My Most Embarrassing Auction..What A Difference A Dot Makes!
As a newbee to eBay I sold a LOT of things. I looked around our farm and I found a TON of stuff that I was interested in getting rid of. Old metals, seeds, wood, cattle, dogs, wife...(well, truth is she got rid of me first, but that's another story..)
But you know, after awhile I got tired of the hassle of packaging and posting everything. Then one day I was looking at a piece of metal called brass shim stock and a bell went off inside my head! You see, brass shim stock is mostly used in machine shops to adjust tooling, but I remembered my grandmother using it to make decorations. And I was off to the races!
I found a supplier on the internet and got a very good deal.. Then I placed an auction on eBay and crossed my fingers and SURE ENOUGH, it started selling like hotcakes. I was contacting my supplier several times a day, giving instructions on where to send the stuff. I was VERY excited! And then something unexpected happened...
I got an email from an irate customer! He complained that what I had sent him was NOT as my auction described. (dang it!) It seems that when I posted the auction I described the dimensions as "100' by 6'" ...I had misplaced a semi-colon with a colon. The long and short of it was that what I had sent him was about 93 feet short of what I had advertised!
The next day, I had about 50 new pieces of mail in my inbox. Questions ? Comments ? Frustration ? Anger? It would be difficult to categorize them. Once I'd explained the situation, most of my customers where amazingly tolerant and understanding. One of them jokingly razed me for trying to get into his pockets. He also teased me about my user name (richer-u) , and said I should change it to "richer-me". I explained to him that by the time I reimbursed him ..AND paid for the brass, there would not be much point!
Well, to make a long story short; I killed the ad, made good my commitments etc etc. It was a funny thing though, I put the ad back up on eBay with the proper dimensions and never got a single bid. Who knew that just a couple of DOTS could make all that much difference? What a difference a DOT makes!
Please send comments to: aricheru@gmail.com www.abcdollar.com
About the Author
Born near a small Texas farming community. He has been a soldier, teacher, businessman, farmer and entrepreneur....contact at richeru@gmail.com http//www.abcdollar.com http//www.aricheru.com
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