Dear eBay, how I loathe you,

*beware: a long rant to ensue*

I have a love/hate relationship with eBay. Sometimes you will look something up and find it being sold for 1p with no one bidding, and voila 5 days later its yours and it is everything you wanted it to be. Then there are other times, when you find something, that you kind of hoped would be there, but never actually expected it would be, like this A.P.C. dress:

I've had a thing for this A.P.C. dress since I saw it on Kirsten Dunst last summer. I lusted for it, but it was already sold out and I figured it was just one of those things that I would want but never have. I don't know what it is, to be honest, it is not particularly special...but want it I did. So periodically, I search for A.P.C. on eBay -- and last week, there it was, that A.P.C. dress going for a very reasonable price. So I watched it...the evil eBay watch that allows you to visit an item everyday and build up hope that one day, soon, it shall be yours. Only 1 bid -- for a week. "Others have to be watching it," I told myself, "No way it will be that easy." On the day of bidding, yesterday, I had the page open all day so that I wouldn't forget to bid. I like to bid 45 seconds before its over, swoop in and ensure my victory, and that was my plan for 1:20 am yesterday.

But then, at 10:30 pm, I refreshed the page to, ya know, check on the bidding when, all of a sudden, the price had jumped from reasonable to $162.50! In one second, I had lost it. Before I had even begun! $160 was definitely past my budget for a last season dress that essentially is a chambray sack with a little sailor detailing. I went to bed heartbroken, all my daydreams of the past week-- wearing it on a sunny summer day -- were dashed.

I awoke this morning and went to the page that I had despondently left open last night. I refreshed it one last time to see the final bid. It went for $372.76. 372.76 EFFING DOLLARS!!!

And this is why I hate eBay. It makes people crazy. The dress originally was 110 euros which is something like $140. Now, a year later, some crazy (or determined) person paid almost 3 times the price. There is a weird adrenaline rush that happens when you bid, and though you told yourself, no I will only bid $100, somehow, it's a competition and you can't let anyone else win and so you bid ridiculously high, hoping no one will suspect you are bluffing. But they do, and you pay $400 for a chambray sack that your mother could've made.

In fact, an epiphany! I bet my mother can make it (I've put her sewing skills to the test with A.P.C.-copying before). So I come out of this awful eBay experience with a defeated ego, dashed hope, no dress BUT the vindicated knowledge that I did not overpay for something just because eBay told me to. Plus my mom will make it better anyway. hmph!

Phew. The End.