cross-posted from my other blog, because I feel this is important…
Several days ago myself and my other half put several pieces of software up for sale on E-Bay, along with their books. Among them was a copy of “Microsoft Visual Basic 6 Learning Edition”, along with the book “Visual Basic Complete”. They were sold together as a lot, and the description detailed exactly what the buyer was getting, along with a photograph, and details of the postage cost.
I had anticipated that the auction wouldn’t raise much money at all - but was delighted and surprised when the lot was “watched” by a number of people, and eventually sold far in excess of my humorously pessimistic estimate.
It came as quite a shock then this morning for us to receive an email from the winning bidder - who I will not name because they will no doubt try to sue for slander - threatening to leave “really nasty feedback” on E-Bay if we did not discard the book, and lower the postage cost of the package. Surely they had bought a “lot” on E-Bay - bought as described. Most people would not dream of trying to re-negotiate a purchase after the fact - let alone use threats and blackmail.
All I can say is well done to the company involved. They are the first company or individual we have ever had to report to E-Bay for threatening behaviour. We have communicated the stream of threatening emails directly to E-Bay for them to act on. This blog post will of course travel the world too - through Technorati, Google Blog Search, Digg, Delicious, and any number of other indexing services. When we get notification that E-Bay have closed their account, I will of course let their name out of the bag.
The really sad thing is that the threats were made over such a small amount of money. Why would a company risk their name over something so stupid?