OK, so I know a couple of my loyal readers are Ebay enthusiasts, Ebay experts even. To you, this might sound strange: last night, I accidentally bought a dining room table on Ebay.
OK, accidental is strong. Everything connected with my placing the bid was, strictly speaking (and I am beginning to consider myself something of an expert on this), an intentional action. But I didn't exactly mean to do it.
Here's the thing. I've only actually bought one other thing on Ebay, and that was a heart rate monitor. I tracked several of them for days to see what they were going for. I researched them on and off Ebay, online and in actual stores. And when I knew what I wanted and what it was worth, I started making bids, knew what my max was, and got a more than fair (but not outstanding) price.
I played around a little back then -- this was maybe a year ago -- and put some ridiculously low bids in. Most of the time, other buyers, like me, were informed, and their bids would automatically bump up to the "reasonable" range. And the first bid was never reasonable.
But, you see, that made me less wary than I should have been. Because I THOUGHT I knew what I was doing. I searched some tables, saw one I really liked the look of, and saw that there had only been one bid on it. So I just barely outbid him, convinced that on the heels of my "bid confirmation" email, I would have a "you've been outbid" email.
(All this, by the way, was going on as I was getting incredibly depressed watching the Irish lose horribly in the first quarter against Michigan St. Shopping is such a great distraction. Sigh. The evils of consumerism.)
Anyway, it didn't come. And after about 5 minutes of poking around, I realized that the auction was going to end in half an hour and I was going to own the table.
The good news: I got a decent price, and I really do like the look of the table.
The bad news: the delivery charge is a bit steep (I really should have checked that before bidding). Especially considering that, I'm paying more than I wanted to pay.
The great news: I'm going to have a dining room table that I think I'm going to love in less than a week! And I can stop shopping and start doing the things I need to do.
But I still can't believe I just randomly bid on it and got it.
1 comment:
The closest I've come to accidently buying something on eBay was when I bid on a book and then discovered that I already owned it. Fortunately, I was outbid before the auction closed.
Please post a picture of the famous dining room table. We want to see what prompted you to bid so recklessly. :)
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