I know, people are assholes on the internet. Back in the days of Orkut I used to encourage engagement with such folk, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve mellowed down. Happy, medicated, more mature, I rarely interact with the flame war ilk.

But I do still have a temper.

So I bought this thing on etsy, a sticker for B!’s laptop, and I gave it a “neutral” review. The seller reacted by giving me, the buyer, a “negative” review. I thought this was a dick move, and I told him so in a message.

I gave a neutral rating because it’s much larger in real life than it is on your store site, and I felt the image was disingenuous. You can leave my negative review up, but that’s a pretty lame way to retaliate.

He comes back and says that I should have let him know what size I wanted, and that he gave me the “standard” size. After some more back and forth, he provides this as an argument:

Next time you go to Wal-mart, Kohls, Target, etc and you buy a shirt or something similar that is sized related…let’s see if they ask you on the way out if you got the right one to fit you. If you get it home and it doesn’t work, is it the stores fault because they didn’t ask you if it was the correct size? or let’s go to best buy and purchase a macbook bag or case. Say you have a 13 inch but buy a 15 inch and didn’t notice it until later. I guess it is the stores fault for not making sure you made the correct size choice while in the store? Seriously..

to which I reply,

This might be a hard concept for you to grasp: your store is virtual. Customers can’t pick up your item, touch it, look at it, as they might in a Wal-Mart, Kohl’s, Target, etc. And also, these retailers have a RETURN POLICY, in case someone makes a mistake. You might take a tip from their service managers as well, because I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t talk back to their customers like this.

After a few more exchanges he offers to let bygones be bygones if I just admit I was wrong, which, of course, I’m not about to. I tell him so, and bid him good day. As a final kiss-off, he adds three more negative feedback entries for products I had bought and rated as “positive”. So now, to the outside world, I look like the asshole.

This may be all, oh, ok, whatever, who cares if I have negative reviews on etsy.com, but seriously? I GAVE THIS GUY MONEY. AND HE TOTALLY SCREWED ME OVER. It’s the online purchasing equivalent of Dick’s Last Resort, if Dick’s Last Resort was funded by Haliburton and they served your meal with a side of red-hot nail files. Comments, anyone?