Hide and seek
Petronella Wyatt
Not since Lady Bracknell can any woman have been more winded and confounded by a handbag. Last week I wrote about the risks of buying items on eBay, the online auction house. I described how I had paid for a handbag and then received a somewhat suspicious email from the seller. To recap, it said, in broken English, that his accounts had been closed down (no satisfactory reason given) but 'not to worry', I would receive my goods.
Well, guess what. I didn't. For the past seven days I have worn my fingertips to quills sending entails to this person. I begged for the bag. then I begged for a refund, then a partial refund, then a can of Coke, or anything. And guess what. He failed to respond to any of my pleas. Yesterday, therefore, I did the sensible thing. I determined to track the b— down. First, it seemed a good idea to find out where he lived, He had an unusual name, which sounded Arabic. Other than that I had one piece of information to go on. The location of my item, his page had informed me, was Bournemouth. I assumed, using all my powers of logic, that if the item was in Bournemouth, the seller must be in Bournemouth, too.
So I did the obvious thing — the thing that most people forget to do because it is so obvious: I looked through the phone book. Incidentally, the ordinary phone book has provided me with more addresses and numbers than any of my best contacts. I believe I have discovered at least two dukes and six earls there. But my Arab, let us call him Mohammed Gobi, wasn't there.
So if he wasn't with his handbag, where was he? I filed a complaint to eBay but they would not or could not reveal his whereabouts. It occurred to me that he could be anywhere — Paris, Rome, Dubai or Iran, Alta. This is when ray conspiratori al genes bestowed upon me by my Hungarian and Turkish ancestors — went into overdrive.
Could it be that this elusive purveyor of leather goods was something far more sinister? Indeed, could his whole enterprise be a front? Was it not possible that he was attached to al-Qa'eda? Was it not likely, then, that he was raising money for bin Laden by selling expensive handbags on the Internet, taking the cash and failing to deliver the items. Perhaps he really operated out of a cave somewhere in the Middle East.
I put this theory to a friend of mine over lunch. He protested that Mr Gobi must be very stupid, calling himself by an Arab name. Surely if he were a terrorist, or a fundraiser for terrorists, he would adopt an Anglo-Saxon name like Henry Smith. I disagreed. I countered that Arab terrorists were not necessarily clever. Indeed some of the most fanatical people were the most stupid. After all, would a clever man really believe in this bin Laden guff?
I thought not. To me, it followed that if my handbag terrorist was as simple as I imagined, he would of course use his real name. I returned home and took a further look at the names of sellers on eBay. The more I looked, the more it seemed as if Arabs had cornered a substantial chunk of the market, especially in leather.
Goodness knows, there might be a whole group of them. Terrorists pretending to silly women that they would give them priceless objects at bargain prices (sort of like the story of Aladdin). And if this were the case, think of their turnover! They could make a couple of hundred quid out of each sucker and then do it over and over again. For I discovered, to my humiliation, that there is very little one can do to get the darned money back. In fact, in my case, it was well nigh impossible.
At this rate, bin Laden could be raking in £10,000 a week. Nor would it be possible to unmask his minions. For the Internet's so-called security system provides for a continual change of identities, passwords and 'user IDs'. On Monday I could be Petronella Wyatt, password: 'sucker 205' and by Wednesday. I could have morphed into Gordon Brown, password: 'Bla1r666'. Who would know who I really was? Who would ever find out? For the Internet favours the dishonest. Moreover, for legal reasons I cannot reveal the handbag man's real name. Just in case he or the bag turn up within the next millennium.
I know this might indicate that rage has finally pushed me over the edge. but I really think that the government should take a closer look at the Internet, and at eBay in particular. Ministers might find it more profitable to comb online auctions for possible lunatics (and thieves) than combing the countryside for men in red coats. They can start with the item number of my handbag: 53209949950. Someone send round a code-breaker and a numerologist, please. Those numbers might mean something really important.
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