I could deal with ebay, and probably still can, since they are a large marketplace. BUT I am none too happy with our experience all the same.

2 non-payers in 2 weeks (maybe selling 5 things a week, in a recent pace = mostly video games and accessories).

The first was kind of a long story, but the second person just fell off the face of the earth. What is our recourse? Sit and wait. We can close it amicably and go resell since he hasn't gotten back. But SCREW that. This person needs a mark against their account. To do so means give it time. In the end he can pay and I don't know if it will even matter. I don't understand what recourse sellers really have. I guess we need to educate ourselves more since this is becoming all too common. (20% of sales, for this month?).

Anyway, today someone retracted a bid. It wasn't a huge deal. The whole thing was rather fishy to me though since we had never seen the bid show up in the first place. Maybe it was immediately retracted. Said it was placed the 29th and removed the 31st, according to a notice.

Anyway, doesn't seem to have affected anything, since we never saw this high bid (they did not show up as highest bidder last we looked). BUT the person had to nerve to say they retracted our bid because we changed our listing.

It just peeved us. & there just doesn't seem to be a lot of recourse - though we did file a complaint. Wish the idiot just said he typed it in wrong. He clearly just wanted to retract his bid. We don't make it a habit to change our listings, and overall thought that was pretty impossible anyway, once you had bids.

So mostly, had to gripe.

Still good money and dh has time to deal with all the annoyances. Like I said, I mostly think we need to educate ourselves more. But I am really *getting* all the ebay complaints now. We aren't exactly high volume sellers. I think I Would go crazy if we were...

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Well, I am making the first step into the waters of credit card deep freeze.

I am still not sure about dh's credit.

Mine NEEDS to be frozen. I am peeved at what little regard creditors have for fraud alerts on credit reports. Mine have been respected (as far as I know) but I have heard a few too many stories. & from my ID theft experience, it is clear that the creditors could care less.

I mean, I Seriously got an advertisement in the mail from Zales about how I am one of their best customers. Bite me! I was never your friggin customer. Since the thieves opened 7 different retail cards I get all sorts of crap like this. Just an example of how much I hate all those creditors' guts. They think now is a good time to reel in the real me - look at my credit score - they WANT me! IT's plain as day what little regard they have for ID theft victims. I am now just a business opportunity.

I have the recourse to freeze my credit free of charge, so this is the route I have finally chosen to do.

I was kind of waiting for my free credit monitoring to kick in (lawsuit settlement against one of the bureaus?) but it is taking so freaking long and the credit monitoring I have paid to deal with this the last year just went up from $12.95 to $14.95/month.

It was pretty impossible to combat the ID thieves without monitoring. A free report every year does NOT cut it. Each bureau reports different items.

But I think now that things have settled down, I have enjoyed the security.

So this did it. I saw the increased charge over the weekend and I called to cancel. Boy were they annoying. Their last ditch plea was to charge me 1/2 price for 3 months. Whatevah.

But I already paid for September so it gives me a month to just freeze my credit. I will give it a whirl.

I am kind of tempted to leave dh's credit opened so at least one of us has some open credit. But I am also extra petrified of his identity getting stolen, and worse, someone getting a mortgage in our name or something (since we do have equity - it is the up and coming crime against those with equity and high credit scores - 2 strikes against us). I can't think, "IT will never happen to us." Instead I probably think too much, "It will happen to us." Since it already has.

So it will cost $30 to freeze his credit, and a fee to unfreeze it for anything. But for the long run, it's cheaper and more proactive anyway. Technically no one can issue credit whereas with the monitoring you are just informed after someone stole and used your data.

From a credit standpoint it is no biggie. No plans to borrow money. If so it would be something we would have plenty of time to unfreeze. I am more worried from an insurance and job search standpoint. Everything from this point will be a PITA. Dh had his credit checked for our satellite switch and mine was just checked over the weekend with our new phone setup. So you realize how often this stuff comes up, regardless if you use debt.

But will be worth it for peace of mind. I think. We'll give it a whirl.

Anyway, between that and our new cell phone arrangement, will save $45/month. That is good...

Anyway, not much else going on. Just crappy stuff like this...