The Story of a Bluetooth Mouse And An Idiot

If you are reading this, you may very well know who the idiot is.

This idiot loves the experience of shopping online. The variety and choices you find online cannot be imagined in brick and mortar shops where you have to scroll through places and shops to find what you are looking for.

But I would agree that an offline shop's experience of touch and feel of a product before buying is lacking in the online mode.

Personally, I prefer the online mode as it is convenient and saves time. It also allows you to shop on a working day which is difficult in the offline mode.

I have been shopping online for years now and cannot recollect the amount of time I have spent on those thousands of products that I have bought from the multiple eCommerce portals hosted by local and global players in the market.

This is except for one such purchase, which made me look like a complete idiot in front of my family.

The incident happened in January last year. I wanted to buy an additional laptop mouse for myself as my old one had broken down.

The one place where I look for such low-priced electronic goods is the global giant Alibaba. I have brought many products from the site in the past, right from few cents to some hundred dollars, and found it quite reasonable in most cases.

I like the site because of the sheer number of options you get for any product you search. You would get tired scrolling through those pages in most cases, but the list will not end.

While this is good most of the time, I have sometimes not purchased anything because there were so many choices that I got so confused and could not decide on one product and left without buying any.

So coming to the point, I took out my card on a Sunday and sat in front of my laptop to make the purchase. As usual, there were thousands of options, but I had mentally kept a tight budget for me to avoid any unnecessary buying.

After scrolling through a few pages and doing back and forth for comparing 2 products, I did a last cursory check on a local site to see if the product was priced appropriate and worth buy from a foreign site.

It is important to do this check because of the vast difference in the delivery timings. A local site will deliver goods within 2-3 days compared to Aliexpress, which takes 14-21 days. That's a huge gap, and so if the product you are ordering has hardly a few dollars gaps, it makes sense to go with a local portal.

But Ali didn't disappoint me this time. A local Amazon reseller sold a wireless Bluetooth mouse I got for $7 on Ali for $17. That was more than double the price. So it made sense to go ahead with Ali.

After a wait of nearly 14 days, the local post delivered my package.

I was all excited to check out the new mouse and so hurriedly opened up the package and got my hands on the black-colored mouse with a mat finish. It looked gorgeous and a good value for the money spent on it.

So the package said to put 2 AAA batteries and pull up the small button on the bottom to start the mouse. I rushed to the store below to buy the batteries. I pushed them into the battery compartment and switched it on.

As I went to try it on my laptop, which was in my study room, I recollected that since it was a Bluetooth mouse, it would require a Bluetooth connector to connect with the laptop as all electronic devices do.

I rushed back to my living room and picked up the box to find the connector. After searching every corner of the box, I couldn't find the same, and now I had a mouse without a connector which meant it was useless.

I immediately logged into the site and began a chat with the seller. It was a simple one-liner comment saying, "I have received my order, but the connector piece is missing from the box. Please send it at the earliest."

I waited for 2 days, and there was no response on my chat. I was getting confused as I had never experienced such delays in the past. The seller was also enjoying a five-star rating, so I would not expect him to use such malpractices to fool his customers.

On the third day, I logged in again. This time there was a response in broken English, which said we are closed for the Chinese New Year and would be back in 10 days.

Ten days, my mind shouted. You mean I can't use it for 10 days? I am sorry you mean one more month. Because if they shipped the product after 10 days, I would only get it after nearly a month. I was going mad.

After some aggressive lines, I closed the chat as it didn't seem to be of any use.

With no option to get the mouse early, I ordered the $17 mouse from a local site. In parallel, I left a 1-star review on the seller and also raised a dispute for a 100% refund for a reason - missing or damaged parts in the delivered product.

My 2-year-old son, who keeps exploring all rooms, discovered this mouse on my table. The infrared light at the bottom excited him, and he thought it was a soap with a light (you can't challenge a kid's imagination).

With this imagination, he started taking it along with him for his bathing sessions. It was his favorite toy for the next few days, till one time he banged it for some unknown reason, and one of the buttons flew away from its slot, making it a mouse with only one ear.

There it was, my $7 investment turning to zero. But that reminded me of the refund request I had raised. It was more than ten days from the time I had raised it to their support.

I opened the site and saw the disputed status. It was still in progress.

Just as I was going to close the site, my eyes saw a notification. It was a response from the seller dated two days back.

It said, "Sir, the part is with the product; we have checked it."

I responded, "I have checked the entire box but not able to find it."

The next day another response," Sir, it's in the battery compartment."

I checked the battery compartment, and there was nothing there.

I responded again, "Don't try to fool me I am smarter than you; there is nothing in the battery compartment. Please refund immediately."

I also attached a pic of the battery compartment as proof.

The response which I got next was hilarious and made me look like a complete idiot.

It was a pic of the same mouse model from the seller. He had opened the battery compartment and showed the exact place where the connector was placed in a slot with the help of a magnet to avoid it from falling off when the compartment is opened.

It was so well aligned to the battery compartment floor that without knowing the mechanism, it was very easy to be missed by the naked eye. Also, I could remember the product description saying it was a compact travel-friendly mouse, and to provide ease while traveling the connector holder was built inside the mouse itself.

I rushed to my living room and checked the mouse lying in a corner - half dead. To my astonishment, it was there as shown by the seller.

Holly molly, it was there all the while, and I never found it. I was so mad. I didn't know whether to laugh or slap myself. I felt somebody pouring cold water on me and giving me a shock.

Earlier I had the mouse but not the connector, and now I had the connector, but the mouse was dead.

Had I been patient, I would have had a good deal and saved some money. Here I ended up wasting double the money and made me look like an idiot.

When my wife saw this, she had a hearty laugh, and seeing her; my son joined her, making me feel like a complete idiot.

Even though my heart was in pain for losing $7, I tried to pacify it by saying - "It's ok to waste $7 if it means a good laugh for your family. I can spend many such dollars for their joy."

In reality, I was sulking from inside.

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