This message is presented exactly as I received it, not a single character has been changed. The line breaks are present because 5 separate messages were sent over the course of 10 minutes. Each line break is the separation between messages.

Message from customer:

stupid ckc computers sent me a hard drive in which you cannot install windows xp on it because after 70% of installing windows xp it starts skipping files , i tried to install on 3 laptops, ebay , will you be kind enough to tell this worthless genetic-deformed , money hungry seller that i just bought about 11 hard drives on ebay, all of them installed with time being consumed except this one, tell this seller who has manure for brains and lives in a farmland to send me a hard drive that works or refund my money, tell this yoo yoo that some people in america went to college and learned from college professors about certain genetic-deformed, money hungry people and studyed engineering, and have almost 40 laptops to play with and fix==================this worthless genetic-deformed money hungry manure brained person wasted over 3 hours of my time with this stupid hard drive in which he knew was defective in the first place, he must be one of those people who live in that country where nothing is made over 62 years or one of those people who likes to start all kinds of wars, those worthless genetic-deformed money hungry people who college professors stated in college, or maybe this is a narrow-minded person of another type of people who a greek supreme court judge called the person a narrow-minded son of a gun in a case

wasted over 3 hours on this stupid hard drive, on 3 laptops trying in install windows xp, never seen nothing like it, do not have money to waste because i have not worked for almost 30 years, thank god, i am glad i did not have to pay taxes to support this worthless genetic-deformed, money hungry people due to a bad injury

either send a hard drive that is good or refund my money, you are the first person after buying 12 hard drives and installing them with time consumed that does not work===========another stupid ebayer sent me one which is corrupt and refunded my money, then there was this oriental seller from california who sent me 2 new ones about 6 months ago that still do not work, i do not know what is going on with ebay but nonsense better stop immediately or get some of these sellers off ebay================or tell them to finish grade school and try not to be a genetic-deformed , money hungry worthless american, because it is not funny any more

refund money or send a good one because i have other laptops to test and need more hard drives that work=============buying about 11 that 9 of them work is not that bad on ebay, i can switch hard drives to other laptops because if it is the same type hard drive connector, they will run on laptops take the same type hard drive connector

probably cannot deal with this manure brained farm hand company who think they know everything and other people are stupid

The licensing website for Route 66, with information on licensing and use of Route 66, includes dozens or hundreds of photographs, sounds and movies relating to Route 66 that appear to be vintage stuff, including having the classic song “(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66” playing over an image montage. But there is absolutely no information indicating that they have asked for, paid for or received the rights to use any of the images, videos or sounds on their licensing site. In fact, there’s very little information overall about the company, actual licensing, their history of ownership, anything at all. There’s not a lot of information about the parent company Tempting Brands either, their official website address just links back to the Route 66 licensing website already linked above.

I have to admit to being incredibly confused about this. Route 66 was a federal US highway that existed for 70 years before being decommissioned and is one of the classic icons of Americana and the development of America’s car/roadtrip culture. I can’t fathom that any company, individual or organization could claim to own a trademark to the name or symbol of Route 66. There are some very specific trademarks and copyrights held in relation to Route 66, such as the old 60s TV series, but courts have shown that even those are very limited due to the nature of Route 66.

Technically the route was decommissioned and I can see the symbol potentially existing in a legal limbo, but there are thousands of companies, communities and individuals who have used Route 66 logos and symbols over the years for just about every use imaginable, including t-shirts, business logos, a movie, TV series, even a state park. Every state the route passed through has a Route 66 historic preservation association. It’s simply unfathomable to me that this trademark can stand as legally binding. The fact that it’s held by a European company is just insulting on top of that.

For those of you who would like to contact the relevant parties about this, feel free to call Zazzle at 1-888-8ZAZZLE (892-9953) or (408) 983-2800. Tempting Brands contact information is:

Tempting Brands B.V.
Westerkade 27-3
1015 XE Amsterdam
The Netherlands
T: +31 (0)20 778 2156

http://www.temptingbrands.com

Martijn Berkhout MA
Managing Director
E: mberkhout@temptingbrands.com

Below you’ll find a series of screen captures I took of the licensing site as it stands now:

As the country has moved through the recession, there are some buying trends that I’ve noticed with our business. We used to have relatively consistent sales throughout the entire day. There were a couple of peaks, but we sold steadily even at 2 or 3 in the morning. That’s simply not the case anymore. We now have several dead zones and two very hot (and one warm) peaks throughout weekdays. Our overnight, late morning and mid-afternoon sales have all dried up, dropping by 70 percent or more. But, our early morning (5 a.m. – 9 a.m.) has exploded, as has the evening (5 p.m. to 10 p.m.). The early afternoon sales are still steady, though not remarkable.

I have a few theories about why this is.

First, our current sales match the standard work day more now than they did previously. Employers now may monitor or block employees internet access more, keeping our sales lower during the working hours.

Second, we’ve always had a strong client base of self-employed people and small business owners. Many of my regulars from two or three years ago are gone now. Some of them I know had to go back to a real job or close their business, but most of them just disappeared. I would notice that someone hadn’t ordered in a few weeks and drop them a line, only to get dead air or a bounced email. Some of these people are still self-employed part time, but have to work a regular job too, thus restricting the times that they can be online buying stuff from me.

I miss the overnight sales the most from our old patterns. It was always exciting to boot up the old ‘puter in the morning and see how much money we had made while we slept. The answer is the same most days now, not that much.

With ProStore’s 9.0 update earlier this year allowing truly synced inventory between eBay and a ProStore’s retail website, the potential of the host is finally meeting reality. We’ve used ProStores to host our retail website CKC Computers (www.ckccomp.com) for a little over two years. For those who don’t know, we deal exclusively in laptop parts and accessories, mostly Dell, Toshiba and IBM/Lenovo (though we occasionally have parts for Acer and Compaq models too). I’ve questioned the logic many times of using a company owned by eBay to host my site, thinking that branching further out and escaping the eBay umbrella for more of our business would be a good idea. I originally chose ProStores because of the promise of sharing data between my website and eBay, but have never been impressed with the features available. Until now.

Previously, you could send inventory from ProStores to eBay or retrieve eBay listings for you store, but inventory management still required manually updating. And the system didn’t allow for inventory to be live on both sites. So, if you sent an item from ProStores to eBay, the inventory count for that item would be reduced by the amount you listed on eBay. If you wanted the same inventory live for both, you had to correct it after the fact. Then, if any items sold, you had to manage inventory for both channels, manually tracking and updating inventory counts for each item. If you made revisions to the description or title to add additional information or fix minor errors, you had to make changes to both. With Product Sync and Multi-Channel Inventory, all of that is taken care of now. When you list an item on eBay, an exact copy of the listing is created in your ProStores site. Further, multiple fields in ProStores are synced to the eBay listing and updated whenever a change is made to the original eBay listing:

• Product name/title
• Brief description (I’m assuming this syncs to sub-titles, but haven’t used it yet)
• Item description
• Sale price
• Shipping settings
• Inventory

If you have an eBay store and have defined your own unique Store Categories, the category that an item has been placed in will also be sent to ProStores when an item is listed. This field isn’t synced though, so any future changes won’t be sent over. The only complaint I have about this feature is it only seems to send over one of the store categories. In eBay, you can set two categories per item. It would be nice if both were copied to the ProStores site.

These updates have radically changed how valuable our ProStores site is to us. We deal in about 400-500 unique items, but usually only have 1-3 of each in stock. Previously, I had two separate product description designs, one for eBay and one for ProStores. The eBay design was created very early on and included all of our eBay policies, links to various eBay resources, links to other eBay product we had, our PowerSeller status, etc. So it was highly eBay centric. When I created the website, I clearly didn’t want a bunch of eBay stuff in my product descriptions, so I made a much simpler, more elegant template for product descriptions. Having the two separate templates, in hindsight, was a bad idea. It meant that for each new item I listed, I had to create two new entries. With time always being limited, the result was that all items went to eBay and only a handful went to the website, the ones that I believed had the best chance to sell.

Now, for the first time since we opened, our full inventory is available both through eBay and on the website. We’ve been live for about a month and sales have dramatically increased on the website. Besides sales, the updates have also saved us time. I no longer need to spend as much time per week managing the inventory for each system. I manage one, and all my work gets copied to the other. eBay still generates more sales for us, but this gives me hope that with further refinement, our retail site will one day meet and exceed our eBay sales.

I remember getting into an argument with my dad several years ago about the nature of the Internet and free content. He insisted that all that free stuff would go away and eventually everything online would be a pay service of one form or another. Dad wasn’t exactly wrong, he just didn’t realize who would be paying (often not the consumer) or that the price might not always be money.

I love comments sections (and great examples of why you should think before you write one). From the comments on this story:

Posted by: ihsanalshorafa
Dear Editors,

Please be advised that this article is substantially plagiarizing an article published in The Economist news publication. Such behavior is not becoming of a magazine as original as yours. The article published in The Economist can be found at

The Economist

It was published in November 2007

And the reply:

Posted by: sklassen
You do realize Chris Anderson also wrote that Economist article?

I don’t know what the legalities of plagiarizing yourself are.

A routine email for me to receive:

“Hi, I usually buy this product at five percent of what you are selling it for, but my supplier is currently out of stock (shocking! –ed). Would you be willing to meet this price?”

I’m willing to negotiate and haggle, but this tactic will immediately get you banned from doing business with me. If you really have a magic supplier who can beat my prices by 95 percent, send me a name and email for this business. I will become a loyal and happy customer for years to come.