410 words on eBay
Two weeks ago I had to buy some stuff for my mum on eBay. Some extra cups for the breakfast crockery my parents have been using since…, well, as long as I can remember anyway. It’s called ‘Polka’ and was designed by a Scandinavian designer for Rosenthal in the 1960s. It’s quite a nice and plain design with the rare feature that the plates are completely flat and smooth on top, no rim, nothing. Quite cool.
For some reason or another there are only seven plates and three cups left in my parent’s cupboards now – where I can only remember being responsible for the demise of a single plate. So some extra cups are useful, I suppose.
Shortly after winning the eBay auctions for the cups I got a message from another person who wanted to buy the complete set but only got the plates, coffee pot &c because of my bidding. All items had been put on eBay separately. While I could understand that it was a shame to break up the complete set, I had a mission to fulfill and didn’t want to sell those items… in fact I wondered why the person hadn’t put higher bids on there if she wanted to get the complete set. Our maximum bid wasn’t exceptionally high and could have easily been outdone…
Some time passed, money was transferred and profits were made by the postal service before my mom got the parcel with what we bought. She says that the crockery isn’t exactly like hers and sounds different when you knock on it. What to do in this situation? My mum suspects it may be fake stuff. But the seller didn’t seem particularly dodgy. So if it were a fake, it’s probably been bought as a fake back then without people suspecting anything. The seller didn’t seem particularly dodgy (i.e. active on eBay), at least.
The bottom line remains that my mom doesn’t want the crockery now. So what to do with it? I e-mailed the person who asked to have it earlier on, telling her that she can have it at the price I paid plus the shipping cost. But she started questioning the shipping costs I told her and suggested I’d send it with her paying afterwards… or offering it again on eBay. Yeah, right… if I were interested in being a crook in the hassle of selling stuff of eBay I would have just done it…