"Sucks to be you".

That is a message that I got in spades from Ebay today. "Sucks to be you". I've been battling them for about two weeks and still am getting "Sucks to be you" as a response.

What actually happened? Well, I sell off my Magic: The Gathering collection on Ebay. Our household is on a fixed income, disability and navy retirement, not exactly rolling in cash, if you understand. That income is pretty key to running the house, paying off emergency bills (Such as my beloved cat Ivan's often expensive vet bills, or a huge fine on our car), or small incidentals that pop up every once in a while. Suffice to say, we count on that income.

Now I shipped out two cards, a Revised Bayou, and an Arabian Nights (Version A) Guardian Beast. The former the buyer wasn't happy with the product's condition. Very nitpicky but I understand it as a collector. The latter had a mail carrier who just manhandled and bent up the otherwise Near Mint card.

I had no problem with issuing them a refund on returning the product. Heck, I had to do it before when someone wasn't happy with an entire set of Alpha basic lands that I had shipped him (About 2 years earlier). No problems with it, got the cards, resold them happily, all said and done, no problems.

But this time... this time Ebay gave them a different address. One I hadn't lived in for 3 years (And updated back then, 3 years ago). Yes, I had gotten returns fine before, no problem. But this time, they sent the buyers the old, incorrect address. Nevermind I actually had the CORRECT address on my parcels I had sent out as a return address, but that's just minor compared to what "Sucks to be you" actually means.

Ebay gave them the wrong address, the buyers didn't question it, and shipped it out as requested. As usual Ebay gave me a directive to issue the final refund when I got the items in question. Granted, I never got the item. So when the days came, and I didn't it? Well I didn't log onto Ebay, update, and issue the refund.

So they did it FOR me. In less than 12 hours after I was supposed to have gotten it. If the mail had been even 1 day late from the estimate (Face it, USPS, we all know that happens quite regularly), they still would have ruled against me. Degrading my seller rating (So now I'm capped to a very, very pathetic amount of monthly sales), dinging my bank account, and I never did get the product. After all, it wasn't shipped to me.

Call upon call upon call I made, trying to track down the buyers. the post office, and what could have possibly happened. Eventually I got Ebay to tell me it was shipped to someplace I hadn't lived in for 3 years... With a message of "Sucks to be you", after all.

So again, another round of legwork. Making sure it didn't bounce back to the original buyers. Making sure it didn't end up in the Dead Letter box at the Post Office, making sure that some postal worker didn't just walk off with it. Nope, it definitely got delivered to the locked mailbox. It definitely is in the hands of whoever lives there now.

So I'm down the money. I can't earn extra income during the winter, when bills get more expensive, stores get more expensive, and I can't sell as much. I'm left in a lurch. There's not much else I can say. I'm out the product, quite expensive product really. I'm out the money. I can't make up the losses easily.

When I pointed out the problems today. That it was a bug in their system. That I HAD gotten returns successfully before, that I HAD changed my address LOOOOOOOONG before those returns got shipped to the old one... what did they tell us?

"We have no evidence of that, we don't keep records beyond 180 days".

I offered to give them evidence, dated screenshots, pictures of packages I had gotten successfully, and so forth. The answer, "That won't change anything, I'm still ruling against you."

To be fair, I wasn't even asking for a refund. Not really. I mean I would have LOVED to have gotten one. But what I had asked for, and what I really wanted primarily, was the return of my seller status. The chance to put up enough stuff to try to make up the loss and keep on track to maintaining my happy little poverty stricken lifestyle.

That's what I wanted. The ABILITY to make money, not to be handy money. That simple. That's what I asked for right off the bat. They wouldn't even give me that. They wouldn't even admit the possibility of a bug in their system. They wouldn't accept any evidence to the contrary of their stance. Nope, just "Sucks to be you".