EBay Shipping Oddity

[kevin_standlee]

I bought something on eBay a couple of days ago, and rather than have them ship it up to Oregon, I gave them my office address as part of the payment process. The order confirmed, I got my confirmation e-mail showing my office address, and thought no more about it, until today, when I got another e-mail from the seller (not the automated one from eBay and PayPal) saying "because you gave a PO Box, I had to ship it USPS."

I wrote back and said, "I gave you my office physical address in San Mateo CA, per the attached message. Where did you ship it?"

He replied that what eBay had sent him pointed to the PO Box in Mehama, and that's where it went.

The Mehama address is the default, since nearly everything I buy on eBay goes there, but for the seller to see a different address than the buyer is kind of odd. It's not a big deal; I was just accumulating spare parts for the computers because now that Dell has discontinued the Inspiron 600m, I expect to see the supply of parts dry up soon, given that Dell seems to think they need to completely retool every six months or so *sigh*. I don't need the part right away and will get it on my next trip north.

But the next time I buy something through eBay and want it shipped anywhere but the default address, I think I'll be more insistent upon the address, putting it in the comment fields as well as setting the various toggles in the eBay/PayPal process.

Comments

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Stay away from the Inspiron series in the future. It's the "consumer" line and undergoes many changes. The "Latitude" line is their corporate line; it's much more consistent parts-wise.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I wish I'd figured that out in advance; but now I'm sort of stuck with it.

We did decide that the damage to the one machine was sufficient that we would just go ahead and buy a similar-but-not-quite-as-fast replacement from the remaindered stock. Given that I was actually able to get the damaged machine to POST once, I think it's possible that processor is still sound, in which case I might be able to do a "brain transplant" if I end up feeling really ambitious. The service manual seems to make it look reasonable straightforward.

For that matter, if I can accumulate a new case and an LCD screen for the Inspiron 500/600, along with the keyboard (that's what I bought), it's possible that everything else is still sound and I could assemble a completely computer from parts. The screen is the expensive part, though. Somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 the total cost of the computer is tied up in the LCD screen.