If you are the seller or a high bidder - now what?

It came with a letter from Meg Whitman saying how much she and eBay appreciated all the effort that went into getting the Shooting Star. Of course, since this is eBay we are talking about, a mere $100,000 in eBay fees isn't enough to get an original computer-generated letter - this one was a smudged photocopy. No - you don't get the letter. I tossed it into the garbage where it belongs.

The box arrived the same day that eBay made it perfectly clear that they would listen to the two nitwits and the halfwit who make up their marketing department and ignore the anguished screams of all the folks who made them the success that they are. This quarters numbers matter much more then the lives of the people who built eBay and whose fees are used to pay the birdbrains who came up with the "recommended") emails which are carefully designed to ensure that no volume seller can ever buy a supply of anything intending to sell it over time - eBay will tell all his customers where they can buy it now instead. No seller who has invested tens of thousands of dollars building an inventory can ever hope to make it back - eBay will be stealing all his customers away.

The jacket is of much higher quality than the company and is size 3X - big enough for a pro football lineman. Very heavy and obviously quite warm, it has never been worn (I only spit on the box and not the jacket) and will be shipped only to a domestic US address for a UPS fee of $10.00. No foreign bidders, please. It is much too heavy to ship internationally.

It was my intention to put it to its proper use of lining the Kitty Box but I thought there might be someone who wants it so here it is.

The starting bid is not my idea of its value - eBay does not allow a starting bid of a negative amount - so I have to set it at a penny. Please pay very careful attention to the special terms of sale which apply only to this one auction. They are in full agreement with eBay's new policy of screwing the folks who built them.

We reserve the right to change, abolish, reword, revoke or ignore any and all terms of sale anytime we feel like it. Any complaints will be ignored since we know best. We may cancel any or all bids for any (or no) reason and close the auction early if we feel like it. For that matter, we can do anything else we want just because we feel like it. If you don't like it, go eat grass - we are eBay and you will be assimilated.

Should you be outbid, we will inundate you with unsolicited commercial email (a.k.a. spam) recommending that you go elsewhere and bid on something else we, in our infinite wisdom, think you want. We will use the following priorities in selecting such auctions for you to bid on.

1. Top priority will be given to bottom-fishing scum-sucking thieves who don't have the item, can't get it and have no intention of doing anything except stealing your money the same way they stole the auction description, scan and title. If they have cumulative negative feedback, it will be a bonus. After they take your money and don't ship, should you be foolish enough to complain, we will ignore you for a week and then tell you, "We are only a venue. Tough luck."

2. Since the Title of this auction is "eBay Shooting Star Suede Jacket", we will select other items we, again in our infinite wisdom, know you want like Star Wars trading cards, cameras for shooting movies, suede gloves and recordings by Full Metal Jacket. We know you will be delighted to have your emailbox filled with such trash but, if for some inexplicable reason, you don't want to receive it, we will give you an opt-out link buried nine levels deep and impossible to find. We will then constantly ask you to change back so that we can spam you some more. Even if you never do, we will change your preferences on a regular basis and blame it on "a computer error" so that we can spam you over and over again.

If you are so stupid as pay us a very large amount of money, we will dump manure on your head, insult you, ignore anything you say and rely upon our in-house birdbrains (none of whom have ever sold a thing so them must know better then anyone who only runs 10,000 auctions a month) who will rig questionnaires and "survey" a selected group whose input will be ignored unless it agrees with their own views.

If you have a problem with our generous terms and conditions, you can just suffer. After all, we have 29 million eyeballs (sure, we count as unique users all those folks with 30, 40 or more userIDs but what's a little lying and faking among friends) and 83% of the market. Names like WordStar, WordPerfect, Lotus, Wang and others who had similar market shares before going into bankruptcy, out of business or being swallowed because they, too, ignored their users, their customers and the folks who used their products and relied only upon their superior home-grown staff of inexperienced wunderkids mean nothing to us. We are eBay - the 600 pound gorilla and we will run this company into the ground and destroy it because we have egos almost as big as Meg's bonus.

Bid early and bid often as eBay needs the money. It wouldn't do to disappoint Wall Street. Why that would be almost as terrible an idea as actually listening to the people who use the service. And we all know that eBay would never do such a silly thing.