Attention, nerds! If you are horribly wronged, do not simply accept your mistreatment. Sure, in high school we learned that survival depended upon rolling up into a ball and feigning death to protect ourselves from the jocks, but those days are behind (some of) us!
I finally got to the point that I threatened legal action against ebay for banning my account (see my “Boycott Ebay”:http://blog.nerdbucket.com/articles/2007/02/09/boycott-ebay article for more information). I told them essentially they had wrongfully banned me, and if I didn’t get a real response soon I’d simply take legal action for unfair business practices. I also hinted that banning people for legitimate items might allow for a class action lawsuit – they’re quite familiar with class action lawsuits, so maybe this was enough to put the fear of God into them.
In any case, they sent an email that they reinstated my account and relisted my previously-removed items. There was no “Oh #$@%! Sorry, looks like we made a mistake!” I would have liked that. But the admission that my account should be reinstated was good enough.
Hooray for me!
If any of you nerds are treated poorly, follow my example and threaten legal action. It’s good and good for you. Just keep in mind that you have to actually be in the right for this to work. You won’t get anywhere trying to sue your boss for telling you that Captain Kirk was cooler than Captain Pickard. Not only would no judge take that case, but your boss would be right.
(Note: some people will claim that ebay simply changed their mind on the policy in question, but we all know it was my threat of legal action that made them do it)