Well, I found a way to appeal eBay's decision not to help with the item they failed to deliver to me, either by giving me information to help me try to find it, or by refunding the cost as their website promises.



Then they said they needed longer to investigate. Then they said the case was on hold while they investigated further. Then they said they would close the case (for no stated reason) unless I made a cybercrime report to the Internet Crime Complaint Centre (IC3) which is run by the FBI, and provided them with the complaint number.

So I have reported eBay to the FBI, at their request, and await the outcome of this process with interest (and increasing amazement at the hoops I'm jumping through).

==============================================

UPDATE: less than ten minutes after I sent eBay the IC3 complaint ID, a full refund of the item and shipping costs popped into my PayPal account. WIN! But they really made me work for it! Clearly they are trying to get people to give up before getting to the (undocumented) end of the process.

Bagheera wrote:You mean you haven't noticed until now?

I laughed.

Well I officially have no friends which means its make heavy feel like he's absolutely worthless and compare him to his "normal" can do no wrong cusion time and now I'm essentially banned from coming out of my room and talking.Oh yes and now I'm not allowed privacy and all my ideas are and I quote "a load of total crap that isn't worth anyone's time" and that would be a qoute from my mother.

Sorry I just needed to vent a bit

pwhodges wrote:UPDATE: less than ten minutes after I sent eBay the IC3 complaint ID, a full refund of the item and shipping costs popped into my PayPal account. WIN! But they really made me work for it! Clearly they are trying to get people to give up before getting to the (undocumented) end of the process.

What in the w-...? That's one surprisingly prompt reaction. So do you pull the FBI complaint now or something like that?

heavytread wrote:Well I officially have no friends which means its make heavy feel like he's absolutely worthless and compare him to his "normal" can do no wrong cusion time and now I'm essentially banned from coming out of my room and talking.Oh yes and now I'm not allowed privacy and all my ideas are and I quote "a load of total crap that isn't worth anyone's time" and that would be a qoute from my mother.

Your father hits you and your mother talks to you like that?!

Whoa. Whoa.

If only there was an open market for parents, but as far as I know the only real alternative in America is the foster system.

Geez, PW, that sounds like quite a mess. Glad it's resolve, but I gotta say I'm leery about doing anything over eBay now. On the upside I at least know how to force them to resolve the issue if it does come up!

heavytread: Talk to a school counselor at the earliest opportunity. They will determine whether or not CPS should get involved (and by the sound of it they probably should).

Monk Ed wrote:What in the w-...? That's one surprisingly prompt reaction. So do you pull the FBI complaint now or something like that?

The only option is to add information; so I can add that they have now made the refund as a result of the report. If I was the IC3, I would be pissed at realising that eBay were making this cynical use of their system as an extra barrier for people - but I don't know what sanction they could apply.

Bagheera wrote:heavytread: Talk to a school counselor at the earliest opportunity. They will determine whether or not CPS should get involved (and by the sound of it they probably should).

+1 to this. Take action to better your situation, don't just wallow in it.

I woke up half five in the afternoon. So much for fixing the sleep schedule

Welcome to my life

My computer has been noticeably slower lately and has trouble connecting to the internet. It may just be our university's second-rate servers but I'm growing concerned.

A close friend of mine's behavior has me very worried lately. For starters, I guess it's worth explaining that he is almost unbelievably mild mannered, as is his twin brother, but as the years have gone by, I've gotten more and more of an impression that he's repressing a lot of pent up emotion, and it's become increasingly visible lately.

Last fall, he had been under a lot of stress (he's working in a theater in Chicago and, from what it sounds like, was pretty much running the show at one point - a huge task for a 25-year-old). During a routine doctor's visit, he was given a prescription for Paxil, which from my understanding is notorious for having really strong side-effects. The Paxil apparently gave him a reaction that shared similarities to hypomania (though myself being someone who experiences actual hypomania from time to time I'm going to say it doesn't sound like it meets the criteria for an episode, and it kind of bothers me that he keeps referring to it as that), part of which was a slew of grandiose thoughts and impulses.

Meanwhile, another friend of ours to whom he had been very close to for the previous two years was apparently beginning to date a guy who wasn't treating her well. I know nothing of her side of this story, so I have no idea how true this is, but I do find it believable that she would get herself into this kind of situation. It's worth noting at this point that he admitted to me that he was starting to have "feelings" for her, though I have long suspected he always liked her.

So in this period of grandiosity - which apparently only lasted a few days - he wrote her a very long email telling her why she should not be dating this guy. When he woke up the next morning, he did not remember even writing the message, and was horrified at what he had written. Obviously, she was very upset with him and decided it would be best not to talk to him for a while.

At that point, I had a lot of sympathy for him. It was a reaction to a medication that he didn't really have much control over, and having immediately stopped taking it after he saw that email, he understood her reasoning for cutting him off for a while. He had a solid explanation for his mistake and it wouldn't be implausible for the two of them to eventually be friends again after things cooled off.

So that was it for then. Let it cool off, explain yourself later. Well...

Things began to get a bit worrisome last week with a couple of very long Facebook statuses that - while not naming names - clearly described what was going on in his friendship with her, i.e. that it was over. Describing how a "platinum level friendship" had completely vanished. Eventually I received a text message from him - a very long one - describing what had gone down recently... and... yeah. I won't get into the details, but it sounds like once he decided it was time to try to apologize and try to mend their friendship, he did so in an overtly desperate fashion, and as a result, she blocked him from any and all social media connections they had. He described her as being on a "vindictive" streak, and wanted to know if she had unfriended me on Facebook as well (which she had) to know the extent of her actions.

I gave a short response, in which I did mention that perhaps the ways in which he had tried to apologize to her had affected her reaction. In his response to my response (which he didn't seem to take any offense to) he went on to describe her as being "unreasonable," that it was more her fault than his, that this other guy had changed her, etc.

The thing is... it seems to me that it is more his fault than hers. There's really no way for me to tell that to him.

I was once in a situation not too different from his, and while I did eventually come to the reason that I was the one at fault, it took a while. Overall he's always been very intelligent and mature, and though I've always sensed that there was a strong emotional undercurrent beneath his calm and mild-mannered demeanor, I never thought it would show like this.

The calmest people are often the most internally turbulent.

Facebook is probably the worst invention in human history.

Bomby von Bombsville wrote:having immediately stopped taking it after he saw that email

This jumped out at me. Did he at least gradually stop under doctor's orders? I'm no doctor, but quitting any prescribed medication cold is bad bad bad. When I was in high school, a friend had to be rushed to the ER because they did that.

So, this sounds like a difficult situation all around, but if there's no calm way to explain to your friend how he was in the wrong (situation considering), can you try to personally explain things to your female friend?

Chuckman wrote:The calmest people are often the most internally turbulent.

Very true. I've noticed this about people I know.

This is the problem with some relationships, especially the ones that are terribly psychologically devastating, when the other calls it quits.

Chuckman wrote:The calmest people are often the most internally turbulent.

Yes.

Facebook is probably the worst invention in human history.

It's useful for keeping in touch with people. I can see why some people are so averse to it, considering how dramatic some people can be, but I can't say I've ever felt any particular antipathy for it.

Sailor Star Dust wrote:This jumped out at me. Did he at least gradually stop under doctor's orders? I'm no doctor, but quitting any prescribed medication cold is bad bad bad. When I was in high school, a friend had to be rushed to the ER because they did that.

My understanding is that when all was said and done, he had only taken it for 3-4 days.

So, this sounds like a difficult situation all around, but if there's no calm way to explain to your friend how he was in the wrong (situation considering), can you try to personally explain things to your female friend?

She mostly knew me through him (and his brother), so I'm assuming she'd probably be apprehensive to talk to me as well, especially considering she "unfriended" me on Facebook. I'm not taking that personally, though. I think she's worried that he's been trying to track her or something, and if his attempts to make amends with her were as desperate as they seem to me when reading his text messages, I understand where she's coming from. The only way in which I could see myself ever talking to her at this point would be if we were to run into each other unexpectedly in public. He did mention at one point that another mutual friend of theirs had offered to try to mediate, but that only exacerbated things (he believes that this mutual friend "two-timed" him, but I'm skeptical), so part of me thinks that if I were to run into to her that she would probably avoid me, thinking he'd probably have convinced me to mediate as well.

Because I like them both, I'd like to see them work it out, but at this point I don't see how that could even be possible. My initial inclination would actually be to mediate (I'm not a big fan of conflict like this), and perhaps the fact that I feel a decent amount of empathy for her in this situation would make me a more ideal mediator, but I think that ship has sailed at this point. I honestly believe that all he can really do is cut his losses at this point. It kind of sucks that his brother and I both probably won't ever be seeing her again as a result of his actions, but since I wasn't that close to her I guess it wasn't really that big of a loss.

At this point I'm more just frustrated with the fact that he seems to be drumming up support from people who've told him that he wasn't at all at fault when, at least from my point of view, he's more at fault than she is. He's always come off as incredibly intelligent and mature before this situation, but if this is what the people around him are going to feed him, I worry that he may find himself in this situation again. We can never learn from our mistakes if we refuse to recognize them as such.

It sounds like he's just making it much worse by trying to get others involved. If she's cut him off then obviously she's not receptive to further discussion on the matter.

Time for this guy to cut his loses.

Somehow misplaced my pencil case (and thus all my school equipment, pens, calculator etc.) as well as my entire Biology folder and textbook. I hope to God I get it back soon because I'm going to need that stuff for revision and the idea of not having it for an exam is driving me up the wall.

Also I just found out that in my younger days I was apparently a figure of some fear and possibly loathing, which I actually hadn't been aware of (although in hindsight my actions would cause that kind of reaction in any rational person). I wonder if I really am any different now than I was then, and I really am beginning to question why I often act in such a bizarre and aggressive manner. It sort of becomes a 'screw the future live for the present' event when I just throw everything at the wall instead of considering the long term effects, but still now that I think about it anyone else would find it all plain disturbing. Hopefully I won't have another meltdown event, but I always say that and there's usually another anyway. Ho hum.

One of the employees at my work just got terminated. I had to escort her out as she was having a tantrum. It's unfortunate too, because I was on good terms with this lady. We used to laugh at how badly the students would dress and how horribly they would park in the lot. We'd even tape up signs all over their car critiquing their parking job.

It sucks when I have to go full security mode on someone I like. She had been working for this company for a long time, and it was only a minor infraction that got her canned. I feel like she was treated unfairly, but I still have to be that guy that tells her to leave or I'm calling the cops.

Fucking lost my house keys, forever. I literally have no idea how I keep losing them every year. Last year the same thing happened. When I get new keys, I need to look up tips on how to ensure my keys are a top priority

r1cepurin wrote:Fucking lost my house keys, forever. I literally have no idea how I keep losing them every year. Last year the same thing happened. When I get new keys, I need to look up tips on how to ensure my keys are a top priority

I need my keys for multiple things, throughout the day, so I've made them top priority, next to my wallet. Maybe put them on a lanyard and wear it around your neck, or on a stretchy-band around your wrist?