In the past year and a half, it's been every single day with me. "I didn't read the description/look at all the photos but it's YOUR fault for not putting the issue in the title or not putting a close-up of that miniscule scuff on the first photo." Now it's gotten to the point where buyers can file whatever claim they want and send back part or none of what you actually sent them and you don't get shit. Had a guy last week buy a rare $1200 vintage item from me. Was complete, no issues, took photos, described in detail any defects (there were none.) Sent it with signature confirmation and ensured. This weekend, he gets it and complains that it didn't work with the item he bought it for, despite the item being made for a specific brand and myself even mentioning that it didn't work with other brands. But no problem, I sent him a return label and told him to send everything back for a full refund. Got it this morning. All the valuable parts were clearly missing. I contacted the seller and was told "well those were missing when I got it. I clearly sent you a message about it in our exchanges." Which he DIDN'T. Naturally, he opens a case against me, which feeBay IMMEDIATELY accepts. In all my years dealing with them, I've never seen them accept a case so quickly. I spend all afternoon with their customer service, where I mention taking the buyer to small claims court. The person on the other end told me that if I did, they'd suspend my buying account. On top of that, thought I'd sell my laptop to get some extra cash... big mistake. Sold it to someone doing a private freight-shipping job. Guy gets the item, repackages it, and tries to send it to his client... in RUSSIA. Where apparently it's illegal to ship it to, because it was confiscated. And of course, not only do my cries of "reshipping is against eBay's TOS" fall on deaf ears, they refund the reshipper without return out of MY pocket. FEEbay is a joke. I'm so sick of this site it's not even funny...
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ebaysucks/comments/ausw5r/i_am_so_sick_of_ebay_99_of_its_userbase_are/
If this doesn’t scare you away from this company, I don’t know what will. A couple of weeks ago I made a purchase that amounted to roughly $430 using PayPal and selected to pay by credit card versus a bank account payment as I always do. I’ve been paying this way for at least 10 years glitch free. Well I logged in two days ago to see that I have a negative amount owing to PayPal and some guy from accounts receivable trying to contact me to pay it. This makes zero sense as all of my payments are immediate since I use my credit card. I looked at that transaction for $430 and see that I successfully submitted it but two days later, PayPal decided to ignore the fact that it was a credit card payment and instead gave the seller…get this…$280 from PayPal funds. Not even $430 but this random amount of $280. PayPal then decided that I now owe them slightly more than $280 U.S. And I’m Canadian. This would work out to over $300 for me to pay. The difference ‘owing’ to this Canadian retailer is $154. So where the hell is this random U.S. amount coming from?!! They literally reached into my account, changed my form of payment, didn’t properly pay the retailer and are now billing me some astronomical fee. What a bizarre and irritating situation.
Source: http://www.paypalwarning.com/trusting-morons-paypal-money-day/
It can be hard to take a blow to your ego. But for some guys, especially those who work in finance and have "made 32k since June," it can be damn near unbearable. After this woman refused to answer his aggressive string of texts, most of which were insulting her, Finance Guy went off.
He told her that not only is she a "6," but also that Sex & the City has "f*cked up the minds of so many chicks in our generation."
I was an ASM for about a year, had done retail before. Our store was right in between a fairly upscale touristy part of town as well as some of the poorer neighborhoods so we got all sorts of people. I'll tell one horror story and then one uplifting story
The holiday season was in full swing and we were always crowded. This particular day we had a few seasonal hires in to help with the work load and I was behind the counter pulling games as people came up, to make the transactions faster. Then suddenly a smell hit the entire building like a hundred cats had peed in the air conditioner and someone had tried to get it dry by stoking a fire with burning hair.
My seasonals looked at me with a mix of confusion and terror as a family of four approached the counter and it slowly became apparent that they were the cause of the smell. I've been noseblind before from staying with an aunt who used to be an animal hoarder, but this was far worse.
I sent my seasonals on break, grabbed the hand sanitizer, pumped a small mountain of it into my hands and as casually as possible smeared it on my upper lip, hoping my facial hair would hold onto it and block the smell. It mostly worked. I was already in holiday rush mode but this was the fastest I ever got a used Xbox 360 and GTA V packaged and ready to go.
When they left, we noticed that the store had actually cleared out of all other customers, who also couldn't deal with the odor. My SM came out of the back, gave me props for not embarrassing them, and promptly proceeded to fill our store with Febreeze.
Ok, one uplifting story. I know it's not what you asked for but you're not the one making this post, so nyeh.
We had our regular customers and over time we would get to recognize a few people and have a general sense of what their interests were. Beyond just being salespeople and trying to pitch whatever was hot and new. Frequently we would also get people who knew they had 7 days or however long to trade a game back in for the full amount they paid for, and would use us as a general rental service that way. We were supposed to flag their account (somehow??) to stop this from happening but it wasn't common enough at our location to really care, we weren't losing money and it was better than them stealing from us.
One sort of grungy guy missing a couple of teeth would come in regularly and he had a few different criteria: he owned a regular DS, he didn't have much money, and he wanted the games to be very long so they could occupy his time. Usually RPGs, but they had to have a good story. He'd bring it back if it wasn't engaging and ask for something else. The first couple of times he did this I thought maybe he was trying to put one over on us, but the games he was picking actually were too long to reasonably finish in the time he would have them. (I guess I could've checked the save files, but it wasn't that big of a deal.)
He disappears for a couple of weeks and then one day I'm working and I get a call, it's him. It's not too busy so we chat for a few minutes. He basically wants to pick my brain about what we've got that's less than $10 that will last for a month, and if it's worth his time to come get it because his money is so tight that just driving to our store and not finding something will be sort of a significant loss. This happens to be during a week where Dragon Quest 9 is on sale for less than ten bucks, and we have one copy left, so I set it aside and tell him to try it out. My wife isn't a big JRPG fan but she tried it and it held her interest for quite a while, so maybe this guy will like it too. He comes by, gets it, thanks me and leaves.
I don't see him for months. He's one of those regulars who you get to thinking about, whether or not you would really say you were acquainted, but just that general "I hope they're okay" sort of thing. Then one day he comes back in wearing a FULL SUIT, grinning ear to ear. I recognize him right away and ask how things are going. He tells me they turned around and he got a job as a cook at a Sonic within walking distance from his house, and had been able to save his money for a while, thanks to Dragon Quest being so long, and he wanted to say thanks and to buy his mom a PS3. He knew the only games she really recognized were classics, so we picked out one of the new Pac-Man games and Namco Museum. He was looking at the price tags of a couple of other ones and I could tell he was doing some quick mental math, so I told him "pick the ones you're looking at and we'll see what we can make work". He gets one more game for his mom and brings them up to the front.
It's been a few years since, so I honestly don't remember what if any promotions we had going on at the time, but wouldn't you know it? He got enough of a discount for some mysterious reason that he was able to afford everything.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/bicr5z/gamestop_employees_of_reddit_what_are_some_of/elzyhic/
Rumors. I have heard so many from my friends and just people around my school about the Dark Web. From what i've heard, its a place where there are no rules. You could sell drugs, guns, and there are also some more darker things that seem humanly impossible to even think of. My friends have recently been telling stories about what they've seen on it, after finding a way to get into the hidden part of the internet. I decided I would like to experience too, so I asked my friend Ryan (not his real name) for guidance and to just be there since i'm too scared to go on it by myself.
He downloaded a virtual machine onto my laptop, a vpn, and some tor browser. Eventually, we were in. I wondered if what the others had said were true. Is it really that bad here? For about 3 hours, Ryan and I surfed the web. It was actually true. You could by drugs, and guns. Even hitman. Here is where shit gets crazy.
We're four hours in, and I click on a link to a website. Worst mistake I could ever possibly make. If I could go back in time, I'd never even think of going on the deep web. Sorry, I'm rambling. As I was saying, I clicked on a link being a fucking idiot. The website was mainly composed of what you would call minors, in the creepiest ways. The people weren't posing for a photo, they were taken by secret. Even some of them were sleeping. I didn't know how to feel. Uneasy? Scared? Or simply disgust?
As I was getting bored of the site, I scrolled down.. my jaw dropped completely. I simply glanced at Ryan, with a "WTF??" look. There were various pictures in this post. They were photos of me. One in school, going into my house, sleeping. I felt sick. Somebody had been watching me in my house, and took pictures. My heart was pounding and at this point I was shaking. I sat speechless until I could even utter a word. When I read the post aloud, this person knew everything about me. It was all listed in the post.
Ryan asked if I was okay, but of course I told him now. I buried my hands on my forehead, running my hands through my hair. I felt like crying, but I knew that wasn't my only alternative. We had to figure what to do. I clicked the persons profile (it was like a forum, maybe even Instagram). I wasn't the only one who had fell victim to this stalker. My friends were stalked too, even Ryan. Then I noticed something. The boy that had gone missing two weeks ago.. he was also stalked! Then, I could finally conclude what this website was. People were making bids on the people taken.. the boy was kidnapped and then sold to the highest bid.
Ryan and I immediately called our friends and told them what we had discovered. We all gathered in my room around the monitor waiting for one to speak up about what we should do next. Nick suggested we contact the police, but that could get us in bigger trouble. So Jason and Nick left a post-it note for them, hoping it would be resolved.
A month later, Nick and Jason completely disappeared. The police couldn't protect us from unknown strangers. After their disappearance, I moved away with Ryan. We've both been bought but somehow we escaped. We're still hiding.. waiting for the day that we finally get snatched up for our awaiting buyer. You best believe that I completely got rid of the computer or go on the Dark Web ever again. It's been 3 years since the incident. Never. Fucking. Again.
Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/c9yeb4/i_am_being_stalked_by_someone_on_the_dark_web/
When you first started selling on Etsy, did you have dreams or goals of eventually quitting your day job?
It started as a hobby, a way to support my crafting habit, but then I saw Etsy as a stepping-stone, a way to work towards running my own business. The community was so encouraging in that regard and every where I turned I was told that that’s what I should aspire to.
Apart from creating things, what do you do?
Oh, I don’t have time to create things anymore. I spend all my time on the Etsy forums in promotions. I also relist 35 times a day, but I can’t tell if it’s helping my views.
How long were you selling on Etsy before deciding to switch over to Etsy full time?
It wasn’t a conscious decision. I found myself needing to renew items, respond to emails, and track the status of my items constantly throughout the day. With customers waking me at 9am because they couldn’t tell if they had paid for their purchase, even after I had worked all night and gone to bed at 6am*, it was a necessity rather than a choice. I even have a friend helping me answer emails and ship and it’s not enough*.
What made you decide to keep your day job?
I have to pay my Etsy bill somehow. Unfortunately, constantly checking my email at work gets me into trouble.
How have you promoted and marketed your Etsy business?
I spend about 4 hours in the promotions section bumping my own thread, but it’s better to bump others’ threads. It looks less greedy. I also set my alarm for an hour before the treasuries open up so I can get one of them or when ad space spots are going to become available. Littering business cards where people will find them has actually worked out better than any of these techniques, though. So now I spend several hours a day dropping them from random places. The $4,700 in listing fees* I spent last year can hire a plane and I get a larger audience by dispersing them over the county.
Can you walk us through what a typical workday might entail?
Sure. I put on the coffee, turn on the computer, and check my email. I then sacrifice a walmart smiley in effigy to the Etsy Gods. Before going to work, I check to make sure what’s going out that day is ready for the mail carrier. I go to work for 8 hours, come home, and get orders ready to go out the next day. After comparing the Etsy and paypal addresses on every order* that came through I send a convo thanking the customers. Once a week I have to make time to call my credit card company to make sure Etsy hasn’t double charged my fees.
What goals have you set for the next few months and year?
To set up my own website with a shopping cart that’s fully integrated with Paypal*. I figure it’s a step up, and cheaper, than my current situation.
Do you foresee quitting your day job anytime in the future?
No, I’ve already had to sell my cat’s toys as supplies, take out a second mortgage, and take on a second job as a phone sex operator to pay my listing fees and advertising costs.
Any other thoughts?
The biggest problem I face with Etsy is that people think that because I'm the individual artist I will bend my policies, or prices. They see people that will do work for between 1-5 dollars an hour. So when you charge a mark-up on supplies, and charge labor rates above slave labor, people take offense.
Thanks to a Bitches Aux for the last quote, which, unlike Etsy's Day Job series, is not bullshit.
*Inspired by true events, unfortunately.
Source: http://etsybitch.blogspot.com/2008/06/keep-your-day-job-farceor-not.html