ComplainerMan

I purchased an old Macintosh SE on eBay last week for $10 plus $40 shipping. For $50 I would have a piece of computing nostalgia – an anachronistic curiosity that I could mess around with for the remainder of it’s life, and then properly discard as eWaste, when that life came to a natural end. I have old SE peripherals, software and music files I used to create MIDI music back in the day, and this machine would allow me to take a stroll down memory lane. But it was not to be. When I received the old Mac, it had already met it’s demise:

Sad Mac. Dead Mac.

The Sad Mac icon, indicating a dead hard-drive. The icon is barely discernable because the CRT (cathode ray tube) is so messed up. I looked at the box and could find no damage. I did notice that it was shipped DHL, not UPS as the auction specified. I went back to eBay and confirmed that it was supposed to be shipped UPS with $100 of insurance, but I noticed something else. My sad Mac was not the same model as the one in the auction picture, which was there to demonstrate that the unit being sold still worked.

One of these things is not like the other.

I contacted the seller to inform him of the problem, but didn’t mention the picture issue to see what he would say. He didn’t respond within 2 days, so I sent another message, this time mentioning that the picture he sent of the working Mac SE was a different model than the broken unit I received. This time he responded within about 15 minutes, saying he was sorry the unit didn’t work, but that the picture WAS of the unit I received. That was it. Either he accidentally sent the wrong Macintosh SE from his extensive inventory (sarcassm) or he was trying to scam me. Selling a broken computer as working, and pretending it was damaged in shipment. I replied with the specifics of how I or anyone could tell that the computer in the auction picture was different from the Mac I got.

His reply completely ignored the picture issue and instead offered to refund the $10 I paid for the computer. Not the $40 shipping. A little back and forth later the best deal I could get from him was a full refund by shipping the computer back to him at my cost. So any way you sliced it, I was going to pay for shipping a dead stick across the country. I chose to leave negative feedback and try to get eBay to resolve the issue through the resolution center.