accidental purchases

An objective look at one person's difficulty in using ebay.

MJ claims ebay is hard to use. MJ claims she buys stuff on ebay "by accident". Is it really "by accident"? Is ebay really difficult to navigate? Or is it simple human error? This post aims to conclusively answer that.

We have three seperate instances of MJ having difficulty using ebay and thus making "accidental" purchases. We will present each case and make an analysis. Remember, we will do this as objectively as possible.

Accidental purchase #1:

This occurs when MJ was in law school. She hadn't used her ebay account in a couple of years, so she wanted to see if it still worked. Normal users would just log into their account, see that it was still active, and be done with it. But MJ is not a normal user. Her (then) apartment needed a big mirror (think one big enough to hang over a mantle), so she decided to bid on two mirrors randomly for $1 each, thinking she would be outbid. To her horror, she won them BOTH. Each one is about the size of a dinner plate. She says they were both described as "big" so she thought they would be big.

Analysis: Why would MJ bid on something to make sure her account worked? By logging in and seeing her account was still active, she should have concluded that her account did not get disabled. Even if she did bid on something, why would she bid on something hoping she would lose? And why would she bid on 2?

Conclusion: Human error 1, accidental purchase 0.

Accidental purchase #2:

This occured about a year ago when MJ wanted to buy The Village. She insists it is a good movie (although everyone else knows the truth) and wanted to force people to watch it. So she decided to buy the DVD off ebay. With 8 minutes remaining in the auction, she discovered that she had bid on the movie Signs instead. Because of this "accidental" purchase, she went back to ebay and bought The Village, the actual movie she wanted.

Analysis: An accident is when you knock over a cup of water that you didn't know was there. An accident is not when you walk into a car dealership and buy a car when what you really wanted was a bike.

Conclusion: Human error 2, accidental purchase 0.

Accidental purchase #3:

This final instance happened a few days ago. MJ loves trivia and wanted to purchase genus 1-6 of Trivial Pursuit. Somehow, she "accidentally" bid on two different auctions of genus 2. Not wanting to buy two copies of the same game, she was distraught. But fortunately, she got outbid on one of them. A few days later, she was checking the status of her auctions and MyEbay said some of her auctions were ending. When she checked the auctions, she found out that she was outbid on an auction for genus 2. Thinking it was the auction that she wanted to win, she rebid. Then she discovered that auction was the original one she was outbid on. So she was now winning two auctions of genus 2 again.

mj: ebay is very tricky
mj: i think it merits a class action lawsuit
mj: when i went to it, it said 2 items i bid on were ending soon
mj: so naturally i think it's the 2 items i was winning yest
mj: but nooo! one of them is the one i was outbid on!
mj: so i rebid on it tho i didn't want to!

Analysis: When you do something of your own free will, something that you don't want to do, something that nobody is forcing you to do, it is definitely ebay's fault. Riiiiight.

Conclusion: Human error 3, accidental purchase 0.

In summary, when you bid on something expecting to be outbid, and then you aren't, it's not an accidental purchase. That's like saying you go to the supermarket, put a box of cereal in your cart and goto the checkout expecting it to fall out before you get there. And then when you get there you are surprised you are buying a box of cereal.

Also, if you goto the cereal aisle wanting to buy Frosted Flakes, but instead grab Special K, you should not be surprised that you bought the wrong cereal. Read the description of what you are buying.

And lastly, if you put two boxes of cereal in your cart when you only want one, are pleasantly surprised when one of them does indeed fall out, do NOT pick it up off the floor and put it back in your cart. If you do, you will be buying two boxes, which is what you were trying to avoid in the first place.

I hope this post is helpful to all of you in your future bids on ebay. Or in the supermarket.