Ripped Off by eBay

it's been a while since i've posted a blog, i know...60 hour weeks really get to you after a while.  i love technology and all, but sometimes enough is enough...my own dog doesn't even recognize me when i get home from work anymore.

it's pretty rare that i get wriled up by the way a company chooses to do business.  i'm usually quite patient and understanding, i have even gone almost a week without internet access (*gasp*) before, simply because i felt my ISP was doing everything they could to fix whatever was wrong...in short i could at least understand their reasoning for what was happening.  today i experienced a rare incident that had me fuming, livid, and at a complete loss for words.  as any internet savvy person knows, only a fool would actually go into an electronics store (best buy, circuit city, etc) and pay full price for something when they know they can usually do at least 10% (if not more) better on the price by hunting around online...my family knows this as well, so they were gracious enough to give me a slew of gift certificates for eBay this year for christmas.  they also knew that i've had my eye on a certain item for quite some time, the listing price on eBay for a new one is a good 20% cheaper than if you were to buy one from a brick and mortar store.  anyway, i've had the certs for a few weeks now, just waiting for the killer deal to come along on eBay, and sure enough it did.  the product i wanted at the right price...after a little haggling with the seller, i'm ready to buy.  he comes down on price, sets up a private auction for me, i click the “buy it now” button, and i'm home free, right?  oh so very wrong...    first off, eBay has a policy of a 200 dollar cap per gift certificate, which is understandable enough, lots of companies have a cap similar to this.  what i didn't know is that eBay has a policy of one gift certificate per purchase.  imagine the horror of making a purchase thinking you have at least half of the price covered, and then being stuck in a binding purchase owing more than double out of pocket than you thought.  of course (like any reasonable programmer :-) ) i thought this was a flaw with the site, how could i be limited to only using one gift certificate for a purchase?  if i have 3 g-certs to a bookstore, they certainly don't require me to make 3 visits to their store to use them, right?  as stated before, i usually don't get emotional over too many things, but this, in my opinion, is simply unacceptable.  after making the rounds of obligatory calls to paypal (and i wish i could call eBay, but alas they have no phone number, only email) i got nowhere.  i was referred to the terms about g-certs on eBay's site, and there it was in plain english... “one g-cert per purchase”.  have i lost my mind?  why oh why oh why on earth would a company even attempt to place such a restriction like this?  it's my money to do with what i please!  i honestly can think of zero business justification for something like this, and i don't know of any other company with a similar policy...and of course no one at paypal could give me a decent reason as to why eBay chooses this model.  i have yet to hear back from eBay (24 hour response time, gotta love that, meanwhile the seller is left wondering what's going on as to why i haven't paid yet after all the haggling).  i know i probably won't get anywhere by arguing with them, but i feel compelled to do so; i made a purchase w/ moneys already paid for...eBay already has their money from the sale regardless if i buy anything or not!  so why would they have such a policy?  a few thoughts came to mind:

1. eBay's system isn't set up to handle this scenario  i say BS.  i've been building systems for years now, this is certainly within the realm of implementation
2. eBay is trying to cut down on forgery, etc  again, i say BS.  i would think that a brick and mortar store has more of a chance of g-certs being forged than an online shop.  perhaps i don't really know if that is true, but it seems logical enough.  the g-certs are linked to my paypal account (which eBay owns of course, so i would expect them to have the necessary safegaurds in place...), there are plenty of 3rd party fraud prevention shops out there, etc
3. eBay wants me to repeatedly visit their site and buy stuff  sounds reasonable enough (i would do this sans g-certs), however eBay doesn't make their money off of me buying something, they make money off of their sellers by charging them fees.  if anything, this policy hurts their sellers more by effectively locking any of the sellers peddling goods over the 200 dollar g-cert limit out from potential g-cert shoppers who more than likely don't want to spend too much more out of pocket over the limit of the g-cert.  [did that make sense?]
4. ...

so basically i'm left hanging by one of my most beloved sites on the internet.  i've committed to a buy (any decent eBay'er knows what it means when you win an auction...it's binding), yes i could perhaps convince eBay to retract the bid (at the risk of losing my perfect rating via bad feedback from the seller), or they could just get rid of this ridiculous policy.  so my question is this:  how would a policy like this be beneficial?  in my opinion, all parties lose out, including eBay, but most of all, the sellers.  meanwhile, i'm left stranded after having purchased a product that costs x$ dollars, having .5x$ in g-certs, but being stuck with 3 times more than i planned on paying, because of a stupid policy that seems to have absolutely zero merit.  cheers.