Not to be out-eDioted by our last contestant, another fool valiantly decided to purchase an item without reading the description. I’ve come to realize that most people don’t seem to read the item description, probably because most sellers seem to either A) Put down nothing at all, B) Put some irrelevant information that boasts about how wonderful they are, or C) Put in some generic product description which may indicate what faults the item COULD have, but they’re not sure, because that would require about three additional seconds of effort.

This doesn’t really seem to matter, though, as long as the item is exactly what the buyer ordered. It could be missing all of the inserts, the case, and have stickers and goop oozing off of it, but as long as the item works, they usually don’t complain, especially if it’s the lowest price.

But if you divert off of the path even a little, you can run into problems. Such is this situation. I happened upon a box of old movie screeners while I was at a garage sale. I got them back and started noticing that a few of the movies were worth something, so I tossed them up at the lowest price, with warnings that they were screeners. I looked at a few of them and they looked just like the retail versions, so I figured it really didn’t matter, as long as the customer got their movie.

So it should come as little surprise that I found out that I got negative feedback from a buyer of one of these movies who complained that there were two movies on the tape (double screener) and there was a sales warning at the bottom. The second point was a legitimate complaint, though barely, since she should have known that a screener could contain such a message, but the first was just stupid, since it clearly stated in the description that not only was this a screener, it also had a second movie on it, and any idiot would… oh, wait! She didn’t read the description! Duh!

I e-mailed K. Cox informing her of the description and expressing my disappointment that she didn’t contact me about the matter in the first place. Not that she would have escaped with a full refund, mind you, but it would have shown some initiative.

Granted I should have looked at the tape to see if such a message would be present, but I don’t think that would have done any good. She didn’t reply to any e-mails and clearly didn’t read the item description, so how could the information reach her? I suppose I could have tried to locate her house and threw a rock with a note attached through her window, but she would probably just complain that I didn’t just ring the doorbell and explain the situation. Feh.

And just so I can vindicate myself in this matter, no one else complained about the screeners.

So here’s a fair warning to all potential buyers: please read the item descriptions. Especially if you buy from me, because I’m thinking of changing my sales policy so I’m allowed, if provoked, to come to any moronic buyer’s house and bludgeon them to death with they’re own purchase.