Just Browsing

I've never had a job where I had to wear dress clothing. Well, I did some office work back in the '80s where I did the tie-but-no-jacket thing that I now realize is a terrible look, and in the mid-'90s I spent a couple of years working a part-time second job on the house staff of a theater company, but that was a sportcoat-and-khakis kind of thing.

So why have I spent so much time over the past several months looking for dress shirts and ties on eBay? I have plenty of outfits that are suitable for job interviews, and bolder shirt and tie choices that would easily take me to a wedding or other semi-formal event. Do I on some level want a job where I have to dress up every day?

I don't think that's it. I do enjoy getting dressed up, but I'm sure if I had to do it daily it would cease to be enjoyable. I think it's just that I like clothes, and my interest in various items of clothing tends to run in cycles. While I've been looking for these items, I've barely looked for shoes, which I need none of at the moment.

Tie Do-Over

After the tie incident a couple of weeks back, I continued browsing eBay for a suitable replacement. It didn't take long, which was a little surprising.

This tie is very different from the other one, but it's also from Liberty and made of cotton in the USA. The background is a coral pink, which my camera represents as more red than it really is.

We don't have any summer weddings or other dress-up events on our schedule, but if we did this would be a likely candidate to wear, probably paired with my cotton suit and the chambray dress shirt I acquired back in December:

(Blame the poor lighting in this shot on my basement's fluorescents.)

Meanwhile I'll still be checking eBay to try to find another tie in the same pattern as the one that got mangled.

An eBay Story

Last month I mentioned my experience with a fraudulent eBay bidder who "purchased" one of the items I had for sale but neglected to pay for it. Since then I've been more wary of the offers that buyers have submitted, and have looked at their feedback information before responding.

A couple of weekends back I got an offer on a suit that I have for sale. It was for only 40% of my asking price so I rejected it, but I also noticed that the bidder had zero feedback and his eBay user account had just been created a week or so earlier.

A couple of days later he made another offer, higher but still lower than what I was hoping for. I contacted him through eBay and told him that as a seller I was looking to protect myself, and that to be blunt, I was suspicious of him. I said that I would feel somewhat more reassured if he could confirm to me that he had a vaild Paypal account with a confirmed address.

His response was more or less "oh yes I have a paypal account," which was not at all what I had meant; I was looking for him to provide information that I could use to confirm the existence of an account. So I came up with an idea: I asked him to send me $1 via Paypal, so that I would have a transaction connected to him, with the associated verifiable details. I would then deduct the dollar from the amount I wanted for the suit, which was still higher than his second offer.

Imagine my lack of surprise when I heard nothing from him, which served to confirm my suspicions. Interestingly, he tried again this past weekend, making another offer for the same amount as his second offer. Buyers get three offers per item per auction, and as a seller I can reject any offer without having to provide an explanation, so I was able to deal with that nuisance with a click of my mouse.

eBay does protect sellers from fraud, as happened with my earlier experience, but heading off a fraud before being victimized is certainly preferable.