Buying and Selling Online

The mere mention of buying and selling items online brings one to think about Ebay. The funny thing though is that Ebay is not the only player in the web right now. There's actually a lot of other websites that allows anyone to sell anything. Among which are Bidville.com, Craigslist.com and some small personal websites not to mention the other product specific buy and sell websites like egghead.com and amazon.com. But Ebay does take a whole lot of the pie considering that it has expanded its services to a lot of other countries, some of which have been successful while others have but a mediocre following.

There's a bunch of nice deals you can see when you visit sites like this and oftentimes, its not just about the price but also the sentiment. Nothing beats the feeling of finding something you have been looking for in a long time. Ebay had done a great job in conveying this message in most of their advertisements. As they say, another man's trash maybe somebody else's treasure.

One has to be careful though and has to exercise good judgment when visiting these sites. Just because an item is in there does not necessarily mean that it's being sold at a good price. Some sellers actually lowball their prices but will hit you in the shipping charges. So one has to be careful when extending an offer to buy. Make sure you ask the seller about the small things like quality, shipping charges and other knick knacks if this information is not clearly defined in the item listing.

If you are selling, make sure you also have the basic information included in your listing. The object of the game is selling and making a profit. You don't want to misled your customers. You want to provide some satisfaction that they are getting a good deal from you which in turn will make them regular patrons who will come back and do more business with you.

So start cleaning out your garage, your attic and your cabinets. Maybe you have what I'm looking for.

Hewlett-Packard Suck!

I have always avoided HP products until about 5 years ago when I have to get an All-In-One Printer. Against my better judgment, I purchased an OfficeJet G85 printer and have used the product without any issues until a couple of weeks ago where the scanner component started malfunctioning. Turns out that the only 'fix' HP has was to re-install the drivers. Using the HP supplied uninstaller, I was able to uninstall successfully without any hitches but re-installing was another story.

When I tried re-installing the software/driver, the process always end up with a message saying that the software/driver has already been installed yet the whole OfficeJet G85 does not work in any capacity at all. So back to the HP Support website I went and it told me that I need to get the latest driver for the Product from their website. And based on the document they have, I also needed to uninstall any previous software/driver I had in my PC. HP also provided a force uninstaller on their website so I used this to clean up any traces of HP related application/drivers in my PC.

Imagine my shock when the uninstaller not only clean up all HP related applications/software but also half of my hard drive totally unrelated to he problem. Luckily I have all my data in another drive and all my other softwares' installation CDs saved safely away. I can use that to rebuild my PC if ever. So I continued to install the HP application/driver and guess what? The damn printer still wont work.

I decided to give HP support a call to see what's going on and after being passed around among their 'elite' technicians, I was told that basically they cannot provide me a free phone support due to my product being obsolete. Support could still be given though provided that I pay them $30/hour to answer my questions but they won't guarantee that it will fix whatever was going on with my printer.

Now this gets me riled up considering that it was the application from their website that deleted half the contents of my hard drive and it was their instructions that I followed. I would have been willing to pay the support cost if they can guarantee me their product will work which they can't. To top it all, the support person has the audacity to instruct me to trade in the OfficeJet G85 which I paid $245 five years ago for $5 applicable to any new HP printer they have.

What makes them think I'm getting another HP product?

Blog Content and Topics

I've been reading a lot about how blogs should be written and made myself feel bad knowing that my blogs just talk about everything under the sun. Most documents I've read suggested that for a blog to be successful, it has to have a pattern, or basically a singular topic to evolved on. Like say for example if your blog talks about technology. Once you started on that kind of topic, your blog is supposed to be focused only on that.

I don't buy it though. I guess it does make sense though since having a singular topic will garner you to have a following. People will keep coming back for content from your site just because it helped them in one way or the other. But to look at the bigger picture on focusing on a singular topic or content, you are attracting a singular audience. Eventually your blog will become stale and you will have to keep refreshing with new materials.

If you have started talking about the sun, how long can you keep such a blog content fresh? Eventually, you will have to look for something else to talk about. And I guess i'm just trying to persuade myself that I'm going the right path by keeping my blog content diversified.

Now if only I can get readers to come in.

Woot!

So I was surfing the web one night trying to find some good deals on a certain electronic product and I chance upon this website that offers one single item each day for a really great price. And I mean really great price. The item they were currently displaying at that time was for a home entertainment system which was way below its current market price. And no, it wasn't refurbished either.

Granted that the products for sale will be on the site for only 24 hours starting at 12:00 midnight and ending at 11:59 pm, that particular item was already sold out. So I came back the next day to see what else is there. And the site just continues to amaze me. Everyday, I'm in there hoping to catch some gold.

I have yet to make my first purchase at this site. Looking at the feedback, everyone seems to be satisfied with their purchases. I think I'm joining the bandwagon sometime soon. As like other bargain sites in the web, one may find the same items somewhere else. So be wary.

Nothing beats budget disasters like impulse buying.

Scammers

I got an email today from the widow of the deposed ex-president of Nigeria. She mentioned in her email that her husband had some money in the billions left in a bank based in Nigeria and they can't get it out without the help of someone from another country.

That's where I come in. I'm suppose to contact her secretary who would be sending me a check for $10,000 US dollars - $8,000 of which will be for me for all the troubles I have to go through and the $2,000 is supposed to be deposited to the said bank. That would allow me to make transactions for them in that bank and thus transfer those billions somewhere else. The only catch though is that while waiting for the $10,000 check to come to me, I'm suppose to deposit the $2,000 in advance since there is some waiting time attached to this whole process.

Sounds really tempting, doesn't it? Well.. it's just wrong in so many areas. First, if you're a deposed ex-president from a starving nation, you probably dont have that much money and two, you don't deserve it. Third, I'm poor so I can't really afford to give $2,000 out of my pocket so that's not even an option.

But just to give them the benefit of the doubt, I sent the so called widow an email asking her to contact my secretary and do business with her. Maybe she'd get lucky finding her.

Considering I don't have one.