EBAY and PAYPAL are thiefs and LIARS and they suck ASS!!! big time. they are both a TOTAL rip-off.

anyway, what i came on here to say (before it took a 100 yrs to be ALLOWED onto my own acct).....is that.......ebay and paypal are a RIP-OFF!!!! and you know how they basically force you into adding your bank account info so that they can DIRECTLY siphon money out of it? well i NEVER wanted to do that, was NEVER comfortable w/that, but unless you DO do it, you cannot be "verified" which supposedly is supposed to be some great treat and allow you extra special treatment and such, but it soooooooo does not.
i resisted it for a loooooooong time but they were so far up my ass about it and never let it go, that i finally "had" to. doesnt' matter if i put on 50 credit cards or even a cash balance or anything, i have to let them have my bank account info.
so recently paypal AND ebay BOTH w/out my knowledge OR permission just took chunk sums of money straight outta my bank account. i am NOT happy w/that.
okay, yes i DID sell a few things (about 5), recently on ebay and used paypal as my method for receiving money, which i thought would expedite it (as opposed to using another method or waiting for someone to send you a check, then waiting for that to clear), and i have bought tons of things through paypal and on ebay, but boy was i WRONG!!! it doesn't expedite shit, in fact it just delays everything 10 times longer than it should be.
oh man, i really didnt' want to type the entire story here about how i used paypal to print my shipping labels and packing slips (AND i paid them directly the shipping costs) and how i have and have had for years, a PERFECT record w/ebay (and paypal even), 100% positive, AAAA+++++ feedback, transactions and so on for buying AND selling, but they conveniently have a cap on those things. unless you sold something in the past few weeks, it's like you never sold anything at all. also i didnt' want to get into my PAYING paypal and ebay already for their services IN my recent selling (but they LIE about their charges and then take tons more later when the mood apparently strikes), and i didn't want to get into how paypal totally bullshits you about how and when you get YOUR money from them. they want to wait up to a month, sometimes more, to establish that you are a "good seller" or some such bullshit. even when your buyer has already received your item, given you great feedback and then some and they STILL hold YOUR money and have all their stupid reasons for it.
i understand the concept behind it and if someone IS a new seller and so on, they may be some scam artist and screwing people over, but if you have sold and followed every rule (and do the packing slip and shipping thru paypal or ebay which according to them will "speed up" the receipt of your money (when it soooo does not!) and then come to find out, after you already sold something extremely underpriced (but enough to be worth it) AND paid the shipping AND paid the 2 companies for their services in your selling and not only do they hang onto your money forever, but they also then later charge you some extra SECRET HUGE amounts and take it out of your bank acct willy nilly, wtf is that??
so yes, i didn't want to get into any of that, but i touched on some, obviously.
and i won't get into all of the details of what each site SAYS that they charge you for your listing (which i did it the cheapest way possible on every count) and what they SAY they charge you to accept money for you, but it's TOTAL bullshit. somehow they can (and do!) secretly charge you these other huge amounts that were not mentioned ANYWHERE!! let's say they say it costs $2.50 to list and sell something on ebay and you don't add ANY extras (though man they act like you can't sell shit unless you use ALL their add ons to do so, extra pictures, different fonts, blah blah blah. oh your item will NEVER be seen unless you pimp it out. more bullshit. that's capatilism for you, or should i say greed? yes i realize they are a business and they are there to make money but man oh man, they are ROLLING in the money!!! because if what they charged me and keep trying to charge me on top of that is any indication of what they are getting from everyone listing on their site, then everyone working for ebay should be a multi-millionaire!)
oh and another thing, out of all of these things that i'm NOT mentioning here (wink wink. i'm just not getting into all of the details that i could and would, did i have more time and interest in thinking about this some more) is that i always wondered and was (and am still) so irritated by the people selling things that are retail price or even MORE than retail. i always think "wtf?? that is NOT why people come on ebay, to pay the exact cost or more that they can buy it for from a store or even online AND most likely w/free shipping, whereas you see these people trying to charge $15 or even $30 for just the shipping and i'm not even talking a heavy, heavy item, it's ridiculous, that defeats the purpose) but NOW, again, having just dealt w/their rip-off-ness i now see why people ARE charging astronomical amounts for items they are selling AND i also feel REALLY badly for the people who are literally selling things (decent things, worth a lot more) for a penny or even for .99 and a lot of times w/free shipping. so they are making NOTHING. in fact they are PAYING lame ass ebay and probably pay pal as well to just sell the item. so they are spending money, not making it.
and in the past, this was not occurring, on my part i mean, i was charged (when i sold things before) the fees that they TOLD me i was to be charged. not anymore. and i sold some pricey stuff back then. an amazing camera that an ex boyfriend gave me, it was like a $600 camera and i was charged like a dollar or something to sell it. no i didn't sell it for anywhere near $600, but it sure amounted to more than what i sold recently!
so yep, now i have a little compassion for those selling overpriced items, but let's be real here, there are some people that are flat out delusional in how much they are selling things for.
let's say that a skin serum, for example, retails for $65 and their STARTING price for that item is like $80, then on top of that, they then throw in a $15 shipping fee, when you know damn well it will cost them a couple of bucks to ship it.....hell, i have paid for numerous items on ebay and wondered at the shipping costs but of course paid it, cause i was still saving money w/the total, so say i paid $8.00 for shipping, then i receive the item and see plain as day on the package that the shipping cost to them was $1.72. i get it, make money wherever you can and pad your shipping and so on, but now i see it as the GREED, unecessary greed i might add, of ebay and paypal!!! if they actually charged what they SAY that they are charging you, as you are creating the page of the item to be sold, they would STILL be making a killing, making tons of $$, but nooooo. not the way it goes anymore.
i have seen and purchased from other ebay-type sites before and had considered them in my recent selling, but i thought "no, not that many people will see the item, ebay is so huge and the main one (same w/paypal), the most used, the most convenient, the go to place and i want the best bids, the best chances in selling my item". well i'm DEFINITELY rethinking that now!
not that i have anything left that i want to sell, but in the future if i do....
oh and besides, if you do a google search or whatever, your specific item WILL be found, especially if it's rare to any degree.
oooh that reminds me, i purchased a book from ebay? amazon? something, years ago. i was searching for a book i read as a teenager or young adult and i can't recall for the life of me what it was called, so i searched by wording plotlines and so on and FINALLY came upon what seemed to be the book and i got it for a pretty cheap/decent price. sadly, only to receive it and discover it was NOT the book i had read and wanted again. was some kind of cheap looking romance type deal, so i just put it aside, never even bothered to read it or anything, but went back to searching for the actual book that i did want, only to discover that the book i bought is apparently VERY rare, very hard to come by (which i have bought a few things that were like that, took me years to finally get ahold of them and i paid fairly dearly to do so, but was fully worth it) and i discovered that women were practically losing their minds trying to find and purchase this book. i saw people saying they would pay hundreds of dollars for this old paperback, crappy looking book. so i should totally sell that huh? i have no interest in it, though now i'm thinking for the hell of it, i should at least read it first and see what all the hubbub is about.
the same was the case (before, not so much now) w/"atame" (no accent marks on my keyboard) or "tie me up tie me down", the wonderful almodovar film w/antonio banderas when he was just a young-un. i always wanted to own it but it was virtually impossible to find it, well it was impossible for years. it was never put into dvd format and any VHS' left in the world, no one was giving them up. finally i DID find it. it was selling for $80, for an old vhs. crazy huh? but it was that rare, just a couple yrs ago. shortly thereafter i found a copy and paid just under $20 for it.....1. cause i had always wanted to own it, 2. because i think it's a great film and then 3. it seemed like a good investment if that's what was going on price wise to find it, though i didn't really intend to or want to sell it, i wanted to own it, though i'm not thrilled that it's VHS, i did save one VCR, so i can watch it on that, but THEN they (whomever they is. the production co or whomever) put it onto dvd and changed the whole situation about huge prices for a rare movie. 
i don't know how i moved onto rambling about that.
so to sum it up, even though i barely touched on what happened w/these companies, EBAY and PAYPAL are RIP-OFFS and liars as well. i cannot stand liars and misrepresentation more than anything, it is my biggest pet peeve in this life.
anyhoo............gotta go folks. if anyone ever reads this stuff anyway.
and IF anyone does, i wish i knew (yeah i see the view counter but is only a number, doesn't tell me much), because i have sooooooo much to talk about, write about, vent about, inform about (on my original area of expertise and why i started this blog) and so on and if i knew anyone was reading and hopefully enjoying anything i wrote, i would write a hell of a lot more. writing is a lonely profession. that's for sure. that's one thing that has slowed down the process of finishing my book. that and HOW to get an agent, a good agent, that will get your work READ!! that kinda freaks me out. how does one go about that?? anyone know? i've asked published friends, some famous writers, but they weren't very forthcoming, so i know no more than before i asked.

the internet trying to access and control EVERY aspect of your life....NO privacy whatsoever seems to be the policy....

what the hell?? i couldn't even access my OWN blog account!! and as usual, w/EVERYTHING on the internet now, they wanna link up EVERY email account you have, so you have ZERO privacy left. you cant' keep anything to yourself online anymore. i hate that. hate is a strong word, i STRONGLY dislike that. i have an old ass aol account still and i check in occasionally and i went to do so tonight and it's all "new", of course another change/upgrade (so they call it) to make it IMPOSSIBLE for you to navigate anything and also to try to FORCE you into linking up your entire online life w/them. i couldnt' even go to my mail or anything else and their so called "new look" or whatever was absolutely awful.
i realize things shouldn't stay stagnate but c'mon, why continue to try to "fix" things that aren't broken and "fix" them in such a way that you don't even wanna use them anymore! geez louise man.