Life’s a bitch and then you marry one

The first item I’ve ever put up on eBay was grabbed up in no time, but already it’s become the ordeal I feared auctioning off my stuff would be. I offered ordinary P&P options but the buyer contacted me to ask if I could courier them the item. I was going to say NO but didn’t want to be dismissive the first time around, so I said I’d investigate.

I found the Fedex site impossible to negotiate, but finally figured out I’d have to apply for a ‘personal’ account first. That would take too much time, so I tried TNT who seemed to offer shipping without too much hassle. But when I rang them this morning to verify things were as simple as they seemed, I was told that because I wasn’t a business, they could not give me an account and would not pick up the item. Instead I would have to use the service they offer through the post office.

The post office I can NEVER go to because it only opens during office hours.

I find things like not being able to use every day services available to businesses deeply frustrating. It did nothing to improve the mood I’ve landed in since my return from the U.K.

I’d felt gloomy since Monday morning, but it was the cashier at Duivendrecht station who triggered my festering wrath. On Monday evening 11.15pm she refused to give me change from a tenner and made me buy a sausage roll so I would have the coins to pay for a subway ticket.

Bitch. I cursed this stupid country and its refusal to accept credit cards in vending machines (or anywhere else for that matter) to hell and back. And then the 54 line broke down and I had to get back on a train anyway. And walk more stairs with my gammy knee, because all the escalators had broken down too.

But anyway, selling stuff on eBay… I had to refund the buyer their shipping money and placate them with apologies. They begged me to go to the post office, would even pay for my petrol. I don’t have a car, but anyway, there’s no post office anywhere near where I work. More apologies and grovelling. I hate this. I hate negotiating with sellers in the first place, but it’s worse the other way around as I’m expected to make the buyer happy. I find this endless negotiating with strangers incredibly taxing. Bloody does my head in. Now the buyer’s unhappy, and I’m drowning in guilt and I wish I had said NO in the first place. I’m considering sending him the item free and be done with it.

To make matters worse, TGP post have failed to deliver the lovely Revue 400 se camera I bought from a seller in Austria. I’ll have to go to the post office (when? WHEN? WHEN FOR FUCK SAKE???) to fill in a form. I’ve done this before and always get the same standard ‘sorry we can’t find it’ answer a few weeks later. There really is no point.

My deep sympathies go out to those who do this for a living.