Time to forget Ebay?

[zulu]

Mine's Sisyphus, cos I can never get it all the way to how I want it!

[The Natural Philosopher]

I remember a right obnoxious tit who decided that all the new Suns would be from shakespeare,so his was called Ariel.

Sadly, while he was on holiday the next three arrived, and got called Persil,. Bold, and Surf.

[Andrew Gabriel]

My home machines go by the rather boring names a1, a2, a3, etc. I'm up to a20, but most of the earlier ones no longer exist.

One of the first networks we setup at work in the 80's had snowhite as the fileserver, and the dwarf names as the desktop systems. I've seen this a few times since, although you inevitably have to start inventing new dwarf names eventually.

Another scheme I've used and come across many times are the elements, with the atomic number being the host part of the IP address.

At one company, we used fruit names at one site. We ended up with a lot of computers and it was getting quite difficult to find unused fruit names. There were occasions when someone asked for a new computer, was told to go and find a fruit we weren't using, and never came back to complete the PO. The other site had a number of train spotters, and their systems were all named after types of trains, and there are a lot more of those that one might imagine.

When I was working in the Solaris Kernel group, we had a number of test systems which were all named after types of death and related things, such as such as murder, suicide, homicide, defebrillator. This resulted in a number of humorous phrases such as "is murder dead?" I saved away this note from the lab staff on one occasion... "I made a mistake in the doc I sent out that has the power outlet assignments. It's now corrected. The assignment for murder was incorrect and instead caused defibrillator to power off, killing it. The outlet for murder is now annotated correctly and defibrillator and murder are both up and running. "

Another one to raise a smile is "elvis", whose main purpose seems to be:

# ping elvis elvis is alive #

[google]

At my first place of employment, there were lynx, jaguar, osiris and various other catty names. The powers that be insisted that pussy be renamed not long after they realised it existed.

Andrew

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 01:02:59 on Mon,

31 Dec 2007, magwitch remarked:

Better help pages would have saved you from that frustrating experience. You were trying the online equivalent of something like getting the Post Office to "stop" a Postal Order. An activity that doesn't make any sense.

Thanks for explaining that. I've never had them take the money from the wrong source - although they do confirm on a transaction by transaction basis where the funds will come from, and offer you a choice to change. If they confirmed the CC at that stage, and then took it from the DD, I'd agree that there was a problem.

It's taken many iterations to get this far. I'm afraid you didn't explain things very clearly before.

Although it seems OK for people to make wild claims about PayPal.

Duh! So this part is because the vendor doesn't understand how PayPal works :( That's not actually your problem.

I agree that setting up PayPal for bank accounts with multiple signatories is a pain, but probably not any more so than setting up such a *bank* account from scratch today in this brave new world of IDs, anti-fraud and anti-money-laundering regulations.

He was paid twice in the sense that you sent him £250 twice. Quite a bit of the rest seems to be you suffering because of *his* finger trouble.

If you'd sent him a £250 Postal Order, and his dog ate it, you'd probably be even more in trouble. All the Post Office's fault, obviously.

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 11:20:11 on Mon, 31 Dec 2007, The Natural Philosopher remarked:

Assuming you are referring to the much discussed £250 purchase, the money was sent once, and ended up in purdah; sent again by order of the buyer and cancelled by the buyer, then taken from their credit card for the third time (on account of the second payment being cancelled).

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 11:28:23 on Mon, 31 Dec 2007, Tim Ward remarked:

And it's the same on eBay if you are buying from a trader. What you might be "wishing" (but probably only as a buyer, not a potential seller) is that the same rules applied to individuals selling things on eBay.

[Tim Ward]

I know that if I can be arsed to spend long enough reading the small print (and printing myself off a copy just in case it vanishes or changes) I can in theory work out to what extent ebay and/or PayPal do or don't provide an escrow or guarantee or any other service. I'm happy to accept that it's mostly "don't".

I know that if I am a buyer dealing with a private individual outside ebay I have the following choices:

(1) Physical meeting. Inspect the goods and hand over the cash. If I failed to spot a problem during my inspection that's my problem, I know and accept that.

(2) Credit card (within the appropriate limits), if they have some means of accepting payment. If the seller defaults I can go after the credit card company.

(3) Escrow service, should I want to pay for it.

(4) Take a punt.

I know that if I am a seller dealing with a private individual outside ebay I have the following choices:

(1) Bank their cheque, wait until it clears (which cheques really do these days!), then ship the goods.

(2) Physical meeting, take cash. If it's lots of cash, or they're daft enough to try to pay me in £50 notes, we then go to a bank together, I pay in the cash and get a receipt.

(3) Escrow service, should the buyer want to pay for it.

(4) Take a punt.

The problem is that with ebay in many cases the choice is basically (4) whether you like it or not, via PayPal. What you cannot replicate without using ebay and PayPal is the following frequently complained-of scenario:

(a) Punter agrees to buy something from you, and sends you payment via PayPal.

(b) You ship the goods.

(c) Punter falsely claims you never shipped the goods.

(d) Punter gets PayPal to recover the payment from your credit card account.

(e) There's f-all you can do about it.

(f) Punter puts the goods back on ebay for re-sale.

[Duncan Wood]

How does that differ from selling something by any other means remotely?

[Bob Eager]

It's harder in the latter case to get the money back from the seller.

[Duncan Wood]

You can still reclaim it from thge creditcard company though. They stop the transfer of disputed transactions immediatly.

[Tim Ward]

Duh! - read the post! - that's what it's all about!

[Duncan Wood]

You can replicate all of your A to E substituting the word Visa for Paypal.

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 17:12:48 on Tue, 1 Jan 2008, Tim Ward remarked:

There's a learning curve for any new activity. Even a physical auction is probably a bit daunting the first time someone tries to buy something. All that faffing about with registering and getting a number, viewing the goods, understanding when a particular item comes up, what fees there are and so on.

Crucially: because a vendor accepting credit cards has been through quite a complex vetting process, and the card company is getting a substantial slice of the action.

You can still examine the goods before bidding, if you wish and the seller agrees. Not often worth the effort, but not that dissimilar to a real auction. Sending and receiving money by PayPal is more like using a postal order - but buying one from the Post Office by DD that you can cancel later if the thing you spend it on is no good - quite a risk for the Post Office.

You send the goods by Recorded Signed For - this has an automatic Proof of Posting built in, and proof of delivery. Costs very little extra. Should really be considered worth the money.

It doesn't work like that. PayPal only retrieves (after dispute resolution has failed) money in your PayPal account. Buyers often see this is a *dis*advantage. But it's rather like the Post Office "stopping" a postal order, which (if the concept existed) would only work until the PO had been paid in and cleared.

If the money was grabbed back from your PayPal account, and you had failed to use a postal method that gives *you* any protection (rather than insurance against loss/damage that protects the buyer), you might have learnt a lesson. On the other hand...

... it's fraud.

[Bob Eager]

If it's a private seller (as in most of the cases under discussion) it won't be a credit card.

[Duncan Wood]

The above scenario was selling something to a private punter.

[Bob Eager]

My understanding is that that was true, but from a private seller. That's where the trouble lies...scamming private sellers.

[Skipweasel]

Horton, McGrew, Sneetch, Zax and Lorax here.

[Colin Wilson]

Workgroup: EEYORE

Closely followed by:

DellPC DuffPC2 Laptop Craptop2

[The Natural Philosopher]

My attitude is if they wont give me a name and address to send a cheque to, i don't want to do business with them.