325: A-Minus-Minus

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A-Minus-Minus

Title text: You can do this one in every 30 times and still have 97% positive feedback

Explanation

The Hat Guy is trying to make the world a weirder place by shipping bobcats to his Ebay buyers. Ordinarily negative feedback is used to warn future buyers about sellers that ship broken products or post misleading listings. In this case the unfortunate buyer is leaving feedback warning future buyers that the Hat Guy ships bobcats instead of the actual products.

The title text is about a flaw in Ebay's feedback system - you can intentionally do nasty things to your buyers and get very bad reviews, but still have overall high feedback scores as long as you don't do it too often.

Transcript

[Black Hat is packing a bobcat into a box; Danish stands beside him.]

Danish: What are you doing?

Black Hat: Making the world a weirder place.

bobcat: mrrowlll

[Black Hat has finished taping the package for shipping.]

Black Hat: Starting with my eBay feedback page.

[Bandaged person at a computer with assorted debris around the floor]

screen: comments:

bandaged person typing Instead of office chair package contained bobcat.

bandaged person typing Would not buy again.

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Discussion

Why should the woman be Danish? She wasn't introduced at this point, and has different hair. --141.89.226.146 10:32, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Good point; I've edited the transcript accordingly. Thanks! - Cos (talk) 12:19, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

- What can we learn from this? - I've learned to expect the unexpected and laugh my ass off when I figure out the reason behind it (Thank you for all the laughs and lessons, Mr. XKCD) - E-inspired (talk) 16:36, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Does this explanation still need to be listed as incomplete? I really don't think so. Gman314 (talk) 17:23, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I did remove the incomplete tag after entering more clear internal comic links. But this is still more a link collection than an explanation. I'm still not happy with this.--Dgbrt (talk) 18:43, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

The explanation is clear, but is there some specific e-Bay meaning to A-Minus-Minus (A--) ? --Quicksilver (talk) 19:45, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

I put in my take on A--. Maybe someone can check this, and remove the incomplete tag. 199.27.128.160 05:03, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I think that A−− is a grade, proportional to 97%. 108.162.212.199 12:25, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Following that logic, A+ = 100, A = 99, A− = 98, A−− = 97. 108.162.221.117 13:57, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Since it seems like we've explained every possible interpretation of the title, I'm removing the "incomplete" tag. Neito (talk) 16:17, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

What's the deal with the marks on his face? In the last panel, they look like a hash mark and a dollar sign; int the previous one they look like tally marks. Dfeuer (talk) 11:46, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Randall probably didn't feel like making extra work form himself maintaining visual consistence between panels. -Pennpenn 108.162.250.162 00:53, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Bobcats don't have big fluffy tails, they have "bobtails". Also, I would love to be sent a bobcat. Please send me a bobcat. I'm so lonely. Gwynfshae (talk) 15:20, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

here have a fanfiction about boxcat: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13249443/1/I-Am-A-Bobcat Overlord of oddities (talk) 22:58, 21 May 2020 (UTC)