the great "e-bay negative rating" off

before i go on about my lovely weekend, i've been attacked by someone in the internet world even though i believe it is justified. this, my friends, has happened on that lovely place called ebay.com. normally i love ebay. i worship ebay. it is one of my most favoritest places to shop online, especially to satisfy my yarn cravings. now this one woman has singlehandedly made my visits to ebay miserable.

for all those that don't know (HA!), i'm a knitter. so when i go to ebay i go to buy bags of quality yarn.... about 3 weeks ago, i purchased yarn for this pattern. i won the auction while i was away for my birthday, the weekend of july 24th. FANTASTIC! i come back, pay for my auction. this was on july 30th.

time passes, no yarn. i send an e-mail via e-bay. no response. i send an e-mail via hotmail. no response. i send another e-mail via hotmail. no response. this is now the 12th of august and no response from all of my e-mails. 15 days from when payment was sent. 20 days from end of auction. so, i figure, it's time to file a complaint with paypal. because my money's gone, right? what am i supposed to do?

on august 13th, i finally receive my yarn. the date on the package is august 10th. i leave feedback for my seller:

Item shipped 15 days after auction. ZERO response from seller. NOT RECOMMENDED

today i receive an e-mail from the seller:

The reason for the delay in shipping your item was that my 9 yr. old son was bitten by a spider at his school that resulted in an infection that hospitalized him. We have been home 2 days and he is still having swollen lymph nodes, vomiting and fever. The hospital needed room due to the hurricane that hit us in central Florida. I would trade you delayed yarn for my problem any day.

see, now that i know what the hell is going on, i feel bad for leaving negative feedback. so i hold off on responding to her. until i see this in MY feedback:

Tried to communicate with buyer... very rude.

WHAT? excuse me? i went 2 weeks without my auction winnings with no communication and i'm the one that's rude? *sigh* so i send this:

My apologies for your son being in the hospital. I believe, however, after 15 days of no communication and no delivery of goods that it is justified for my reaction. One week, understandable. Two weeks? I had considered my money gone, with no item delivery and no action taken from you, the seller. I believe I had gone through the proper means of trying to either 1) track down my items or 2) reclaim my money as recommended by the paypal site. How am I supposed to react justly when there is no communication? I do not find that "rude", I find that as defending myself from possible fraud. Again, my apologies. I hope your son feels better.

and then leave this under the bad feedback she gave me:

Reply by me: 1st e-mail from seller received today. E-mailed seller 3x, all with no response.

i'm sorry if i'm heartless, but until this morning at 9:00AM i thought my money was in the pocket of some evil phoney. it's not being RUDE, it's called BUSINESS. *sigh* i can't wait to see what she comes up with next.