Most of the time when I’m showcasing outfits here, at least on
e piece of my compilation has been from ebay. Well, this week marked my 50th transaction on ebay, so I want to show you all my SHINY BLUE STAR!
But as Ratigan so aptly states in The Great Mouse Detective, “It hasn’t all been champagne and caviar. I’ve had my share of adversity, thanks to that miserable, second-rate” seller [insert username here].
In the course of my fifty transactions there have been a few doozies, so I thought I’d show them here so that you could laugh with me, and I could better explain Ebay’s return policies to those wary of the site’s security in general.
While many seller’s include the opportunity for you to return your item (and for those primarily worried about fit or quality this is a good way to shop as you can specify you would like to only shop from sellers who offer this option- I would recommend bhfo, in particular), I would say the majority of auction style listings are non-returnable. So what if I get my Louboutins and find out they’re fake, you ask? Or what if when I get something it’s in much worse shape than I thought? Or a different size?
There’s no need for you to feel powerless as a buyer, as every purchase is covered by:
The only downside is that if the seller listed something wrong and you have to send it back, there is the possibility that you might have to pay return shipping for their mistake (since this only covers your original shipping), but it depends on the deal you can work out with your seller.
Chloe’ Sunglasses
Description: 
The seller was correct. The scratch does not affect the look or vision:
To be fair, I still do not know if these are fake. I do know they are suspiciously plastic. Very suspiciously, this doesn’t feel like designer plastic. Further, Chloe glasses come with an authenticity card. No one said anything about an authenticity card here- a fact which I am very on the fence about, because generally fake sunglasses usually come with all the fixings plus some… My real Chloe sunglasses also have markings like this on their small wiry frame, but they have additional product markings as well…. So in between the altogether lack of an authenticity card, cheap material, the fact I have never seen other Chloe frames of this style, I am very confused. But that’s okay. Because either way I got a cool Chloe case for $4.02, so the damage is mitigated.
Lesson: Sunglasses are easy to fake. Know what the real ones look like and are made of before buying!
Isabel Marant Dress
What I was promised:
In their defense, the dress does look like this, except I wouldn’t call it exactly “new.” See strap below.
They took the “without tags” part to the next level. It has no tags from the store. No tags from the designer. No tags with care instruction. When you look inside, all that greets you is a suspicious looking stitch job and the distinct smell of an overseas factory (don’t act like you don’t know what I mean). Safety pinned to the lining was a slip of paper with “Isabel Marant” handwritten on it.
…
yeaaa. In this case I did file a claim saying that the item was counterfeit. The seller immediately reimbursed all my costs and told me to keep the dress, which I still like even if it’s not Isabel Marant, so that was a win. It is ebay’s policy if an item is found to be counterfeit that the buyer can keep it as long as they agree not to resell it. I don’t know if the seller is running a racket or what, but they had over 60 transactions with positive feedback…
Lesson: Sometimes a deal might be too good to be true…
Lipstick (what was I thinking?)
There is no longer any listing for this item. That’s kind of what tipped me off that the listing might be fake. Originally, having no idea what Chanel lipstick looked like, I just blindly bid on what I thought it might look like. My rationale: this $17 lipstick is less than half as much as I’d normally pay! As you can see above, we all make gaudy mistakes at times, but it will be okay. About two days after the seller shipped it to me, ebay sent me a message that said:
Now, I didn’t know at the time this was a message saying
YOU BOUGHT A FAKE, and I had accidentally sent the lipstick to my little sister’s address (who had even less of an idea than I did). So I had to wait until I could get back home to find out if it was real or not. I’m telling you, if you don’t know what a real one looks like, it’s pretty difficult to tell, but the painted on Cs at the top seemed suspicious to me, so I went ahead and opened a case with ebay. My money was refunded within six hours. Turns out, ebay had booted the seller off altogether for all the frauds they had sold.
Lesson: Have an idea what an item looks like before you buy it. Also as a general rule of thumb, we probably shouldn’t mess with sketchy makeup. I coughed up the $35 for the lipstick you see.
The Latest Catastrophe
In the spirit of saving the best for last, I bring you the current drama distracting me from law school:
It looked so harmless in the listing, some slight scraping, otherwise in good condition:
Little did I expect…
I was floored. This jacket looks and feels close-up like it went through a woodchipper. I immediately sat down, head hung low (I’ve wanted a Burberry jacket for so long!) and opened a case. The seller responded saying that they thought they “accurately represented the jacket” and said that if I wanted to know more I should have asked questions….
R: Would you mind telling me whether your hamster has been slowly consuming this over the last three months?
R: Dear Seller, did you slash the inside of the sleeves before you listed? Just wondering…
R: This item hasn’t spent any significant amount of time being intimate with sandpaper in the past twelve months, has it?
In two business days I can escalate the case to Ebay. Cross your fingers all goes well!
Lesson: still processing…
Be smart! Check feedback before buying. Know what you are looking for. And in the future you/ I might want to consider these:
Next, I walked down the Bankside (past an adorable Christmas market installed for the season) to eat at the fabulous OXO Tower. A quick fun fact that I ran across the other day– the OXO Tower was originally a power station (to rival Battersea) but was purchased in the 1920s by Liebeg Extract of Meat Company, producer of the OXO Cube. At the time, there was a ban on skyline advertising, so in converting the old power station, windows in the shape of “OXO” were added to establish a sort of advertising dominance across the central London skyline. Though the company has passed, the windows have become so iconic that they survived a 1970s plan to demolish the building.
The Clothesline 