word!

I’ve been spending a few years on the internet now and in that time have been using online auction houses with little trouble. It’s easy to see why people love eBay, because you can buy anything on it. I’ve boughten many things on it and have even bought my first computer and two monitors from it’s electronic competitor Ubid. So I was prepared to buy my brother his first computer after such good, solid experiences. But what happened next made me doubt the auction houses themselves.

In the end of October 2001, I found a decent price on a computer that was decent for the money. So I bid and eventually won. Little did I know that at this time Ubid was implementing a new processing system. So after one week of no action with regards to my winning bid, I tried contacting them. I emailed, called and wrote letters in the next month and a half, but to little avail. The emails would only be auto responsed or vaguely worded that they were working on processing my order immediately. Phone calls were a little better, I could at least get to a person, but the messages they gave me were as vague as the emails, yes they were experiencing problems and things would be resolved shortly. But after a time, their phones were DISCONNECTED! (Due to the customer’s overwhelming outrage with their bumbling of this system) Letters were sent but never responded to.

After the middle of December, it looked like they wouldn’t even start to dig themselves out of this mess by Christmas, dispite the fact that Ubid still continued to operate at full scale and with full auction listings. I called after the holidays, in early January 02, to try to finally get this resolved. By that time I had bought a great computer pre-built to our specs from iBUYPOWER .

I finally got a hold of someone that could resubmit my winning bid, yes, a whole 2 months after the bid had won the auction! But this was after I was told I should have just canceled my order. Within the next week, I finally recieved the beige box that I had worked so hard for.

But Ubid still wanted payment. Having used a credit card for payment through Ubid, I at least had some options. I first cancelled the orders on my end, eleviating actually paying for something I didn’t recieve, especially in regards to their user policy. I also wrote to the Better Business Bureau about this erroroneous situation,due to the fact that the BBB logo was prominently displayed numerous times on Ubid’s website. Through all this, Ubid only offered a $50 forgiveness on the computer and free shipping, but only if I accepted that they hadn’t erred.

Excuse me? After 2 months of waiting and constant correspondence on my part, that’s all they could do? Forget it. I continued to balk at their attempts to retrieve payment for something they erred on and wouldn’t stand behind. So without a paid credit card billing, they’re the ones out a computer, not me.

But to add insult to injury, the disputed computer was pretty much a lemon. The modem, DVD drive, fan, power button and hard drive have all failed and have been replaced since it was acquired. Sure glad I didn’t pay a cent for it, because it wasn’t worth it. At least my sister has something to bang out an email on now. And I hope it makes it the rest of the school year without me having to fix something else! GOOD RIDDANCE!