1st Actualist Poetry Marathon

1st Actualist Poetry Marathon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was selling a batch of items on eBay of a type I usually don’t sell. Lots of buyers wanted to wait until all the listings were over to combine shipping which is fine and encouraged. When all the listings are over, I gave everyone a few days and then emailed all the buyers who hadn’t paid yet to let them know that all of the listings of that type had been sold, we have no more of these items and won’t be getting more.

Most of the buyers paid at this point but there are a few stragglers. I gave them another week and then sent them each individual emails (not through eBay’s bulk system, I actually manually wrote everyone an email) reminding them that we had no more of these items to sell. A few more paid.

Now it’s been a bit over 2 weeks after the listings have ended, some having ended a week before that. I send another individual reminder email about how we have no more of these items to list and how we’ll need payment soon. After this email, all but three of the buyers have paid.

I gave those buyers another week. It’s now been over a month since some of these listings ended and all three of these buyers haven’t replied to any of my emails. I file a NPB figuring this will be a reminder they don’t ignore. One more buyer pays. I give the other two buyers two full weeks after I start the claim before I actually request the final value fee.

As a seller, I feel like I’ve been more than fair here. I gave the buyers a total of 3 personal reminder emails, 2 automated reminders from eBay and a full month and a half to send me payment. If at any point they’d asked for more time, I would have granted it, but I never got a single reply.

Needless to say, the buyers have suddenly figured out how to reply to me and are angry. One’s email starts out with the following (this is completely unedited other than the item name, I just copied and pasted):

hello
I was expecting you to have more [items from this set] for sale and make more purchases in one shipment.
You open and closed me an unpaid item case and we were hoping to have more shopping that I would do.
you would think that I’m not going for 2 dollars to pay for my purchases?

Note: This buyer is located in the US. I don’t know if the broken English effect is by a language barrier or whether he just typed really fast. I’m thinking English is not his first language. So, slack cut there.

But this kind of email just makes me sad. I sent the guy three freaking emails about how we didn’t have any more of these items left and his first argument is that he wanted to wait for more items. So sending him all those other emails was a complete waste of my time because he obviously didn’t read them. Secondly, yeah, dude, when you didn’t reply to any of my emails OR the NPB, I assumed you weren’t going to pay. What else was I supposed to assume? (His item also didn’t sell for $2 so I don’t know what that part is about.) Many buyers email me to tell me they need extra time on payment or that they just plain forgot and that is completely fine, I ALWAYS grant them more time. Was I supposed to psychically sense that you weren’t reading my emails and still meant to pay?

Anyway, I digress. The above are the first three sentences from his email. But what I really wanted to show you was the rest where we seemed to devolve from somewhat normal into a kind of verse. This is just copy and pasted, no edits in anything on my part.

You honestly I was disappointed
lament their lack of consideration
get lucky in your business with these attitudes

and hurting buyers.

The weird dangling last line? The lack of punctuation? The random switch to third person? Tell me these isn’t a weird sort of poetry to this.

Needless to say, I emailed the buyer even though I already sold his item to another via second chance offer just to keep everyone happy and we’re cool now. But I keep reading his original email out loud beatnik poet style because I kind of dig it. I’ve never enraged someone to the point where they emoted in poetry before.