Well, it’s officially Black Friday. That means that you, yes you, dear reader, fell under one of three simple categories:
(1) You awoke bright and early to grab the latest and greatest deals at the retailer of your choice.
(2) You wanted to go shopping for any particular reason, but ended up stuck with the rest of the crowd from option 1.
(3) You stood strong and didn’t venture out into that cold, cold world, therefore inadvertantly taking part of “Buy Nothing Day.”

As for me, I fell under hidden option number 4: Worked while everyone else shopped. Horray.

Speaking of shopping and the like, does anyone else think it’s a little odd what eBay’s been doing this year? They’ve been going way overboard in the advertising arena. Last night I saw a commercial on TV for eBay. What does eBay themselves sell? Nothing. They’re simple a medium for people to buy and sell stuff to each other. This commerical for eBay was just some guy trying to put together lego-like pieces that turned into the letter “I”. How this ties in with eBay, I don’t know.
I’m sure we’ve all gotten the standard spam from eBay proclaiming how I can get “Great Gifts starting from $1!” They seem to be a big fan of the whole “from $x” thing. Do we know what “great gifts” we can get from $1? Does eBay themselves even know what “great gifts” they can get from $1? No, I didn’t think so either.
Finally, the most worthless and futile move by eBay yet is their catalogs. Yes, a 60 page catalog showing random goodies from sheets of stickers to fancy laptops to ovens and dishwashers. Note that the picture of the laptop you see is not the laptop you’ll get. It simply says “Laptops from $600!” No details, no specs, just an in-the-ballpark lowest price that you could possibly find on eBay (at time of publication, of course).

Spare us from your not-so-whitty advertisements dear eBay. Instead of 30-second commercials of people trying to assemble letters out of giant lego blocks, why not have a 10-second advertisement simply stating that there’s this great thing at eBay called “Search” and that you recommend that we use it.
Instead of 60 page catalogs of prices that are probably no longer accurate, give us a single sheet of paper stating that we can search for whatever we want.
As a matter of fact, let’s push that even further and not even bother using paper. Heck, just shoot us an email and save yourselves some change. We’ll get the picture. It’s just eBay, we’re not idiots.

~Jaker

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