| Awkward Turtle Moments... |
| Written by Vaughan Smith |
| Tuesday, 09 March 2010 17:15 |
 I was recently engaging in a beverage with some chums when one piped up with a story regarding a workmate selling their old cellular telephone on Trademe. The seller, let’s call her Selina Seller, was hoping for maybe $20 from a person that wanted the cellphone for some sort of cellphone based experimentation and was pleasantly surprised when the cellphone started to gather a bit of pace in the online auction house. Selina Seller must have at this stage thought - “Have I a rare model of 2006 phone? I can’t have... Let the auction proceed!” When the Auction drew to a close there was much triumph from Selina Seller who proclaimed - “$100 dollars, what a financial scoop for Selina Seller!” (Third person referencing bothers me, but I’ll excuse it when you get 5 times your expected selling price for an item such as an old cellular telephone.) It was soon after, that Selina Seller received a message from “Purchasing_Angel_69” or some such similar Trademe account name saying: “There has been a terrible mistake, our daughter got onto the computer and opened Trademe, where your phone was on the front page of Trademe and was very excited about the colour of the phone in the photo and outbid herself 15 times to the accumulated total of $100.” Selina Seller took only a second to fire back the response - “Well that’s tough for you, if you want very bad feedback on your otherwise sparkly star-based Trade Me reputation, you’ll couch up the coin and get the phone.” It was the next day that a reply to that came and it read - “We suppose you are right and it was through our neglect that this has happened, will a pick-up suit as an extended lesson to our daughter that she has done a bad thing...” I would like to press pause on the story here momentarily and say at this stage of the game that I would have said - “Tell ya want, flick me $30, I’ll courier you the phone and we’ll call it square.” Alas friends, I am not Selina Seller. It seems Selina Seller had a penchant for lessons to be learnt and invited the purchasers over with their click-happy child to pick up the phone and exchange the cash. When there was a knock on the door, a triumphant Selina answered to two adults standing there who could be no other than the reluctant Trademe auction winners. Behind the adults was their daughter, who the Mother said to come out from behind them; a child with Down syndrome emerged from behind the mother. I’d like to pause again now for a second and say that when this little detail came to light when I was being told this story I actually dribbled beer from my mouth and made this noise - “ggggwaaaaaah”. I thought surely even the steadfast disciplinarian that was Selina Seller, would have at this stage said - “Oh heavens, there has been a misunderstanding, I apologise, here’s the phone, don’t worry about the money.” Instead the following transpired... Selina sees the child and has an minor attack of the awkward turtle and says - “Can I offer you some sort of discount? Say 15%?” Again... Pause... WHAT? 15%? Is that the going discount on purchases for mistakes made by a child with Down syndrome? 15%? 15%! That still makes the phone an $85, 4-year-old phone. Un-pause... The parents say - “Well we all have to learn our lesson.” Selina retorts - “I suppose we do, shall we call it a 10% discount?” WHAT JUST HAPPENED?! You just cut back on the discount? I think the lesson they wanted to learn was more around the 50%-100% discount range. “Okay, I suppose so,” say the parents and hand over 5 $20 notes, that’s $100. Wait for it... Selina says, “I don’t have change...” “Oh” say the parents, expecting her to knock the price down to $80, I would imagine. “Guess we’re calling it $100 then, enjoy the phone”. Wave, Smile, Door Shut. AWWWWWWKWARD TURTLE!
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