[PLUG-TALK] eBayzon

[Denis Heidtmann]

John, I admire your tenacity and dedication to the effort. My contribution
to this issue is to buy as little as possible online. Hard to do these days
as "stores" are becoming rare.
-Denis

On Sat, Jul 24, 2021 at 9:45 PM John Jason Jordan <johnxj at gmx.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 24 Jul 2021 19:46:01 -0700
> Keith Lofstrom <keithl at kl-ic.com> dijo:
>
> >While I am not a "boycott Amazon" zealot, friends are, and
> >I shop alternate venues (like eBay) when I can.  Yesterday,
> >I bought a roll of Gorilla Tape from "kims.my15_4" on eBay,
> >allegedly UPS delivery, and paid $3.94 for it.  Just after
> >that, a friend sent me an identical roll using her Amazon
> >Prime account, paying $2.97 for it.
> >
> >Both rolls arrived simultaneously today, both in Amazon
> >Prime bubble-plastic envelopes.  So, the "kims*" eBay bot
> >bought a roll using Amazon Prime, addressed it to me, and
> >profited 97 cents.  Clever little fiddle, though this
> >points out the futility of dogmatic Amazon boycotts.
>
> Such Amazon boycotts are still useful. The problem is that buyers must
> be ever cautious. I buy a lot on eBay, but I never buy unless the
> seller offers to accept returns. It has to say so right in the listing
> so I can make a printout of it. If something arrives in an Amazon box,
> back it goes. That takes the profit out of their game.
>
> I also constantly message the seller asking what is the current physical
> location of the product. If they won't respond, then I know it is in
> some third level Asian country, being sold by someone playing games
> with American buyers.
>
> >If kims.my15_4 can earn a buck automatically with a bot,
> >so can a "headless" bot.  I can imagine a low-grade AI
> >program maintaining itself this way, renting increasing
> >amounts of time on AWS, experimenting and growing.
>
> You don't even have to wait for headless bots. Dishonest sellers are
> all over eBay these days. So far this year I've had to return six
> purchases, and two of them the seller refused to take back until I
> sicced eBay and PayPal on them. On one of them the seller said the item
> was at a residential address in Vancouver, WA, but in fact it was in
> China, being shipped to me by Newegg.
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG: https://pdxlinux.org
> PLUG-talk mailing list
> PLUG-talk at pdxlinux.org
> http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-talk
>