adir1

  We have been eBay patrons for many many years, probably almost since it’s inception. But lately, it seems to become more and more of a wild west and less and less of organized trusted marketplace.

Check out this latest example of an auction. Could this be an antique sold by resident of last century? Must be, and he’s probably a ghost by now! That or there was some other reason that eBay blocked him from selling and supposedly removed him/her (see screen shot below for evidence).

But, even though the user is not registered since July 2006, his/hers auctions are doing just fine. There are several of them ending daily, some even with Actual Winning Bids!

I wonder what the poor folk who pay the person can expect for their money. There isn’t even a way to leave negative feedback, once the user isn’t registered. But it gets better! We have decided to alert the “excellent” eBay customer care to this alarming situation, and got a reply back, several days later:

First of all, I would like to thank you for reporting such an important information to us. Valued members like you are indeed an asset to our community.

… please report the listing violation using our online form.

The best part is, that the form they are referring us to has no such reason in valid complaint drop-down as ‘unregistered user selling’, or even ‘other’. And, presuming for a second that our complain ended up in the ‘wrong’ department, they can’t forward emails/complaints inside eBay customer care?! They have to ask us to resubmit?!

Just to make sure I bore you to death with this post, there are more horror stories from other users and one that we ourselves recently ran into. And trying to resolve it with proper eBay channels is impossible, it seems that they don’t have the time to read even few sentences of your complain to understand the situation. Instead, they are shooting standard email responses completely unrelated to the question/concern.

Well, rant over. I think eBay is still fine for those cheap unimportant purchases, but if you are planning to make a major purchase, beware!!!

Us? We are giving up at this point. Maybe the good folks at Consumerist can pick it up and get to the bottom of this.

Seriously, with all the Millions and Billions eBay and PayPal making on these auctions, they can’t find good programmers? Or decent customer service?

A friend, who shall remain nameless, has asked me if this was a “geeky” blog that she should stay away from due to it’s inaccessibility to the normal folk, presumably.

What makes a blog Geeky? I probably won’t post here the secrets of memory management optimizations in Java, or the intricacies of CPU Profilers. But, I will post about Codecs and other scary words like that.

Really, even when talking about complicated tech stuff, I do try to make it accessible by linking to explanation pages for “geeky” words like Codec. And I also think that these matters should be of interest to all people, since our entire world is becoming Digitized (or maybe it always was). But, I am also very comfortable if you choose to skip certain posts that you find of no interest.

Now, just to demonstrate how Geeky this blog really is, here is the main subject of today’s post: Hand Soap.

 Seriously, I don’t know if everyone has discovered it, since it’s fairly new, but in our household we love Dial Complete Foaming hand wash. Yep, it comes Foaming right out of the dispenser, and this is not only grand fun for the kids (who finally Use soap), but very effective. The Antibacterial soap is clearly visible and easily reaches all over your hands, cleaning better, in my humble opinion, at least.

There! Super geeky post for you, enjoy (or skip, that is)

You really should subscribe, to avoid unpleasant situation that CNN ended up in. Today they finally discovered and broadcast a Video that my readers saw a week ago.

adir1.com — Your best source for early and relevant news! Well, except for natural disasters, political debate and other such depressing things that I will avoid reporting on.

I am planning a bigger post on my whole philosophy of blogging, but meanwhile just to emphasize that I favor Quality way above Quantity here.

I guess I am just in a Happy Friday mood, so when I came across this golden oldie, while cleaning the over 2000 unread emails from my mailbox, I decided it warrants a post. Enjoy!

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg!

The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, theolny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.

The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt!!!

PS: I tried spell checking it, but taht flaied for some unnkwon raeosn… lol

I decided to give Prosper.com a try about a month ago (read my original thoughts on that), and today came across an interesting listing from our brave soldier currently deployed.

I do hope, for his sake, that the listing’s photo is real and of his own financial accounts. However, the most interesting thing must be the Questions and Answers section of the listing. When asked, out of genuine concern from Prosper investors about being repaid in case of his fatality in a dangerous deployment, the answer was:

No I am not in a “safe” area. But to compare the odds of me dying here lets look at statistics. There is no traffic where I am at. So if you live in the states YOU have a MUCH higher chance of dying in an accident than me dying here in Iraq. (Aug-02-2007)

Hmm, no traffic, you say? Who knew that we are in the danger zone here while Iraq is all around safe place to be, eh?

Looks like other Prosper lenders have no argument with this rock solid logic, since there are no further follow up questions and his listing is getting fully funded any minute now.