Theater Masks

Theater Masks

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Ebay and writing

I learned first hand today how the quality of writing can affect your view of a person. I recently sold some Wii games on ebay. The games were completely fine when they left my house, and now the buyer is claiming they are scratched up and won't play. What's interesting to me, for the sake of this blog, is his (and apparently his wife's) complete inability to write. These are some of the emails I received:

"My son just opened the games to play on his Wii and they are all scratched to hell. The only one that is not scratched is the furry park one. I am a little pissed right now because these were for his birthday. Needless to say I need to send them back and get credit including shipping. Jason, wait till you see these games there are scratches all over them and not even playable, you should have looked at them before selling."

And, even better:

"Jason, just to let you know they dont work AND I am not keeping them and have notified paypal your a liar, AND i will leave you a bad feedback! this is the wife my son cried you are no good!"

Now, let's look at these emails objectively, ignoring content. Run-on sentences, incorrect words, no capitalization, lack of punctuation, and crude language abound.

Not to toot my own horn, but I tend to think I write correctly (whether or not my writing is qualifiably "good" is another issue altogether!). I certanly know I write correctly when dealing with official transactions or in trying to get something from a company or someone else. I'm wondering, based on this -- based on his emails (his wife's?) and on mine which were detailed, precise, and well written, will PayPal decide I need to pay the money back, or that I did nothing wrong?

On a more subjective note, I don't have any actual PROOF that the games were fine other than Caitie's and my word, but the games WERE playable when they left this house. I don't know if his son didn't like the games or if his son broke them...but I know at the very least I SHOULD come off as the more honest person based solely on my writing!

Or am I completely wrong in my view on this?





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