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I made $100K from a dick joke

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Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#191

Post by wat10000 »

bandrami wrote: post #126
wiseowise wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sending this to a woman we worked with that he had a grudge against for some reason or another Sometimes I wonder what the hell is going on in people's head.

I've had to let a few reports go for inappropriate statements. Without exception, whatever they got in trouble for saying they prefaced with "I probably shouldn't say this, but..." For the love of God if you can put that into words just don't say whatever the thing in question was

Translated from Moron to English: “look at how brave I am, admire me and despair at how pathetic you are for censoring yourself.”

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#192

Post by nosioptar »

Beijinger wrote: post #186
nosioptar wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I ordered from amazon, I repeatedly declined prime. My bank called me the next day about a suspicious charge for a year of prime. I had to cancel my card and get a new one. The banker told me they'd had dozens of similar problems where amazon was charging people for stuff they never ordered. When I got the package a few days later, the $150+ set of cello strings I ordered, sold and shipped by amazon, were c…

Out of curiosity, how did you realize that they were counterfeits and is there a big difference? FYI: I don't play cello.

The label looked like it was printed on a cheap ink jet printer. The colors on the label weren't the right shades either.

The strings were guitar strings rather than cello strings. They're too short for a cello. The winding metal is different too. A bow doesn't grip guitar strings as well.

Most counterfeiters send super cheap cello strings with a fake label. In those cases, the best way to tell is that the silk windings on the strings will be the wrong colors.

There's a huge difference in sound. Cheap/fake strings tend to sound metallic and harsh. They also tend to break quickly, while a proper set of strings can last over a year.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#193

Post by nosioptar »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #154
nosioptar wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I ordered from amazon, I repeatedly declined prime. My bank called me the next day about a suspicious charge for a year of prime. I had to cancel my card and get a new one. The banker told me they'd had dozens of similar problems where amazon was charging people for stuff they never ordered. When I got the package a few days later, the $150+ set of cello strings I ordered, sold and shipped by amazon, were c…

Amazon is the American version of Temu, Aliexpress, etc nowadays; I wouldn't use it for anything but their own products (Kindle). For specialist items like the cello strings you mentioned, music shops are thankfully still a thing, both online/webshops as irl ones. I'd go there instead. Same with books.

Agreed, I normally wouldn't buy strings from anyone but a reputable violin shop. The strings I wanted were new and none of the small shops could get them at the time.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#194

Post by firesteelrain »

harrall wrote: post #113
kgilpin wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my kids’ generation (college aged) they all use Facebook Marketplace.

eBay and Facebook Marketplace don’t really compete. FB is better for normal fungible items. eBay is better for specialty stuff. Don’t forget that you have to pay to list and usually have to ship on eBay. It’s two totally different vibes. If I wanted to sell a Dewalt angle grinder, I would go to Facebook first. If I wanted to sell a Sony E-mount camera lens, I would go to eBay first. Most used things I buy make more s…

FB marketplace is full of people wasting your time.

"Is this still available?" Yes it is - never heard from again.

I stopped giving out my address. I will give a general area where we can meet so they can gauge how far it is for them. When they are on their way, I give them the public location to meet. Only serious people will meet me. On some occasions, I still get ghosted. But ghosting has become more and more common. I don't recall it being this bad when Craigslist was huge.

Rather go back to yard sales.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#195

Post by paxys »

_1tem wrote: post #9

Sometimes I think about the years of hard work that I put into building a SaaS business and wondered whether I should've just done something silly like this instead.

That's like saying "this guy won the lottery, so maybe I should quit my job and just buy lottery tickets."

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#196

Post by pjdesno »

toast0 wrote: post #69
lotsofpulp wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eBay is interesting. It has consistently high profit margins, but no upward movement in revenue or profit, which peaked over a decade ago, and its returns heavily lag SP500. I’m guessing investors don’t see much opportunity for growth in the online auction business to make it worth dumping a bunch of money just to take market share from eBay.

From my perspective, eBay has a solid niche of older items, and they tried to break into the buy new items market too, but the hassles of selling mean for the most part only scalpers sell new items on eBay. Although there's some niches where it's not unusual: new auto parts seem common, I guess it's easier for a dealer parts counter to run an eBay store than otherwise.

I mostly use eBay for buying computer and bike parts - e.g. my most recent purchase on my work (tax-exempt) account was a batch of a specific model of 40Gbit NIC, and a specific type of bike seat post on my personal account.

The eBay search function isn't great, but it's vastly better than Amazon, where search results are polluted by large numbers of garbage sponsored results - this may be related to its success in these niches. (although in my case it's partly because I can avoid paying for Amazon Prime, and still choose things based on prices that include shipping)

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#197

Post by idiotsecant »

sandworm101 wrote: post #171
jenscow wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who do none of the value adding work of buying large lots and retailing the ... I think they're saying that is the value added work, which they don't do.

I dont think so. We might not like dealing with them, but even the most horrible of middlemen still provide liquidity to a market. Amazon got its start as a middleman for books, and was hated for what it did to the retail bookshops, but it did inject liquidity to the betterment of consumers.

I think you need to re-read the posts you're replying to. Everyone is specifically saying warehousers add value to the chain. Drop shippers do not.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#198

Post by acac10 »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #110
ninkendo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the exact experience selling an iMac on eBay about 10 years ago. Buyer clicked buy it now, my listing was removed, they never paid. They deleted their account shortly after (it was some .ru email address.) eBay had nothing to say other than “try again after X weeks”. Why, so it can just happen again? They admitted they have zero protection against it. I deleted my account and sold it on Amazon instead. How anyo…

I sold quite a few things on Amazon back in the day. Was great for getting things off my shelves collecting dust at a good price. At some point maybe ten years ago they started requiring very invasive identity validation to sell. My account from '98? and good selling karma does not matter apparently, not grandfathered in. Long story short, don't expect Amazon to be more reasonable than Ebay these days.

How is this equivalent?!? In fact, stronger seller identification is what makes the site safer for everyone. I think you're really missing the point of stronger identification on commercial sites. It should be done for sellers AND buyers alike. It would drastically decrease the number of bad transactions if people knew they were no longer shielded by anonymity.

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#199

Post by dylan604 »

ktm5j wrote: post #182
rgovostes wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just remember eBay has almost no way to report scam listings, hacked seller accounts, obviously fraudulent buyers, etc. They don’t want to clean up their act. Caveat emptor. Two executives were recently imprisoned over harassing a journalist, to give you an idea of the corporate culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal

> The Steiners were harassed and threatened both online and physically in their home by deliveries of such things as a bloody pig mask, live cockroaches and spiders, a funeral wreath, and large orders of pizza.[5][1][6] Pornographic magazines with David Steiner’s name on them were sent to a neighbor’s house. Wow, what disgusting human beings..

To which party are you referring?

Re: I made $100K from a dick joke

#200

Post by lotsofpulp »

asddubs wrote: post #144
potato3732842 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that for a lot of "cheap junk from China" gets cheaper when you eBay it directly from China and cut out the cost of the Amazon middle man. Recently I bought a chainsaw tool on eBay from China as I didn't want to buy a 6-pack for $10. I was able to buy a couple for about $0.20 more per unit. Sure, higher unit price and they'll be here slower but it's several $6ish saved.

ebay seems relatively competitive with aliexpress, sometimes even cheaper. amazon everything seems to cost much more

Amazon has free returns on almost everything, so if comparing prices for the same item, the cost of free returns has to be added.
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