Buying on Half.com

I have been an eBay user for a long time.  My first ever purchase was tickets to the Ukraine vs. Switzerland men's ice hockey game in the 2002 Olympic Winter Games.  The tickets, obviously, were cheaper than buying them from SLOC.  Anyway, I have always had good experiences with eBay and Half.com until now (and even this is very minor).

Kateřina wanted a book, and we figured we could find it online pretty cheap, so we went looking using CampusI.  It showed a Half.com seller had the lowest price, so we went and saw the following advertisement: "Condition: Brand New.  This book is in excellent condition. there are no rips or writing throught.  All my items come from a smoke free environment."  For $7.00, this sounded like a real steal.  We bought it.  When it had already been a couple days and there was no confirmation from the seller, I knew we were in for some potential trouble.  The book finally came two days before the end of the "expected time of delivery."  The surprise, though, came when we opened it up.  I don't know what "brand new" means to others, but to me, it means blemish free, untouched, perfect.  Obviously, our seller has a different idea, because the book was worn on the corners, had crease marks in the spine, some of pages' corners were starting to wear, too, and a previous owner's name was written on the inside front cover.  Hardly "brand new," I thought.

Since sellers and buyers are known by their reputations on eBay and Half.com (elsewhere, too), I am a firm believer in feedback.  I hate it when people don't leave feedback on my transactions.  I thought about leaving negative feedback for getting a book in a condition other than what the seller described, but since the rest of the sale was a good experience, I was kind of wishy-washy.  I left the following neutral feedback: "I'm torn...not brand new - cover wear, name on cover, bent pgs.  Otherwise fine."  Half.com and eBay now allow users to respond publicly to negative and neutral feedback.  Here's what the liar of a seller said, "I described the item in the description.  Sold without any surprises."  Um . . . what description is the seller talking about?

In sum, if you're using eBay or Half.com, you may want to avoid a user using the name "theorrstore."