The last several months in
my life have been crazy, and I do mean absolutely crazy.
Let’s put the pandemic aside, which has made everyone’s life crazy … my life has been simply an unending tidal wave of craziness.
I am happy to say that right after the new year, everything seemed to be resolved, but I had to do a lot of personal leg work to get these things in order.
Some were absolutely essential, like getting my health insurance—and before that, my son’s health insurance—in check, leading up to getting Medicare in April.
Mistakes were made to my account by the good people at the New York State of Health, and those mistakes—which supposedly were corrected, but really weren’t, unbeknownst to me—threatened my interim health insurance.
But I kept at it, didn’t take no for an answer, was told untruths by people who did not know who they were dealing with, and finally, this potential cataclysm went out with a whimper, all having to do with my efforts to fix things.
I won’t go into what I had to go through for my son to get his benefits, because I have done that already here, nor will I go through some other hoops I had to jump through to get things the way they are supposed to be, but suffice it to say, I have spent countless hours on the phone, hours that I will never get back, but eventually, all of those efforts paid off.
And then we have some “minor” skirmishes that I have had to go through to make things right, and I am going to tell you about the latest one, because it might even help you in the future to make things right when you have been so obviously wronged.
Several weeks ago, my family and I were at my sister’s house, and I was talking to my youngest nephew, a good kid who is going to amount to something big someday, I do believe.
Anyway, he is very much a member of his generation, as he is into all the proper social causes, has participated in some marches, and really believes in himself and his generation’s beliefs.
Anyway, we were talking about one thing or another, and we started to talk about music and records, two of his passions like they are for me.
And like his generation, he is very much into owning vinyl records, and, in fact, I have actually bought him one or two records to add to his burgeoning collection.
He mentioned to me that he needed a turntable to play them on, because the one that he had was scratching his records, so he couldn’t listen to them.
So, as a good uncle, I told him, “Don’t worry about it … I will get you a turntable,” and that was that.
Did he believe me? Did he think I was simply talking and there would be no action?
No, he knows me better than that … and I went out, and bought him a new turntable.
I purchased it through eBay, a source that I have used in the past for many things—including the purchase of this very computer I am typing this Rant on—and I never had much of a problem.
I purchased a nice, mid-range-priced turntable for him from the site, it came pretty quickly, and I brought it to him when I received it.
He hooked it up, and lo and behold, the turntable did not work.
He tried several times, my sister tried to get it going, but it simply would not work.
I was told about this, and I came as quickly as I could to pick it up and send it back to the original place of purchase … which began my month-long nightmare.
I contacted the seller through eBay that the item did not work and that I wanted a refund, and right in the middle of the Christmas rush, I did not hear back from the seller at all, as I was supposed to.
I wrote again, and then again, and nothing.
I was forced to contact eBay itself, but not only did I not hear back from them, I continued not to hear back from the seller, and I even got into eBay’s version of hell by doing whatever they said I should do if I was having trouble returning an item and getting embroiled in click after click of not getting anywhere, with each click bringing me back to the same place I had already been to.
I did have the address of the seller, so on the very morning I was going to send the item back to them with the postage cost added onto my refund, they finally sent me a mailing slip, so that I could send the item back for free.
So I had to find a FedEx site to get rid of this thing, and little did I know that my local Walgreens performed this service, but I found out that they did, and I finally sent the thing back.
Through a couple of mishaps with Walgreens—for some reason, they could not send me a confirmation of my action to me right then and there, which I finally received later that day—I finally had the item sent back, and it took a few days to reach its destination, which I know because I did receive a message that the company had the item, even the date and time and person who signed for it, which I received through a Walgreens email to me.
And then I waited … and waited … and waited for a refund … and after I had waited enough, contacted the seller asking for a refund but not getting any answer as to when I would receive one … I decided one day to try to contact eBay by phone—
Which is akin to trying to talk directly to the president of the United States using yoiur cell phone.
At one time when eBay was new, they did have a phone number that anyone could use to talk to them, but that phone number has been out of service for decades.
There really is no way to talk to them via the phone about any complaint you have … but then I stumbled onto something on their site, where you can actually speak to a human being about your problem with their service.
You first have to do an automated chat with them, and when this chat can’t resolve your problem itself, it will give you a partial phone number and state that if you provided your phone number to them, they will actually call you back in a few minutes.
I did just that, spoke to someone—a real person—and via eBay’s item guarantee, I resolved the matter in about a half hour, so on December 31, 2021, after weeks of trying to resolve this, it finally happened—with eBay being the entity to send my refund, not the company I purchased the defective item from.
I received the refund on Monday of this week, and in the interim, I purchased another, better turntable for my nephew from another site, and it works and he loves it!
Jot this down: https://www.ebay.com/help/contact_us?id=5182&st=10
That is eBay customer service, where you can actually speak to someone about your problem with their service, so now, you won’t have to jump through hoops like I did to get to where you want to be to right any wrongs you need to address with eBay.
So there you have it.
Persistence can lead to prosperity after all!
Let’s put the pandemic aside, which has made everyone’s life crazy … my life has been simply an unending tidal wave of craziness.
I am happy to say that right after the new year, everything seemed to be resolved, but I had to do a lot of personal leg work to get these things in order.
Some were absolutely essential, like getting my health insurance—and before that, my son’s health insurance—in check, leading up to getting Medicare in April.
Mistakes were made to my account by the good people at the New York State of Health, and those mistakes—which supposedly were corrected, but really weren’t, unbeknownst to me—threatened my interim health insurance.
But I kept at it, didn’t take no for an answer, was told untruths by people who did not know who they were dealing with, and finally, this potential cataclysm went out with a whimper, all having to do with my efforts to fix things.
I won’t go into what I had to go through for my son to get his benefits, because I have done that already here, nor will I go through some other hoops I had to jump through to get things the way they are supposed to be, but suffice it to say, I have spent countless hours on the phone, hours that I will never get back, but eventually, all of those efforts paid off.
And then we have some “minor” skirmishes that I have had to go through to make things right, and I am going to tell you about the latest one, because it might even help you in the future to make things right when you have been so obviously wronged.
Several weeks ago, my family and I were at my sister’s house, and I was talking to my youngest nephew, a good kid who is going to amount to something big someday, I do believe.
Anyway, he is very much a member of his generation, as he is into all the proper social causes, has participated in some marches, and really believes in himself and his generation’s beliefs.
Anyway, we were talking about one thing or another, and we started to talk about music and records, two of his passions like they are for me.
And like his generation, he is very much into owning vinyl records, and, in fact, I have actually bought him one or two records to add to his burgeoning collection.
He mentioned to me that he needed a turntable to play them on, because the one that he had was scratching his records, so he couldn’t listen to them.
So, as a good uncle, I told him, “Don’t worry about it … I will get you a turntable,” and that was that.
Did he believe me? Did he think I was simply talking and there would be no action?
No, he knows me better than that … and I went out, and bought him a new turntable.
I purchased it through eBay, a source that I have used in the past for many things—including the purchase of this very computer I am typing this Rant on—and I never had much of a problem.
I purchased a nice, mid-range-priced turntable for him from the site, it came pretty quickly, and I brought it to him when I received it.
He hooked it up, and lo and behold, the turntable did not work.
He tried several times, my sister tried to get it going, but it simply would not work.
I was told about this, and I came as quickly as I could to pick it up and send it back to the original place of purchase … which began my month-long nightmare.
I contacted the seller through eBay that the item did not work and that I wanted a refund, and right in the middle of the Christmas rush, I did not hear back from the seller at all, as I was supposed to.
I wrote again, and then again, and nothing.
I was forced to contact eBay itself, but not only did I not hear back from them, I continued not to hear back from the seller, and I even got into eBay’s version of hell by doing whatever they said I should do if I was having trouble returning an item and getting embroiled in click after click of not getting anywhere, with each click bringing me back to the same place I had already been to.
I did have the address of the seller, so on the very morning I was going to send the item back to them with the postage cost added onto my refund, they finally sent me a mailing slip, so that I could send the item back for free.
So I had to find a FedEx site to get rid of this thing, and little did I know that my local Walgreens performed this service, but I found out that they did, and I finally sent the thing back.
Through a couple of mishaps with Walgreens—for some reason, they could not send me a confirmation of my action to me right then and there, which I finally received later that day—I finally had the item sent back, and it took a few days to reach its destination, which I know because I did receive a message that the company had the item, even the date and time and person who signed for it, which I received through a Walgreens email to me.
And then I waited … and waited … and waited for a refund … and after I had waited enough, contacted the seller asking for a refund but not getting any answer as to when I would receive one … I decided one day to try to contact eBay by phone—
Which is akin to trying to talk directly to the president of the United States using yoiur cell phone.
At one time when eBay was new, they did have a phone number that anyone could use to talk to them, but that phone number has been out of service for decades.
There really is no way to talk to them via the phone about any complaint you have … but then I stumbled onto something on their site, where you can actually speak to a human being about your problem with their service.
You first have to do an automated chat with them, and when this chat can’t resolve your problem itself, it will give you a partial phone number and state that if you provided your phone number to them, they will actually call you back in a few minutes.
I did just that, spoke to someone—a real person—and via eBay’s item guarantee, I resolved the matter in about a half hour, so on December 31, 2021, after weeks of trying to resolve this, it finally happened—with eBay being the entity to send my refund, not the company I purchased the defective item from.
I received the refund on Monday of this week, and in the interim, I purchased another, better turntable for my nephew from another site, and it works and he loves it!
Jot this down: https://www.ebay.com/help/contact_us?id=5182&st=10
That is eBay customer service, where you can actually speak to someone about your problem with their service, so now, you won’t have to jump through hoops like I did to get to where you want to be to right any wrongs you need to address with eBay.
So there you have it.
Persistence can lead to prosperity after all!
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