A few days ago, I decided to make a few soundtrack purchases. Whilst scanning ebay, I stumbled upon the complete soundtrack of Escape from L.A. that La La Land released a few weeks back. The initial price was $9.95. Sounded like a good deal to me, as I've found the score to be 'all right'.

The auction was started by a European gentleman, which basically meant that the auction would end at around 4:30am EST on Sunday morning. I got up and made my way to ebay. As the clock ticked away, the price had jumped a few dollars. My desire to win held firm, so I entered my bid, only to find that someone else had outbid my initial bid. I tried again. I was the highest bidder. Awesome. The clock ran out and I had won. The price? $16.50 plus $3.00 shipping (at least, that's what it said at the top of the page, but more on that later). My thinking at the time was that a discount was a discount, even by a few bucks. (The list price for the item is $19.99 plus anywhere from $3.50 to $4.50, depending on the soundtrack retailer.)

Cut to about half an hour ago. I'm checking my e-mail. One message catches my eye: 'Your PayPal transaction has been refunded'. I click on it. It tells me that the shipping price was $12.00, not $3.00. Turns out, in revisiting the page, the '12 dollars shipping' notice was buried at the bottom of the page and not, say, advertised at the top next to the item where it said $3.00.

That, on its own, wouldn't be so bad. Here's where things get unpleasant. In addition to the auction price and re-adjusted shipping, I have to pay, on top of that, the original price I had assumed I'd be paying. All in all, a grand total of $48.00 for a score I consider 'all right'. This kind of situation (paying more than I probably ought for a CD, not getting outright conned by an ebay vendor) is not foreign to me. Jerry Goldsmith's Link and Max Steiner's Those Calloways cost a pretty penny, but I find myself enjoying those scores. Also, they were out of print.

I'm certainly going to be contesting this. And if this guy thinks that this is going to result in positive feedback on his page, he's obviously fucking high.