Old Girl Learning a New Trick

For Father’s Day of 2008 Ellen got her dad a gift certificate for eBay through PayPal. After several months, I noticed Steve hadn’t used it yet, so I asked him about it. He’s not keen on shopping and didn’t want to take the time to figure out how to use the certificate. He told me to spend it as I liked.

I picked out a few books on line, but the seller didn’t accept PayPal. A few months later I tried again, being careful to go to eBay so I could use the credit. But then I was foiled by the whole bidding thing. I have never played with that and am not inclined to deal with it. Even when I asked the experienced and capable Audrey, somehow I still didn’t get the coupon spent.

Next, some months later again, our credit card number got stolen (another story), so when I decided to attack the certificate spending today, the first thing I had to do was figure out how to update the credit card info to the new number for both eBay and PayPal. Turns out, that’s not done. The old card has to be removed and a new one entered again. Ok. Then, on to eBay. I found, as AJ had showed me, that some purchases have a “buy it now” option, so those are the ones I looked for.
Finding what I wanted, a new hardback copy of Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire, I held my breath and put the coupon number in the PayPal spot in the eBay shopping cart. Amazingly, this time it worked! Only fifteen months late! Yea!

But there was some money left. I also really wanted Physics for Future Presidents (check this guy’s website--http://muller.lbl.gov/ ), but the lowest price on eBay was $27. Half.com had it for $17. Half.com apparently does not accept PayPal. I bought the book anyway—on Half—for Steve from Ellen. He’ll love it!

But I still had the left over credit. I wanted to use it today while I’m remembering the process, so then my job became findng something on eBay with a buy it now option which accepts PayPal and totals $9 cost including shipping. Some frustration followed as I looked at various knick-knacks, but finally I went back to books and snagged another one with a total price + shipping of $8.45. Whew! I think I can let that last fifty-five cents go. :-] Thank you, Ellen!