I wish I could be as patient as these shoes! It would make my life a whole lot easier…
These shoes are very patient…
Forever Amber
A UK fashion blogger and shoe obsessive
Tagged with ebay …
My legs are on eBay…
No matter how many times people steal my photos and try to pass them off as their own, it never fails to surpsize me. Yes, folks, those are my legs. And that’s not my eBay auction. Gah. One of my readers left a comment on Shoeperwoman (where this photo was originally published) yesterday, to let me know that my legs were on eBay. Sure enough, there I am, helping someone sell a pair of size 7 used shoes. Of course, nowhere on her auction does this seller indicate that the shoes pictured (she’s included no less than three of my photos, so my bed gets to make a cameo on eBay, too – hi, bed!) aren’t actually the ones that she’s selling. Mine are size 4, and were brand, spanking new when these photos were taken – I hadn’t even been outside in them yet: personally I think it’s just a little misleading to use a picture of a pair of brand new, fresh-from-the-store size 4 shoes in order to sell your used size 7s, but the frequency with which this happens suggests I’m pretty much alone in that. Again, this is no big deal, really (or not for me, anyway: it may be a big deal for the person who thinks the shoes they’re buying are the exact ones shown in the photo), but it does lower my faith in eBay even more. I mean, who knows what you’re getting when you buy something there? How do you know you’re bidding on the item in the photo, or whether the seller just stole that image from some random shoe blogger? Oh, and the seller’s response to my, “Hey, those are my legs!” email? She “thought the photos were from the Miss Selfridge website” (Because they always photograph their products on top of someone’s duvet, obviously) and she “will take them down at the weekend,” presumably after a bunch of other people have viewed them and assumed they were bidding on the shoes in the photo. Was very tempted to reply with, “OK, well, my daily rate for modelling shoes is £100 per photo: just let me know how many days you want to use them for!” (P.S. I changed the banner on this site today, as you may have noticed if you’re not reading this via a reader: I fully expect to find the photo of me advertising something on eBay any day now!) Up yours, eBay.OK, that’s it, I’m DONE with eBay. DONE. Finished. Over. I know I’ve said this before, but seriously, this time I mean it. More than I did last time, obviously. It’s not even because of the foot fetishists, either. Well, not just because of the foot fetishists. Last week, you see, I sold five items on EBay. Of those five: 1. Three sold for about £0.99 each, which is less than the cost of the fuel I use driving to the post office and back. Yes, I know it’s my own fault, and I should have given them higher starting prices, but I’d already tried that, and although each item had lots of watchers, none of them bid, so I figured this time round I’d start off low and hope all those watchers would be tempted into participating in a bidding war. They didn’t, so between the listing fees, plus the time it took me to photograph the items, write the listings, answer various dumb questions (“What brand is the Topshop dress you’re selling?”), package them up, then head to the post office with them, I made a loss. 2. One person just didn’t bother to pay me, and when I looked at her account a few days later she was “no longer a registered user” and had multiple comments from sellers all saying “This is the worst bidder in the history of the world!” and “This person is Satan himself!” The thing is, though, because eBay no longer allows sellers to leave negative feedback, all of these comments were marked as POSITIVE, so I’d simply looked at the 100% positive rating, and hadn’t realised that every single one of those “positives” was actually a big fat NEGATIVE. Again, yes, I know this is my fault, but even so people, even so. 3. The one item that did sell for a decent price sold to someone who didn’t bother to pay me, or contact me in any way for four days. At the end of that time, when I finally cracked and sent her an email saying, “Look, are you actually intending to pay for this?” she was all, “Oops, sorry, I actually only intended to bid £5.50, I’m not prepared to pay £32 for it!” I’d maybe have believed her, too, if her bid hadn’t been placed when the item was already at £28.50. Sigh. (And when was she planning on contacting me to let me know about the “mistake”? My guess would be “never”.) 4. Having realised that the idiot in number three had no intention of paying me, I reported her to eBay, and sent a Second Chance Offer to the underbidder. It expired 12 hours later without the person accepting it, so I decided it was time to accept defeat. Then, two hours later, I got an email from said underbidder saying, “Hi, thanks for the Second Chance Offer! I’ve bought and paid for the item now!” HUH? But I thought it had ended unsold? I went back and checked eBay. Yup, sure enough, the item had not been purchased. I checked Paypal: no payment. So I emailed the bidder and politely explained that she must be mistaken, and… she emailed me back and tried to insist that yes, she had paid and I must send her the item, even although I hadn’t been paid for it. Funnily enough, when I finally managed to get her to agree that she hadn’t paid for it, and pointed out that if she wanted it, it had been relisted as Buy It Now, she declined to purchase. I think she was just trying to get me to send her it for free. I hate people. 5. FOOT. FETISHISTS. So, at the time of writing, eBay has cost me more than I’ve made from it this month, and I’d actually be better off if I’d just taken my old clothes and shoes to the charity shop rather than thinking, “Hey, these are all practically unworn, let’s give eBay one more shot, shall we?” This is all particularly annoying to me, because any time I decide to buy something on eBay, it always sells for a fortune: almost always more than you’d actually pay for it new. There’s always a bidding war involving twenty different people, all hell-bent on securing the precious, precious item, and you’d think it was the freaking Mona Lisa we were bidding on, rather than someone’s secondhand dress. I, on the other had, could actually HAVE the Mona Lisa to sell, and I’d be lucky to get 25p for it. Even then, the winning bidder would take three weeks to pay me, and then ask me if I’d consider throwing in a photo of my feet for free. In conclusion: I’m done. Oh, I’ll probably continue to buy secondhand dresses at vastly inflated prices, but never, ever again will I waste one more second of my time, or penny from my back account, on selling there – at least, not until they introduce the ability for sellers to deliver giant, virtual slaps to their buyers. Until then, if you ever see me on Twitter talking about the possibility of selling something on eBay, please feel free to give ME a giant virtual slap. I will deserve it. I can’t wait to see the Google hits this one gets me…Foot fetishists. They’re everywhere, aren’t they? And by “everywhere” I mean “they’re on eBay”. In large numbers, apparently. Last week I decided to sell some shoes, you see. (I know! Me getting RID of shoes rather than acquiring them: who’da thunk it?) And as with every other time I’ve ever tried to sell shoes on eBay, this brought the foot fetishists out in droves. It always happens the same way. A question floods in. The question is from a man. First of all, the man comments on how “sexy” the shoes I’m selling are (Note: always “sexy”. Never “cute” or “beautiful”or “stylish”, or any other of the dozens of words you could use to describe a pair of shoes. Just “sexy”.) Sometimes he’ll say that he wants to buy them for his “girlfriend”, but other times he’ll just miss out this part and leave me to conjecture what someone named “Jim” or “Pete” or “Brian”, or whatever, wants with a pair of size 4 ladies shoes. Then comes the kicker: “If it’s not too much trouble,” Brian will say (for he is a polite young man at heart), “could you take some photos of your feet inside the shoes? It’s, um, so I can see how high the heel is, because there’s no other way to know that than by looking at a strange woman’s feet.” Now, you could argue that this is a perfectly reasonable question for Brian to be asking. But in response, I would argue that Brian is a foot fetishist. He is only interested in seeing photos of my feet in high heels. It’s just a feeling I get. A sixth sense, if you will. There’s always just something a little bit off about these messages. Something that triggers my “this is a foot fetishist” alarm. Also: women never ask these questions. I mean, I’ve been using eBay for years. In that time, I’ve sold a lot of shoes. NEVER have I received a question from a woman who’s asked me to take some photos of my feet in the sexy, sexy shoes. And in all the time I’ve been buying shoes (which is… a while) I’ve never emailed a complete stranger and said, “Oh, hai, could you send me some photos of your feet, please?” It’s just not done, is it? OK, sure: sometimes a shoe looks different on the foot than it does in the image. Sometimes you really do need to see it being worn to know what you think of it. But, I dunno, something about asking a stranger to photograph their feet for you just strikes me as odd. Maybe it’s just me? The final clue that all is not what it purports to be on Planet Brian/Steve/Tony is the final line of the message which always, without exception, says something like, “By the way, could you please not publish this question on the auction listing? Just send the photos to my private email instead.” Uh-huh. FOOT. FETISH. I should add here that I have nothing against people with foot fetishes. I really don’t. I honestly couldn’t care less what people do in the privacy of their own homes, or what turns them on. Each to their own, after all. It’s only when they try to involve ME in their little fantasies by, say, trying to trick me into sending them photos of my body parts, that it starts to bother me. I know it’s not actually harming anyone (although it IS wasting my time, given that these people have no intention whatsoever of bidding on the shoes), but even so, it’s still devious and underhand, and, you know, some women charge good money for those kinds of “services”. (That was a joke.) With that in mind, I’m afraid to say the latest “can you send me photos of your feet” message was the one that tipped me over the edge. In fact, I was so annoyed to be receiving this request AGAIN that a red mist of anger descended over my eyes, and in my haste to send my “Actually, no, I won’t be emailing photos of my feet to strange men on the Internet,” response, I may have accidentally checked the box that says “publish this question and my response on the listing”. Whoops. My bad. Still, I guess there’s no harm done. If it WAS a genuine, reasonable request, people will see it as that and think no ill of my high heel lovin’ correspondent. And if it turns out that Brian IS actually the kind of man who tries to get women to send him photos of their feet for his own, er, use, well, so be it. After all, if you don’t think there’s anything wrong with asking people to send you photos of their feet, then there’s no reason to be embarrassed, is there? Friday (Stolen) Photo: We’ve had the eyes, now it’s the lips!Yes, folks, it’s yet another edition of Friday (Stolen) Photo! Which can only mean one thing: another poor fool has stolen a photo of my face and is using it to sell things on eBay! Or at least, I think it’s eBay. I have no idea what “gittigidiyor.com” might mean, so I’m going to have to assume it means “Site where people habitually steal photos of Magic Amber, and use them to sell products including – but not limited to – false eyelashes and lip plumping gloss.” Or, in this case, “Not-Particularly-Plumping-Gloss”:
Yeah, those are my lips. Hai, lips! Do you see how the “before” and “after” photos are ALMOST EXACTLY THE SAME here, readers? That’s because… they are. As I noted in my review of this product, “Sexy Motherpucker” made no discernable difference to my lips at all. STOLEN PHOTO FAIL. This time, rather than politely ask the seller to remove the photo, I simply asked which address I should send my invoice to for use of the copyrighted images. I get more vindictive with every body part of mine that appears on eBay. The next person to use my face without permission wakes up to a horse’s head in their bed, I swear to God.* Oh, I’m also now a member of Turkish eBay. Yes. And here was I thinking the Friday (Stolen) Photo would be a one-off! Oh, if only! [Thanks to Lucy for letting me know about this one!] * That was a joke, by the way. I mostly just think, “Wow, AGAIN?” when I see these, not, “OK, horse’s head.” Mostly. Friday (Stolen) Photo: Ebay and eyelashes, revisitedIn a change to our published schedule, rather than showing you a totally random photo every Friday some Fridays, I’m now going to use this slot to show you the new places my face has turned up on the Internet without my permission. It’ll be something to show the grandkids, I guess. Assuming Rubin has any. I’m also going to refrain from rehashing the same old post about the CHEEK of people who use MY FACE for their own personal gain, and just allow you to imagine what I would have written if I wasn’t so lazy. Please refer to this post, this post and let’s not forget this post if you’re not sure. This week’s Stolen Photo, then, sees me once again advertising false eyelashes on eBay:
There were actually three auctions featuring yours truly, but two of them used the same image, so I’m sure you don’t need the illustration. Oh, and when I contacted the seller she told me she’d removed the images, but it turns out she only removed one. The others are still there. Presumably she thought I wouldn’t bother to check. Anyway, thanks to Ola for letting me know about this latest appearance. Remember, folks, there are fake Ambers all around you, so if you spot one, please let me know! Meanwhile, if anyone needs me, I’ll be spending my weekend watermarking all of my images. The fun just never starts, does it? The Coat: a cautionary taleSo, a few weeks ago I became ever so slightly obsessed with a coat. As soon as I laid eyes on it I was all, “That coat will be mine!”, so what I did was, I did NOTHING. And it sold out. Everywhere. I know because I, er, emailed the manufacturer to beg them ask them if they’d be getting any more of them in. “No coat!” said the manufacturer. “Cannot have! Sucks to be you! Ner-ner-ner-ner!” Clearly, it was just not meant to be, so I decided to forget all about the coat, but before I did, I decided to search eBay obsessively for it, praying as I did so. And I found it! Only, not really, because the coat I found was one size bigger than the size I usually take. “Will not buy,” I told myself firmly. “Stupid to even look at coat which will be too big. That way heartache lies. Will not even add to Watch List, so cannot be tempted!” So I added The Coat to my Watch List. A few days later, I checked up on it and lo! The Coat had now been bid up to an astronomical price – one that was, in fact, higher than it had sold for in the store. And sure, the coat was brand new with tags, but even so! Even so, people! “Stupid!” I said smugly. “Idiots, bidding up Coat to crazy high price! Glad I’m having no part in that! Forgetting all about it now. Right now. Want, though!” So I continued to watch the coat like a stalker. “Buy coat,” said Terry. “I will give you difference between retail price and crazy inflated eBay price,” said Terry. “Then you will shut up about coat, OK?” “Nooo!” said I. “Stupid to involve husband in buying of overpriced coat which, although crazy expensive is also investment, really. And actually, not that expensive, when you come to think of it. In fact, is still way less than most people pay for coats every day! OMG, is bargain!” So, the coat arrived today. And yeah, it’s too big. And kind of completely different from how I was expecting it to look. I was thinking I could pad it out with jumpers, though, maybe carry Rubin around inside it in manner of kangaroo. Or I could just re-sell it. One thing is for sure, though: I am totally banning myself from buying things online now, because if I do decide to sell The Coat, it will be the eleventy-first thing I’ve had to return this week month alone on account of it not fitting right, and that? Is seriously starting to get on my nerves. I mean, I seem to spend all of my time trailing to the post office and I hate it at the post office. [photo removed because I realised it's a full moon tonight and my skin is too thin to post photos of myself on the internet when there's a full moon - d'oh!] Oh, and the “cautionary tale” referenced in the title? Avoid the internet when buying your clothes. Seriously. “Please Miss, the dog ate my homework!”Now, I didn’t think people actually used the "the dog ate my homework" excuse in real life - but it seems that people do. And not just for homework, either. So, a couple of weeks ago, I won a pair of boots on eBay. I use the word "won" pretty much literally here, in that I got them for the princely sum of £1.20, which I thought was a bit of a steal. Apparently the seller thought so too, for two weeks passed and … no boots. Because it’s summer (well, sort of) and I have no pressing need for boots at the moment, I had actually forgotten all about them until something else arrived from eBay (yeah, I’ve been going through one of my periodic "buying things on eBay" phases) and I thought, "Hey!I wonder what happened to m’boots?" So I sent the seller a quick email, asking if she’d posted them yet. Two minutes later, I got a response, and you’ll never guess what? Her dog ate my boots! I mean, I guess she could be telling the truth. If I had a pound for every pair of shoes Rubin ate when he was a puppy, I’d have… well, I’d have £3 by now. But that’s not the point. Even if the dog did eat the boots, when was the seller going to tell me about it, I wonder? Did she want my £1.20 (plus £2 postage) that badly that she was just going to sit tight and hope I forgot all about it? Apparently so, for she still has it. Says Paypal "won’t let her" refund it to me. And, to be fair, she did offer to send me a cheque for the amount, but God, do people still use cheques? For real? And would you get in your car and drive all the way to the bank for the sake of £3.20? I wouldn’t. (No more than I’d list a pair of boots on eBay, wrap them and take them to the post office for £3.20, for that matter. And here I think we have the crux of the matter.) I mean, I don’t even get out of bed for less than £4… So, no boots for me. And no £3.20 either. Maybe my "dog" will jump onto my computer and leave that seller a big far negative feedback, hmmm?  |
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