As the seller clearly explains "I DO NOT KNOW crap about these things" and amusingly challenges his buyers not to bid, if they are worried about authenticity.

Apparently the winner of this auction was 'Taisha', the same seller who wrote the threatening email on the listing. She used another ID to bid on his auction, even though he blocked her from bidding. She then claimed that 5 out of the 26 beanies were fakes and he was a criminal!

As one of my students said:

“I love how the buyer justifies having the second ID to circumvent his block as JUST a violation of Ebay's rules, but he violated a REAL law. Somehow, in the buyer's mind, that makes what they did OK. I guess ethics and morals come in different degrees.”

There seems to be an epidemic in our culture of people who don't take responsibility for their own actions! In fact, TV shows like that of Jerry Springer have elevated it to an art form. A personal example involves a free ebook that subscribers receive when they sign up for my ezine. Apparently, the link was broken last week and I got two emails about it in one morning. One mentioned the link and asked for a remedy. We fixed the link immediately and sent the polite reader his ebook. The other email was this one:

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Subject line: SPAM Complaint

I WAS PROMISED "HOW TO SUCK UP CUSTOMERS FASTER THAN A VACUUM CLEANER ON STEROIDS" FOR SIGNING UP FOR 'AUCTION GOLD' BUT WAS TAKEN TO A PAGE TELLING ME THE ITEM NO LONGER EXISTS...

DON'T YOU THINK EVERYONE SHOULD NO ABOUT THIS ON DISCUSSIONS BOARDS EVERYWHERE? I DO!

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My response was very courteous and professional – and very firm. I explained that this problem was a broken link and that the book did indeed exist. I also expressed my curiosity over how this was a SPAM complaint when HE contacted us and not the other way around.

I expressed my dismay over the aggressive and hostile stance he had taken, without even bothering to ask us about the book. And further, I politely told him that we would not be a good match, and I would make certain he would not be bothered by emails from us in the future.

In other words, I do not want him as an ezine subscriber or customer.

I received a reply from him which said he reacted that way because he had been ripped off in the past. Further, he “demanded” a copy of my book.

There it is - The Whine. He's been ripped off in the past, and that's a justification for rudeness and hostility. Have you ever been ripped off? If you haven't, it's because you haven't bought much of anything. I have wasted thousands of dollars on material that has gained me nothing. But you know what? I don't regret it. It's a necessary part of the apprenticeship fee that I paid to learn the net marketing business. I still buy things often – ebooks, software, services. But I rarely am disappointed anymore. Why? Because I've learned the business well enough to recognize value when I see it and I gained that knowledge by stumbling around, making mistakes. Some wasted money is a small price to pay.

As a little girl, once I got past the fairy princess and movie star stages, all I ever wanted to be was a teacher. To realize that dream cost me four years of hard work in college and many thousand of my parents' dollars. Further, once I had a teaching position I went on to get advanced degrees. That cost me many summers, most weekends, thousands more dollars and long days of going to class after working all day. No complaints – it's just part of the price I paid to do what I wanted.

So, why do people assume that having a net business should require no sacrifice or preparation? Once I was coaching a new auction student, explaining how she could get started. I asked her if she had any questions and there was a long, long silence. Finally, in a whiney voice she said, “That sounds like a lot of work”. Well, guess what. It is! And here's the analogy I used for her ... If I created a $10,000/month auction business and just handed it over to her .. free gratis ... what would happen? I can tell you that in a very short time it would all fall apart, because she didn't have the skills she needed to keep it going! It's like starting the first grade and being assigned to an algebra class. Skills build on each other and there's no way around the learning curve.

Back to our hostile email: an obvious question is - how can you get “ripped off” when something is free???

As for his demands for my book – what do you think? It's MY site, MY ezine, MY book. Do I “owe” him anything?

This isn't just a philosophical exercise. You, too, will face similar situations in your business life.

This is all a matter of perspective and I have a recent and concrete example.

The past couple of ezine issues have bounced back from one particular address. The response says that the man (let's call him Robert, which isn't his real name) no longer accepts email at all due to spam. The problem is that his old address isn't on the email, so I can't unsubscribe him. However, there is an website address on his email, so I went to his site, hoping to contact him that way. He does have a contact form but it requires such an incredible amount of personal information that I refused to spend the time.

And his site is the poster child for awful! I wish I could give you the URL so you could see what NOT to do. It's garish, amateur, ugly and focused totally on him, with a giant picture of the author dominating the page.

There are a handful of people on the net who have my total respect as net marketers. One of these is Jonathan, who sells high quality products and makes tons of money. I was listening to a recording of his the other night and he mentioned how valuable spam is! According to Jonathan, it is great market research in terms of demand, advertising and more. He says that anyone who just deletes it is missing a marketing education.

Wow, what a difference in attitude! Robert retreats behind the walls of his website fortress, refusing access to the outside world and making it really tough for potential customers. Jonathan, on the other hand, finds gold in the exact same situation.

“Who is right”? That is an unanswerable question.

But, “Who is effective”? ... ah, now that is a question worth asking. Jonathan is a dazzling success when measured in any possible way. And Robert? Of course I can't say for certain without seeing his bank account ... but I can almost certainly guarantee his lack of success.

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More lessons from the Beanie auction:

1. If any auction ever proved the power of being colorful and real, this beanie auction does. People are tired of soulless, corporate writing and welcome personality, drama and flair. This seller really struck a chord with thousands of people.

2. In a later auction, he mentions that he had 350,000 page views of this auction. If that is so, what a WASTE!!! Reading over his feedback, you can see that he created many loyal followers and could have turned the publicity into long term, enduring customers who would have spent lots of money with him. Of course, maybe he didn't want to do that, which is perfectly fine. But, perhaps he just didn't know how?

Here is a comment that proves the power of what he did: “I just read his feedback and it's awesome! The guy is a genius and I'd be thrilled to make his acquaintance. I think I'll go bid on one of his auctions just to add a comment. LOL. When I saw his auction for the certificate, I slapped my forehead again, Why didn't I think of that!?"

{Addendum: the negative comment by the winner of the auction has disappeared in the last few days. Too bad – it was such fun to read. All his other feedback remains, however, and you can see that he was a hero to all of those who posted. The nastygram was NOT appreciated by his new friends and followers.}