American Idol, Virtual thorn

So we watched the American Idol final last night.  Ali and I were both glad that David Cook beat out the little munchkin David.  Here are my observations from the show:

– What was with the dress Jordin Sparks was wearing?  I told Ali it looked like she ripped the cover off of the lunar lander.  She just doesn’t get it.  She should take notes from Carrie Underwood and drop some weight.

– Speaking of Carrie Underwood, she looked great. I don’t know how much I liked the song she performed. Holy shit, that outfit was as short as short could be.

– The one female contestant that has the hair that looks like a skunk was horrible.  When she sings she sounds like she just woke up after smoking 3 packs of cigarettes and drinking a jug of Jack Daniels.

– Since we haven’t really been watching the show for the better part of two months I really noticed that Paula Abdul has dropped a few pounds.  At the beginning she looked dumpy and frumpy.  Last night she looked dramatically thinner and better.

– I couldn’t believe ZZ Top performed.  Those guys looked old when they were big in the 80’s.  I can only imagine how old they are now.

– I don’t understand why the Jonas Brothers are popular.

– The segment where they had Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr and Ben Stiller as back up singers for Gladys Knight was the funniest part of the show.

– When the contestants started singing George Michael songs, Ali and I predicted he was going to show up.  I was all ready to mock him and his performance.  Well yea those big glasses were a bit weird and whenever I see him I have a hard time forgetting all of his public bathroom sex incidents as well as some of those gloriously horrible pictures of him in recent years. Well he gave a fantastic performance of “Praying for Time”, the best of the night.  It was really, REALLY good.

So another reality show is done.  yay.  It will be interesting to see what sort of changes they make to combat the erosion of their audience.  Like I said yesterday I am skeptical we will feel much need to watch the next installment of the show.

I am a very accomplished “Virtual Thorn”.  I have an uncanny ability to annoy people without even being in the same zip code.  My voicemail performances from my Entre days are nearly legendary.  However I also am quite proficient with getting my point across via email.  Well I just finished up annoying the shit out of someone else.

Last week I bought a hard drive on ebay to go into the external enclosure that I plan to use to expand the recording capacity of the HD Tivo.  Well after I won the auction I paid for the item immediately and anxiously awaited it’s arrival.  After three or four days I had not received anything nor had I received any communication from the seller.  At that time, using Ebay’s message system I submitted a simple question to the seller. “Has this item shipped yet?”  I received no response.

So I waited up until yesterday to attempt contact the seller again.  This time I found his personal email address from this paypal account.  I sent this Hi I paid for this a week ago and never received any sort of shipment notice.  What is the status?”  You can sense the slight annoyance in the message but it was still civil.  The seller actually replied to this email with a USPS tracking number.  I plug the number into the tracking site and it comes back as invalid.  I reply back to the seller with this information.  He replies back “That is what the postal machine spit out to me..” nothing else.

So I am getting annoyed with this person now.  I write back and ask him when he shipped it. “Last night”, meaning he waited almost an entire week before shipping it, if he even shipped it at all.  Well now the angry switch was flipped and I send him this in email.

Wow, not a great turn around. I wonder how long it would have taken to ship if I didn’t say something?”

It was nothing horrible but I wanted to make the point that I didn’t appreciate him f’ing around for a week after receiving payment before he got around to shipping the hdd.

Well this set off a rapid fire exchange of email.  It became quite obvious to me I wasn’t dealing with a Rhodes Scholar.  Follow along and enjoy the ride.

Seller – “When you get the package send it back for a refund. Dont appreciate the tone”

Me – “Don’t appreciate you sitting on the payment with no communication.  Feedback will be appropriate.”

Seller – “OK but still send it back my Drive deserves a better home”

Me – “Keep digging, I’ll throw you a shovel.  I actually would return it but I can only imagine how long it would take for a refund to be posted if ever at all”

Seller – “Same day to get rid of you. BTW what am i digging?”

Me (just throwing this against the wall to see if it sticks)- “I find it quite funny that you found my request to have shipped the product within a few days of receiving payment unreasonable.  Good luck on Ebay.

If you seriously want to erase this transaction for both of us, which I would welcome, refund the Paypal payment now and I will either refuse delivery of the drive or return it to you asap.  Otherwise I couldn’t trust that you would follow through.”

Seller – “no it is quite disturbing that you have called me a thief twice when i provided you a tracking number for your drive.  now i am to trust you (one who brought fraud into the discussion) that you would actually return my drive to me.  no, you keep the drive, leave the feedback you want and i hope the drive dies soon because there is no warranty from seagate.  i have been on ebay for close to 5 years and this is the first time I have come across a person like yourself.  i guess it is the new policy that sellers cannot leave negative that has made buyers so crazy.  enjoy the drive and with the holiday weekend you might get it next week. nice doing business with cha.  enjoy”

Me – “Again, this all evolves from your disregard of common auction courtesy.  Go figure that I am to blame for your screw up.  Not good at taking responsibility are ya?  I have been selling for years as well and have conducted quite a few transactions myself.  I know how I treat people that buy from me.  I also know that if you continue to ignore people that buy from you, you will continue to receive the feedback like I will be leaving.  If I had for some reason forgotten/neglected to ship an item for almost a week and ignored a buyer’s initial inquiry into the shipment a few days prior, I would be apologetic, not combative.  

Do business as you see fit, it just won’t be with me.  

I will be quoting this email in my feedback.  I’m sure others will find it quite entertaining.  Have a nice day.”

Seller – “go fuck yourself.”

Me – “I’ll include that too, thanks.”

I win, you lose.  It’s awesome because Ebay recently changed their policy and sellers can no longer leave feedback for buyers.  If a buyer pays for the item he has done his part.  This policy change prevents what used to be a common policy where a seller would hold buyer feedback hostage to ensure that negative feedback wasn’t left for them if they did something shady.  I can hardly wait to leave feedback on this tool.