Most people are good. Yet also dysfunctional.
Sometimes there are bad dysfunctional folks too. But that's a minority.
Primarily because of money, and the need to acquire it, usually through honorable means, like professional and or responsible employment, there are also many ways of acquiring money through dishonorable means. The current human operating system is not all sunshine and rainbows but instead corruption on a grand scale, because we have systems in place that can work very well for un-honorable operators, while those who do the right thing may not always come out on top.
We recently had an interaction with two entities, one being an individual, a little head and the other a large company, a big head, both of which, because of the same catalyst, showed us two degrees of somewhat dishonorable behavior. Which we were able to circumvent without being dishonorable ourselves.
As both a documentary photographer and filmmaker, we are no stranger to the tool that is a camera. And have had many dozens of both still image catered and video catered camera gear over the years. While a tool is just a tool a camera is ultimately just a tool for creating art, it's essentially a much more technologically advanced form of the paint brush which Claude Monet used to paint hundreds of water lily paintings around the marsh at his home in Giverny, Northern France. Much like acquiring quality paint pigments of the past, which the artist oftentimes, usually had to make themselves by hand, we have learned to acquire quality hardware for our film and photo outputs. And camera gear is no exception.
One huge benefit of good gear is that you can often resell it, used, for a decent amount toward what you usually paid for it. Sometimes even nearly equally as much. While other gear does greatly lose value. Or else, if you are savvy about buying used gear, you can get some great deals to save money. We’ve gotten quite good at buying the majority of our gear used, and then reselling it down the line as we adjust our workflow and pipeline, always adjusting and streamlining. Some gear is like an automobile, where the moment you drive it off the lot it does lose value, so you’d be a fool to buy new stuff exclusively all the time.
There is a photography term called G.A.S., which means “gear acquisition syndrome”. As it’s commonplace for less creative folks, especially technology obsessed males, to constantly overbalance time just studying and acquiring gear and not using it well. But we look at this behavior with the dynamic of Michalagelo only creating the Sistine Chapel by painting it, not spending all his time studying the brushes he was going to use to paint it.
So as we eb and flow with our tools, sometimes adjusting them but oftentimes knowing something numerous years old, is perfectly fine thank you, we have inherited a general rule to intentionally always be minimum, a year or two behind in terms of acquiring any sort of camera technology. So that means we’d never buy a new camera right as its first released but instead wait to pick one up new after its about a year old. This works for us because there is an inherent tendency in male technology enthusiasts, inside the planned obsolesced mindset, to always want to acquire hot new things - which fuls consumerism.
We’ll never forget the day when we were working a freelance job in Los Angeles at a company which shall remain nameless because it had both some really excellent people and some dishonorable people, when a young lad, who we had never formally met, came into a room in which we were working at, and proceeded to pull out his smartphone and cold announce to someone else in the room, and ourselves, that he had acquired the latest smartphone the evening prior, and was walking around the company showing it off. For which we could almost care less. For we knew he would never be a Michelangelo or Monet but instead a dude who was the type of blob who would stand in a line outside a store waiting for the latest release of some product which had minor difference from the previous version from a couple years prior which he already owned and had minimal differences from. Thus only shallowly being a paint brush show offers and not in any way an artist, creative, or even genius with a lasting positive effect on others, society, or culture.
This adolescent immature attitude is common for tech enthusiasts. And that is why we use it to our advantage when buying used gear. As we know we might get something that’s a year or two old for ⅔ the price because there is an ocean of these types out there, who acquire the gear, don’t really use it for anything truly artistic or timeless, and then want to move onto the next gear in just a season or two. They’ll also collect secondary aspects of the gear which they'll likely also be selling along with the listing at reduced price, which also works to our advantage.
Our main marketplaces for doing this buying and selling have been two websites. One more local and the other more country wide, and sometimes even international. The first is called Craigslist, an American classified advertisements website with sections devoted to jobs, housing, for sale, items wanted, services, and community service, etc… Founded by yes, a dude named Craig, who began the service in 1995 and to this day it’s remained a very basic, simple text based website for individuals to exchange or buy items through. A comedian of which once joked about that it’s the perfect place to list that you give me a handjob, I give you my coffee table. Being a very small company, which has provided a marketplace for honor based systems of small individual to individual or individual to small business commerce. We have both bought and sold on there, doing many cold non sexual meet ups with people in parking lots for quick exchanges, almost all of which are cool, to swap goods with cash with great success. For as we mature we have also adopted more and more a general rule to stay lean and light with our tool collection, only needing the bare minimum of which to be a creator. Which oftentimes over the years requires quite a bit of purchase trial and error yet to some buying and selling shuffling is inevitable.
The other website which we have long used, the more countrywide and international one is eBay. Another American e-commerce corporation, also just like Craigslist, originally based in the Bay Area of California, also coincidently founded in 1995, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. There have been numerous tech companies from the 1990’s early dawn of the Tim Berners Lee world wide web which grew into major tech giants. Many of which continued to adapt and change, some of which imp[roving but others degrading in the process by becoming more monevolent, but eBay had stayed very consistent in its original simple business model. Which was creating a marketplace for individuals to buy from one another, or an individual to buy from a small business.
We had long used eBay with no kinks or issues. Having for a long time had an account on there with a very high rating, for we have always remained, you guessed it, honorable in our both buying and selling on that platform. And our profile rating has reflected that. Same with the profile ratings of other sellers we have dealt with on the platform when we are the buyer. Yet something happened there which changed this high rating to high rating relationship. EBay primarily works as an honor system, and in the past had been the mediator between two buyers if there was a dispute. But recently, since the time of this writing, we purchased a piece of camera gear from a seller on the platform and having an issue we have now found that eBay’s method of operating in this regard has changed.
Basically, before purchasing from a vendor, it’s important to know at least a tiny bit about them and their past track record. Just like in the old bazaars of the Middle East which day back through the sands of time, an individual might go to their favorite stand owner recurrently because their had a previous purchasing relationship with them and knew their vegetables, buts, meats they had sold in the past had a certain quality to them. And any time a new stand opens in the market, one is always taking a small risk by purchasing from this particular seller for the first time, not being sure what they are going to get.
Our failure this time around was to purchase a piece of used camera gear from a seller who had not been on the website very long. Only for a week or two in fact and they have thus not had any previous ratings. So I purchased an item, which was a bit over $600 US dollars mind you, not exactly cheap, and then after the money went through, it’s up to the seller to honor their listing and ship the item to you. In this case numerous days when by, with numerous inquiry messages sent, with zero feedback or response. Looking at the seller's account, we could see some other items listed. Knowing it was a female seller because one of the other items was a purse and in the photographs they had taken holding up the team to camera there were both very female nails present as well a a reflection of a very curvy feminine phasic in the reflection of the item I had purchased which had a black screen that was reflecting part of their torso. I could also tell it was a woman of Latin American descent. A detail which has future importance for the story.
So about a week or two went by, nothing had been shipped and we started to get a bit concerned - for early warning signs tend to only amplify. Which were concretized when by the end of week two, upon logging back into the website and looking at their account, we saw that they had exit scammed the website. Meaning zeroing out and deleting all the content from their account, leaving either no trace or just leaving an empty but not deleted account. A dynamic which is common in the crypto currency space. Never put any money into any venture in which the owners or runners of that venture are anonymous, because then a launch pad is paid down which is prime time to exit scam.
So when trying to deal with this dishonorable individual, who took our payment and never shipped out the item goddammit, one then looks to the marketplace who’s domain they are in for assistance - in this case, eBay. And as once I was blind, now I can see. Thinking eBay was a giant tech company that still remained mostly transparent, truthful and true to their roots, but instead they have adjusted to be very opaque.
We had once read, and always remembered that the number one thing that keeps a small business afloat in the long term is… drumroll.. Customer service. Meaning how you treat your customers after they have purchased from you. As the spiritually degraded commercial marketplace is really there for the acquisition of capital, customer service is a direct barometer of how much a seller actually cares about their buyers and any future relationship they may have with them. We, for example, who sell various documentary and audio products, know that if any individual who purchases from us, has a question, one aspect of what we must do, to stay honorable, is do our best to make sure they are happy with the purchase should they have a question or need technical support. Aiming to always be helpful. This is something that any long lasting honorable company that has been around for many decades, with a good reputation, will be very knowledgeable and hard working regarding. To make sure that they have long served pre-existing customers and not just blowing them off or dumping them after you have made initial money off their, but instead establishing a relationship of care. Which from a honourable business standpoint means one will continue to purchase from you in the future if not send more business your way through referrals and recommendations.
Companies that treat their customers like they are expendable ultimately will crash and burn. It may take a long time, but the chickens will come home to roost. There was once an electronics store chain in the United States which reigned through the 80’s, 90’s and early 200’s called Circuit City - an American consumer electronics retail company known for having very good customer service via non annoying and overy helpful but still very helpful and knowledgeable sales people on their store floors. Their main forte through the years had been home entertainment center and car stereo electronics and in those early days of the web most people weren't able to research electronics online. And home theatre electronics were more complicated back then. With an amp, receiver, or home theatre stereo oftentimes looking like some sort of Russian synthesizer with tons of nobs, dials, and gauges, and remote controls with buttons equivalent to that of a control panel on the Challenger space shuttle. So when a customer came into their store to purchase higher end audio video hardware, it was important to have helpful and even more importantly knowledgeable salespeople. Who they paid quite decently. The beginning of their end was when their CEO and executive board decided it was wise to lay off the vast majority of their well paid and knowledgeable sales staff across all their locations and replace them with inexperienced, unknowlege, new employees which they could pay minimum wage. Or otherwise known as, the lowest amount legally possible. Then from that moment on there, sales started to plummet and along with refusing to open an online presence for sales on this new thing called the internet, the chain eventually went out of business. Ha ha!
So eBay used to be known for very good customer service, having an on demand, easily reachable, actually human service department to help you should you have a dispute with an exchange like we have with this dishonorable female exit scamming us. But over the years they have made themselves very difficult to contact directly. A sly and somewhat slimy technique that far too many corrupt sales websites engage in. Where they work great if all is smooth, but when a challenger is faced, within their framework mind you, they are not there to be there to help you. So they are also sinking down into dishonorable.
Trying to find any reminiscence of aid through the bones of what used to be their customer service or dispute center sends one on a loop of them telling you to contact the seller, putting the majority of the dispute resolution back on the relationship between buyer and seller, which only really works if both pirates are honorable. So if either buyer or seller is exposed as being anything less, it also exposes the larger system they are inside as also exhibiting somewhat less than behavior.
So the way we personally fixed this problem is we found a way to do it without sinking down to either the dishonorable level of the little head or the big head. Like many companies today, you can’t get real interaction with a human being, or if you do it in a third world country. So in our navigating the endless loops of their subsurface spider webs which are intentionally difficult, many companies use that technique, especially with long wait times of phone support hoping you will just give up, we dealt with the automated process the way it asked to be dealt with.
Luckily, the honorable woman who scammed us had not set the item to be non-returnable, so down in the loop de loop we submitted a resolve ticket and got a refund via returning the item. So after accessing the automated, non-human- helped page to get a refund we filed for the return and accessed a page to print a return shipping label. And the genius woman left her name and address in her account information which is usually unavailable to be seen but can be accessed but now that a return was issued was then available. It was Claudia Camberos, with an address in San Diego. That name obviously being that of a woman of latin american descent, so having seen glimpses of her physicality, we thought it might actually be her real name, not a made up one.
So the only real issue now was she had never actually sent me the item. And eBay’s non-existent dispute resolution assumed she had actually sent us the package in the mail. So, without breaking any laws or sinking down into assholess ourselves, we didn't want to send her anything threatening - a message of meanness or hate, or hardful - anthrax in the mail, or discussing - a turd log, or engage in any kind of mail fraud, but instead kept it straight by putting a dirty rock in a box and mailed it back to her address with tracking details. Which eBay said they would refund once they confirmed the item, when it was never really sent to us in the first place mind you, had arrived back at her address and would reimburse then us for it. So through this automated way, we sent that dirt covered rock off in the mail and by golly it worked. We got our money refunded. Not by her but surely by eBay themselves.
So multiple lessons were learned on this one. Firstly, to not engage with anyone who doesnt have some kind of previous track record, even if that’s just a brief history of operating and part customer reviews. Secondly, that even one large tech company we thought was halfway decent is just as soulless as the rest of them.
Honorable is a great word. It makes one have to stand on their own merits. And almost shows that if someone is not honorable there are going to be many other negative aspects to their personality as well. A main one of which is certainly that of being an asshole. But if one does stand in honor and aim to engage in honorable behavior in the little things in life, that speaks volumes about how they will operate in terms of the larger things in life.
———
An Infinite Path podcast official URL http://www.aninfinitepath.com
Spotify | iTunes | Overcast FM | Stitcher | Player FM
Elevate yourself with a membership to nilesheckman.com, purchasing our current extended episode archive or essay volumes, or sharing a proactive review on iTunes.
Niles’ work can be found elsewhere on YouTube and Vimeo.
Here’s our affiliate link for Jambo Superfoods as well.
