My name is Karma. You feeling lucky?

My DIL wanted a lovely monitor stand for her birthday, I don’t normally buy things from ETSY because it can be a mixed bag of wonderful small business entrepreneurs mixed with ruthless con artists (as opposed to Amazon which is mostly overseas con artists so there’s no question what you are getting yourself into) but I took a chance. The description said it was two 3D printed supports with a wood plank/platform for the display. It said they could reduce the shipping costs if we selected to NOT include the wooden shelf. But I was happy to pay the >$10 shipping as it was a lovely piece and my DIL thought it would be perfect for her desk.

However when the gift arrived, only the 3D printed legs came in the box, there was no wooden shelf. We checked the ETSY listing and confirmed that the product indicated that it came with the wood unless otherwise specified. So I shot a message off to the vendor

Note for seller: It was my understand with the $10+ shipping that the wood was included in my order. However what arrived was only the brace/legs and no wood base.

Hi Karma,
The listing only includes the legs. Previous customers have all sourced their wood from local sources.
Seeing how this order was shipped from Canada to the US, $10 shipping is on the low end of shipping costs. Let me know if you have any more questions.

Your description says “Our design consists of a stained oak top surface paired with stylish honeycomb risers, providing excellent support for your display.” Further it said that some customers CHOOSE to omit the wood to reduce shipping costs.

Now things got tricky. I went back to look at the listing page and sure enough it had been CHANGED to read that the wood was NOT INCLUDED. Slick move by the shyster and I had already refreshed my page and while I considered going to the WayBackMachine, I rang my son ASAP shouting DON’T REFRESH THE LISTING!! But my busy multitasking offspring had already closed his tabs and moved on. Saving the day though my DIL still had the original tab open on her browser and she sent me a SCREEN SHOT of the listing before the Etsy-Con-Artist had edited the page.

I attached THAT to my complaint and waited for his next move.

I didn’t have to wait long, I rather doubt he had actually OPENED the attachments I has sent and he tapped danced back with …

That used to be an option, but was difficult to stock, so it was removed. It is impossible to break even at the current listed cost with a wooden top, let alone ship that for $10. That option used to be listed for over $100. If you would like, you can ship it back to receive a refund for the cost of the product.

Nice try, seeing if I would fall for the .. look you got this at a bargain price! I was also ready at the keyboard quickly laying down my terms …

Yes I would like to return this, with the full price and shipping refunded, and since your description is inaccurate you need to pay for return shipping.

And while I was having fun dickering with the hustler, it was time for me to be joining my daughter for dinner prep. It was Halloween after all and the mummy dogs weren’t going to wrap themselves :p

So I left the bargaining table in the more than capable hands of the charming backwoods southern gentleman … who told me the few choice words he had for the grifter who he said was running the shill to pay for his new expensive 3D printer.

I realized that regardless of the outcome, I was going to keep the gift and likely buy a nice piece of wood to finish for the monitor stand. Because money wasn’t the point of the problem and my DIL still liked the design principal. And at this point it really was in the hands of the Universe. The vendor could see my name … did they really feel lucky? How confident are you that Karma isn’t going to win in the end? One way or another, you don’t get away with cheating people. Not in the long game even of the long con.

Within minutes my husband joined us in the kitchen and announced VICTOTRY!

The vendor indicated that they “looked through my Etsy store, and found that you are correct. When the option for the full kit (including wood) was removed, the name for the legs only option must have automatically been removed as well. I am providing a full refund, and you can keep the legs free of charge. I have also indicated this in my listing to avoid future confusion.”

Of course this is just MY shaggy dog story. Right? It could be it was a serious of honest “mistakes” by a person of integrity who just happened to change his listing after my complaint was received. Right? We don’t know. We can’t get into the heads or hearts of other people. The facts don’t look good, the timing is more that SUS, but if we are to be honest we can NEVER KNOW someone else’s story. We can’t be certain of their motives. We assume we know because we see the world through our filtered lens of previous experiences, and our overall judgement of the nature of other people. And while the statistics may be in our favor (and karma on our side) it behooves us to realize in reality we can never KNOW. Best we can do is feel comfortable with our assumptions, fight the good fight and allow for the possibility that we may be wrong. Afterall, the game of life wasn’t about getting to the end, in as much it was about picking a path and seeing how our choices influenced how our journey unfolded.

And that’s the best we can do on any given spin of the wheel.

p.s. Remind me to tell you about my $40 umbrella stand from Amazon that I requested a refund and return earlier this week because it was a worthless piece of shill and the AI BOT instantly agreed with me and said, here’s your money keep it! Don’t bother returning it we know it’s not worth our postage. And pretty much THAT is the difference between dealing with ETSY and Amazon who doesn’t even pretend they are shady.