Nostalgia and the fear of fraud

Today I decided that I want to get a plastic tire swing for Maly. I found the perfect branch from which to hang it from in the oak tree in the backyard. I was looking for a very specific tire swing — the same one that I had when I was growing up in Bear Creek back in the early 80’s.

I checked craigslist, HomeDepot.com, Target.com, Walmart.com, Lowes.com, ToysRUs.com. None of them had the swing that I was looking for. I reluctantly checked eBay and I found four. Again, I reluctantly placed a bid on one of them. Once my bid was confirmed, I noticed that I could setup a text (SMS) message notification for when I was outbid or when the auction ended. My first thought was, “Cool!” Then I stopped and thought, “Oh, right. This is eBay.” I just have this gut feeling that if I give eBay my mobile number, I’m going to start getting text spam. Not necessary from eBay, but from someone smart enough to harvest cell phone numbers from eBay. I just don’t trust eBay anymore. EBay’s reputation as a whole has gone down the crapper.

I haven’t used eBay in years because it’s full of scams. And even if I did find a $2 item that I wanted, I’m not going to pay $40 to have it shipped to me. So, I’ve been a big fan of craigslist over the years, especially for selling stuff. I used to be methodical about selling unused things on eBay, but it soon became just too difficult and time consuming to list items.

So hopefully this eBay purchase will go without a hitch.

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