EBay shut down my jacket auction.
So I posted a jacket for auction on eBay. In the description of the jacket, I wrote a little explanatory essay about why the jacket was for sale. Within 24 hours of my posting it, eBay cancelled my auction, citing that I “violated eBay’s User Agreement by adding information not associated with the auction.”
Right. Because no one ever posts stories not associated with the auctions, right? No one ever posts stupid ghost stories or sob stories about being jilted or passages from Moby Dick in an effort to draw attention to their auctions, right, eBay?
I’m thinking someone must have complained. Either that, or someone at eBay spot-checked my auction and simply didn’t like what they read.
Here’s what the description said:
Don’t get married until you’ve thought long and hard about your credit and the what could happen if your spouse turns out to be a jerk with bad credit.
When your significant other proposes, look into his face and ask yourself, “Is this a face worth destroying my credit for?” If it’s not, don’t get married.
You might think you love someone enough to let him pay off his truck with your student loans. Sure – why wouldn’t you do that for the person you love? Let him use your lower interest rate! He won’t let you default – he loves you! But will you love that person enough to take part in his Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which obliterates all his debt but leaves your student loans there for you to pay long, long after your marriage is over?
You might think that you love someone enough to buy him $800 worth of clothing from Eddie Bauer on your Eddie Bauer/Spiegel/Newport News credit card. Of course you do! You buy things for the one you love. But will you love that person enough to pay off that $800 plus interest and fees, two years after your divorce, in an amount totaling $1500?
You might think that you love someone enough to live with him in a mobile home because the two of you couldn’t qualify for a house. Of course you do, because you promised to love that person for richer or poorer. But will you love that person enough to take half the fall when he allows the mortgage company to foreclose on that mobile home, after you left him for treating you like crap, because he knew he could just go ahead and live in his brother’s mobile home for free for the rest of his life?
You might think that you love someone enough to mix your DNA with his and bring into this world a child. Or two. Or even three. But will you love that person enough to want to parent those children without child support payments, while that person makes home improvements and takes sculpting classes and buys your kids Lord of the Rings replica swords for Christmas, and, meanwhile, the Attorney General takes its sweet bureaucratic time about enforcing the freaking law and making this person pay the child support he owes?
If you marry a person, your credit becomes tied to his. If you divorce that person, his bad credit never stops messing up your life. It doesn’t matter what you do.
You could go from being a housewife, to being a receptionist for a non-profit, to being an assistant in corporate America, to being a licensed insurance broker making three times what you made when you started out in the workforce three years before. And it won’t matter. People might admire your work ethic, but that won’t restore your good credit.
You could raise the three smartest, best-behaved, most awesome children in the world. And people will be glad when you take those children to Applebee’s and they don’t act like screaming brats. But, even so, that has no bearing on your credit.
You could even write a book, over the course of a year, late at night, after work, when your children are asleep. That book could be so good, that a publisher would give you a book deal for it. That book could be selling copies all over the world. And, you know what? That wouldn’t be enough. You would still, no matter what, after all this time and all your hard work, have bad credit.
I’m selling off a bunch of my stuff so I can pay my bills until the royalties start coming in, or until my ex-husband starts paying his child support again – whichever happens first. Whether or not you bid on this item, the advice on this page is yours, free of charge.
Don’t get married. Buy this jacket, instead.
So I reposted the jacket, without the story. Thanks a lot, eBay. It’s a pleasure doing business with you.
If they shut down any of my other auctions, I’m moving them all to Yahoo.
