A spur of the moment rant

I'd like to take this opportunity to whine, bitch, complain, and warn all of you. There is a seller on Ebay that you should avoid. I know, there is risk associated with buying stuff on Ebay, but by this blog entry, I'm out to prove that there is also risk associated with ripping off trustworthy buyers thinking that volume of sales can make up for crappy treatment of customers.

I unfortunately don't have the time to go into the ins and outs of Ebay  for those "uninitiated", but for any of you who do plan to buy from them any time soon (or any time later for that matter), please avoid a seller named Colordrives. I "won" an auction for a sound card from them back in early August. After a few weeks, they sent me a sound card that didn't work. In fact it blue screened my Windows XP Pro Box during the install (3 times actually). After several attempts to contact Colordrives they finally responded that I needed to ship it back to them. This sucked because I had already paid over $10 to have it shipped to me (knowing full well they were marking up the shipping charge, a common Ebay seller tactic). I relented and shipped it back to them at my expense. For those of you keeping track, I had now paid for the item, paid for it to be shipped to me (plus a 250% markup on shipping costs) and paid to ship it back to them despite it being THEIR fault that they sent me a bum Sound Card.

After about 3 weeks, I started to get a little annoyed that there had been no communication or a new sound card so I started emailing Colordrives to check on the status of my replacement Sound Card. No response. Radio Silence. I persisted, and they eventually responded asking for the tracking number for the item I had sent back to them. I provided the tracking number. Nothing. No response. I kept hounding them. I gave up sending them emails and opened an Ebay dispute claim. In response to the Ebay claim (in which I said I had never received my sound card for which I had paid), these jerks had the nerve to respond citing the ORIGINAL shipment date/information. What smart-asses!! True enough, you DID send me a sound card, you just forgot that it was a NON-FUNCTIONING sound card, and that I had PAID to ship it back to you. I'm sure they're probably shipping this same card back to some other poor soul right now, and he'll probably pay to send it back to them, so they can sell it to someone else, and the cylce can continue.

Anyway, that's enough bitching. It's been a VERY long weekend (which I may elaborate on further down the road, I haven't decided). I'll end with, AVOID SELLER COLORDRIVES WHEN SHOPPING ON EBAY!!!