the end of that, but yesterday this penny person found the list. How she found it I'm not sure. It's not linked to directly from any official Windstone anything anymore, for legal reasons the official site has nothing to do with it. You have to PM me on the forums to get the address, and this penny person certainly never did. But however she found it, she found it. And she totally flipped out. Her first letter said I was "printing garbage" and told me to kiss her ass. Very nice of her.
Now if she'd contacted me and said "hey, this person got their refund, I wasn't being dishonest, could you please take my name off the list?" I would have done it! Just like that. But "@#$%@$## I never did anything wrong here's my life story woe is me you garbage person, KMA!!!!!!!1111oneelleventy!" No freaking way. I wrote back, told her to please calm down and quit being so rude. She replied with more of the same, and I said yet again that I wasn't going to respond to insults, please quit being rude.
Well she fired back a letter today that threatens me! She says if I lived in Michigan, she'd come over here and beat me up, or words to that effect. And also that she knows somebody who makes web pages, and *gasp!!!!* she's going to have them make a web page about me, how do I like that?! Then she says that she's 56, and I'm being immature. And that if I want to meet her halfway, she'll hop a plane and we can fight. I rather suspect that I'm not the immature one here.
And she's not being terribly smart. This is supposed to make me admit she's an honest Windstone seller and take her name off the list? Ha! Her entry now says that she harasses people by e-mail and threatens them with violence. *grin*
( The actual exchange of letters, for anybody interested. )
I tell you. I get all the crazies! If her threat was a little more explicit I'd report her to the police. I'm tempted to anyhow. I have her real name, phone number, and address now. (Isn't Google great?)
