Blackcap Blog

Published at 08:21 on 13 May 2016

So I’m in the market for a nice land line phone. (Basically, I’m getting increasingly pissed at both my cell phone and my cell provider, need something as a backup, and the idea of good old fashioned Plain Old Telephone Service really appeals to me as such.) The best phones ever made of course were the ones Western Electric built for the old Bell System. The Bell System was broken up over 30 years ago, of course, but the phones were so well built many still have a lot of life left in them.

So off to the Web in search of known good old phones. I run across one being sold on eBay that has all the hallmarks of a great deal in the works. It’s new old stock, being listed by a seller with only a few transactions under his belt but with high ratings for the ones he has completed, and it hasn’t attracted much attention from bidders. So I get onto eSnipe and fill in my maximum bid amount.

The closing time rolls around and I check my emails. WTF? No message at all from eBay or eSnipe, win or lose? I log onto eBay to see what happened and it’s another WTF?!?. Again, no mention of the item at all. My bid apparently failed to be submitted at all. Most annoyingly, it sold for a closing price which matched that of many used phones with wear! Arrrgh!

Then this morning I get a personal message from the seller asking why I hadn’t paid. I had won it after all! I never checked the bid details because in the absence of a special notice that I had won or lost, I just assumed my bid failed to get submitted at all.

I hate buyers that don’t pay promptly, so I compose an apology to the seller and pay immediately. I’m just glad I thought to take my iPad with me; I’m leaving town for a big demonstration in Anacortes and something told me it was best to keep as in-touch as possible. If I hadn’t, I’d have annoyed the seller with an even longer delay.