eBay Phone-ay *

I got like ripped off on eBay.

I went on ebay to buy a cordless phone. Just something cheap to use as a backup when I forget to charge up my other one. And I saw this one 2.4ghz refurbished phone produced by um... IBM. Yeah. Ok at this point I should have known something was not right. Since when does IBM make cordless phones? I guess it was a failed experiment. But whatever, I bid and went up to $4.25. And I won! A $15.00 shipping charge sucked but whatever. I mean a $20 phone was all I was looking for. 

But when I received the phone and knew it was wrong. The phone came along with what looks like a big satellite dish or air-port or something. See? Weird. It's like a whole separate piece to the phone and it's big. I guess this was like the original 2.4ghz phone. But whatever. I hook up the phone and set the charger. They said you should charge it for 12 hours before using it. So I charged it. And as far as I can tell it's broken in two different ways.

The power button doesn't seem to turn the phone on unless I slap the side of the phone a couple times. Or push the button really hard. Then it turns on. But then it goes off. And in between it won't dial at all. It doesn't seem to be able to communicate with the 'satellite dish' when it does turn on. No dial tone. It just says 'Connecting...' on the little screen but never does. Then it clicks off. And I slap it again. I tried to hook it up a bunch of different ways but it's definitely broken.

So I know I should expect much from a $4.25 phone but I can at very least expect it to work (at least a little bit). People sell broken stuff on ebay all the time but they call it 'broken'. This phone is broken. But the description said *nice*. It was not nice. I sent an email to the seller about the phone being broken on Monday. No response. I sent a bunch more since then. No response until yesterday. It was automated email. 

Apparently to return it I needed to log into a place called ubid-it.com and get an "RMA#" to arrange for a return. I was like, 'huh?' but whatever. I log on. But it wasn't possible for me to get this RMA# because I was not 'registered' with the ubid-it site. And I couldn't figure out how to register because I didn't register when I bought the stupid phone or something. Uh huh. Whatever. A runaround. Now I'm pissed. I emailed again asking how I can get this 'RMA#' I finally got an email back saying only this:

What was your original question/concern?  I will also need an auction number.

I sent them my question and # and then never heard back. I checked the seller (youbid2003) user ratings and he has a whole bunch of negatives that say he has a habit of sending out crap and not responding by email. Now I'm tripley pissed at me for not looking at that first.  Shame on youbid2003 for taking advantage of dopes like me who buy junky phones all willy nilly like an friggin idiot.

I'm not crazy bout being a whistle blower -but I sent 'youbid2003' an email warning them that I was going to write about this experience and post it on my 'website'. 

And got no response. So this is mine.

ok bye!

tOdd

Update: Alot of people wrote in concerned that I was all down on eBay. I'm not. I trust eBay. The warnings were there for me in the customer listings.