low foot clearance

ebay: a story of greed and innocence lost. in two parts.

this all started because i was looking for the perfect black handbag. i hunted and hunted and i sent cam emails with links to various black handbags. i was beginning to feel bad that i was harassing him with so many of these handbag-related emails that i decided to compile all the links into one big email. so off i went, blithely scanning the web for purses that would make the heart a-twitter. much to my amusement, i realized i was looking at the same damn purse on half a dozen sites. in different colors. looking at a red one and thinking, “wow, wish that came in black.” looking at a brown one, thinking, “hmm, if that came in black it would be perfect.” the bag was the prada br1254, commonly referred to by its most distinctive feature, the big shiny pushlock. i hunted and hunted and managed to find it for fairly reasonably prices ($400 and below). but then i happened to read on the cunty fashion board that most of those sites were to be avoided because they sold fakes.

now here’s my stance on fakes/replicas/knockoffs, whatever you want to call them: i really don’t mind them. i don’t care when or why or how you bought one. oh, and please, i don’t want to hear that someone is personally helping the terrorists win because s/he bought a fake whatever. what bothers me about fakes is that all it would take is one person to whisper to another, “the poor dear, she thinks that ugly thing is real” to turn me into a quivering pile of insecurities. so not worth it for my peace of mind.

anyway, so for some reason i completely lost my mind and turned to ebay.

yep.

i found many different auctions running for the bag, noted the various promises of authenticity and gasped at the low prices (somewhere between $150 - $300). so i bid on one. then, as i so often do, suffered instant remorse and did the due diligence that i should have done prior to bidding. i read the seller’s feedback. instant frenzy because out of the 800+ glowing positives (“beautiful authentic bag!”) there happened to be a handful of unhappy folks. fakes. dammit. feh on me and my greed. what was i thinking that i could buy such an expensive bag for cheap? why on earth would i trust a seller in a third-world country for something like this? and feh on the seller for so freely using the word “authentic” like it meant something. so naïve of me.

for the next few days until the bag arrived, i fretted. tried to think of the nicest way to ask for a refund. then tried to think about just settling and keeping the bag. nightmares of my cupidity.

then it showed up and it was so cute – but definitely lightweight and the leather felt funny. much to my relief (lame, yes) one of the snaps was defective. with a slightly lighter heart, i emailed the seller and asked for a refund. she was so nice about it and provided a local address (a relative) for mailing. she said she’d issue a refund as soon as her relative received the package. it was sent off and i waited for my refund.

but i will wait forever in vain. there was a natural disaster in that part of the world and i never heard back from the seller. i hope she is alive and doing well. i wish her no ill, and i don’t really want the refund back. i’m sure she could use the money right now.

dammit.