Shopping Fail

[bjarvis]

Just before xmas, I saw a good deal on a laptop on eBay. I especially love shopping on bidding sites where auction deadlines land on major holidays or weekends: there are many fewer competing bidders so I have a better chance to slip in at the last minute to grab a good deal.

Indeed, I won that auction: $330 for a new Asus X501A laptop. The listed delivery date was Dec 29 but I was sure that date would be missed because of the holiday. Sure enough, it finally arrived Jan 4, but we were already on the road to North Carolina so I didn't get to collect it until this morning.

It's the wrong machine. It's an X401U model with a CPU less than half the speed of the advertised model. It also has a different OS.

I've since been back in contact with the vendor who has issued the expected mea culpa and I'm shipping the machine back to him for the correct model. I'm a bit annoyed by the delay but if my existing netbook wasn't still running adequately, I wouldn't have gone the online route and would have sought immediate shopping satisfaction at a local store.

Exactly what kind of rating the vendor is going to get will determine on how quickly I get the correct machine.

Comments

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

This is the first time out of nearly 100 eBay purchases that I've had any significant trouble. Up to now, the worst I've had was sluggish shipping. If the replacement machine is correct and arrives in a moderately timely fashion, I'd still consider even this flawed transaction a success.