Nothing good ever comes of ebay (something California will find out soon enough once Meg Whitman buys her governorship).
I'm just speaking from personal experience. I haven't used the service much, but each time I have it's been nothing but disappointment. Things you sell never sell for what you think they're worth, things you buy usually end up being a ripoff. Even when something shows up pretty much as advertised it just proves that phrases such as "mint condition" and "minor damage" are all in the eyes of the beholder. Or seller.
The boyfriend, however, is quite the opposite. He was a rabid ebay-er when I first met him. He's suffered all the same disappointments, fraud and heartbreaks as me, many times over, and yet through it all he's remained undeterred. I think it's because it's not so much the actual purchase for him as it is the pursuit. He's like a big game hunter, after a prize. Actually, it's crazier than that; if you'd ever seen his wild eyed frenzy in the final seconds of an auction, pounding the "refresh" key like a jackhammer, you'd understand.
Of course our diminished circumstances have kind of put the kibosh on his ebay habit. That doesn't stop him from looking, and ever so often he discovers something that becomes an itch that just has to be scratched. And so it was a few months ago with the Mercedes.
The boyfriend is a car guy, and in better times he had a small stable of classic and not so classic cars in various states of repair. He'd buy them and sell them, work on them, keeping and driving them for months or years and then trading them for something else. In the time I've known him he's gone through 18 cars, but who's counting. His pride and joy was an '84 butter yellow Cadillac. When our world started collapsing, and we'd already gone through the savings and the 401k, we both started selling off all our prized possessions. One by one the cars were all gone, except the Caddy; That was too much to part with. We moved here to Bakersfield with it in tow and it sat in the garage until Spring when, sadly, that went too.
But I knew it wouldn't last.
The idea of him without a car project is almost unthinkable and I knew it was only a matter of time. And sure enough, a couple of months ago he called me in to look at what he'd found on ebay... a '83 or '84 maroon Mercedes. We really couldn't afford it, but I could tell by the look in his eye that the Crazy Train had already left the station. Being the enabler I am, I started justifying it; when you think about what a therapist would cost, or a stay in psychiatric institution, it really wasn't that much. And then I looked closely at the listing.
If this thing had any more red flags on it it would have been a May Day parade through Red Square. The most serious one was the fact the car was in Massachusetts, so there'd be no way to check it out first. But he was not to be dissuaded and before you knew it, it was a done deal.
The car arrived about a week later and to the shock of absolutely no one but the boyfriend, it was a complete lemon. Among it's many sins was the fact that the "burgundy" interior had once been tan, and the previous owner had evidently dyed it with beet juice. Once you sat in the car, you'd exit looking like you'd just waded through a vat of chianti. But you really didn't have to worry about sitting in it since it didn't run.
There followed the expected recriminations. Angry emails flying back and forth, talk of wire fraud and theft. The seller didn't give a shit. The boyfriend contacted both ebay and Paypal, who pointed to the fine print in their terms of service and washed their hands of it. All was looking lost. But then he found an unlikely sympathetic ear...
His credit card company! Go figure. I never thought I'd see the day when a credit card company wasn't just concerned, but actually helpful. He pled his case and in very short order they cancelled the transaction.
Now the angry emails were really flying, but now they were coming one way, out of Boston. They were mostly threats to trash his reputation on ebay, to post his name and address on sites dealing with car sales. Until yesterday.
Yesterday the seller threatened to kill him.
The boyfriend came home ashen faced and called me in to look at the email. Yup, there it was..."Going to KILL you!"
What to do. Call the cops, obviously. The boyfriend called the cops back in Boston figuring they were the ones with the killer in their midst, they should be the ones to do something about it. But they informed him that he needed to go through our local police. Which brings us to the Bako angle to the whole story. You knew there had to be one, right?
So around 6:30 last night the boyfriend calls Bakersfield's finest. They seemed concerned and informed him that, yes, it was a very serious matter. They would send someone out to take a report within a couple of hours. So we waited and waited, "straightened" up the house a bit, if you know what I mean.
Hours went by... nothing.
Finally around 10 we shut off the lights and went to bed.
And then, in the dead of the night, the dogs started going berserk. I jumped out of bed and went to see what was up and saw the dogs barking by the front door. I looked at the clock... it was 1am. I looked through the peephole and made out the unmistakable silhouette of a cop. You have fucking got to be kidding me.
I went and rousted the boyfriend; this was his problem. He dashed out of the bedroom, grabbing the Marimekko floral print kimono-style robe I'd gotten him for Christmas years ago. In hindsight, not the best choice in wardrobe for dealing with the authorities. He let the cop in and I heard them mumbling in the kitchen for about 10 minutes.
I hid in the bedroom.
For all I know, the Bakersfield police are completely enlightened and tolerant of gay couples, but I wouldn't bet on it. And considering the robe, oy vey.
I heard the boyfriend let the cop out and he came back to bed. I asked him what they were going to do about it.
"Nothing".
According to them, this is a civil matter.
Really? That couldn't way for day break? It was such a newsflash it had to be delivered in the middle of the fucking night?
What the hell is wrong with these people? One of the alleged virtues of these country folk is their supposed down-home, aw shucks common sense. Where the hell was that at 1 in the morning?
I have to say the whole episode left us totally creeped out.
Not the serial killer in Boston, the Bakersfield Police.
