I’m pretty aggravated right now, not only with the guy I bought that battery from but the whole power seller culture on Ebay.

First, I’m highly annoyed that this battery (a 6 cell for my laptop to replace my year old 9 cell that doesn’t really work anymore) doesn’t work. The blasted thing won’t even charge. It started charging and got to 14% then quit. Now it’s stuck at 9%. It’ll go down, of course, but never does it charge up. (My old/current battery, while it doesn’t hold a charge for very long at all, at least it charges.) I emailed the person about this Saturday. And again today, since I’ve had no response despite their claim that they themselves (he himself, whatever) provides a one year warranty on batteries.

And then, they had the nerve to send me this email:

Thank you for purchasing NEW 6-CELL DELL INSPIRON 6400/E1505/1501 GD761 BATTERY. Please leave feedback for me on eBay and I’ll do the same for you. Take this opportunity now and help build a better eBay community.


Is this some kind of automated thing? I really don’t know but I assume that it’s not automated at least to the point that the seller has to say, “hey, send her this email, ’cause I want my feedback.”

I responded that I wasn’t leaving feedback until we worked out the issue that *gasp* the product doesn’t work and I’ve already emailed twice! And then I snidely mentioned how they should have already left feedback for me anyway, after all, I’d held up my part of the bargain: I’ve already paid for the item.

Which brings me to my next point. This has bothered me for years, since I got an Ebay account in 2002.

I hate hate hate hate hate it that power sellers will not leave feedback on a transaction until after the buyer has left them feedback.

I really think it’s downright dirty. Any time I’ve sold something and the buyer has paid up, I’ve left them feedback! Why do these sellers think that they have the right to withhold their feedback until I’ve left them some feedback? Of course, this leaves me wondering on those iffy transactions if I should leave that neutral or negative feedback because what if out of spite they turn around and ruin my 100% rating?

It’s just really aggravated me, apparently, for 6 years now. Just seems to be so dishonest to me.

/rant.

Guess I’ll keep emailing this guy about the battery not working for the rest of the week and then I guess maybe I can take things up with PayPal (supposedly they’re supposed to back you up in situations like this) and then risk it all by leaving him some negative feedback.

It all really turns me off, though. I had hoped to at least get a somewhat decent battery from Ebay — I know I wasn’t going to get something that was “cream of the crop” but something that was worth $60, or so I’d hoped. I really don’t want to buy a brand new one directly from Dell. The 9 cell (which is what I really want) is $300 and the 6 cell is $150. I have paid off all of my Dell bills and I really don’t want to be adding more to it. But there are situations in which I need some good battery power, something to last me at least an hour and a half, preferably 5 hours like my 9 cell did in the early days! Sigh.

Oh! But also, the auction/buy it now says flat out that it is a DELL battery yet the battery is not a DELL battery it’s something else that fits a Dell computer. That’s false advertising and grounds for a claim, right? This guy has exactly 3.5 days before I start filing claims everywhere. :P