eBay mis-spelling bargains

Edinburghlass_2

So the moral of the story is investigate more of main site of MSE and Martin's articles where he tells you all about the links that are interspersed about the Chat Forums.

Any of the affliate links in Martin's articles are marked with * and this means by using these links MSE will gain a small contribution with enables Martin to keep the website ad-free, run the chat forums and donate to charity.

:money:

edit to add I posted this in response to a post that has since been deleted.

lyniced

I typed in 'handbag' - its amazing how many people have spelt it wrong - hangbag , hanbag, hagbag to name but a few - some great bargains to be had.

Tojo_Ralph

Am I the only one here who has used fatfingers search and ended up feeling sad? ..... ..... Sellers with the odd typo aside, I just found so many others sellers that appear to be nice, decent, honest buyers, however when it comes to selling, their listings, headers and body text are riddled with typos one associates with Dyslexia.

Far from taking advantage of the poor sods, I ended up emailing sellers and pointing out exactly why their items have received no bids..... yet.

djohn2002uk

Good on you Tojo Ralph. :T This thread does not appear to me to be in the spirit of MSE, where Martin advocates making buisnesses your enemy. It seems to me more like saving money at the expense of some other, maybe disadvantaged, individual.

Enterian

I just searched on Hornby. Unfortunately it turned up lots of things matching Horny!

They weren't model railway related either!

Enterian

yaacov81

tonyg wrote:

Or maybe someone has opened a new account and is purposely bidding high - has no intention of paying, but just landing the seller (scammer?) with high final value fees!

they wont loose out because they can file a nonpaying bidder claim
but to be honest wouldnt feel sorry for this guy if he had to pay the fess. this is not a nice way to do business.

lyniced

Tojo - you're right. Both my sons suffer with dyslexia and I had almost forgotten how hard it is to even write the simplest thing. However I blame teachers these days, who say spelling doesn't matter anymore (thats what my sons teachers have said) its content. Well spelling does matter - if you can't spell how are you going to fill in forms correctly, write cheques and write down phone messages. Sorry......I'll get off my soap-box now. But I'm going to email these people and point out (in a nice way) their mistakes.

the_big_lebowski

i kind of appreciate what people like lyniced are saying here.

I don't quite agree however.

For a start lyniced i don't see how you're going to go off and let these people know that they have made a typo. There must be thousands of listings with incorrect spellings. Scratch that, there must be thousands of listings with incorrect spellings every day.

Secondly to insinuate that every person who makes a typo is dyslexic doesn't sound plausible. I'm not dyslexic and it happens me all the time. I think it's far more likely that it's just careless (in which case i have no problem at all).

Thirdly, i don't particularly feel bad in "profiting" off this, as even if it is dyslexic people making these mistakes then surely they should know better. If i were dyslexic i think i'd make sure to use a spell checker, if only for the subject line of an ebay listing. To do otherwise is foolish in the extreme, and i have very little sympathy for them (sorry if this sounds harsh, but really, lets say i'm epileptic yet i decide to go to a night club with strobe lighting, am i not asking for trouble? Should i blame the nightclub for accepting my entrance fee? I don't think so.).

Finally, this fatfingers website can only increase the amount of traffic these listings get (and in fact if everyone used this instead of the standard ebay approach, then spelling would make no difference). So what's the problem?

lyniced

I am certainly not insinuating that all people that make spelling errors are dyslexic. However, you can see (quite easily) where some people have problems with spelling. These people really need help. My brother (who is also dyslexic - must a family thing) has struggled all his life (he's 40 now) with reading and writing- he hates sending cards, writing cheques etc etc. Just lets be a bit easier on those who suffer with dyslexia - they are not stupid!!

the_big_lebowski

Again, i see what you're saying lyniced.

I know a lot of people who are dyslexic and need no convincing that they aren't stupid. But that kind of misses the point of what we're talking about. No one is saying that dyslexic people are stupid.

What i will say is that if you are selling something on ebay and you misspell the subject line then you are stupid, or at least it's a stupid thing to do(dyslexic or not), as it only takes a few seconds to do a spell check.