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>A wad of cash or a check in envelopes isn't the most scalable or amazingly convenient payment solution on Earth, but it is more equitable and irreversible than

>A wad of cash or a check in envelopes isn't the most scalable or amazingly convenient payment solution on Earth, but it is more equitable and irreversible than the current system. Cash gets counterfeited. Checks bounce. Invoices go unpaid. Debtors go bankrupt. Packages get pilfered. The world is full of shoplifters, skimmers, change raisers, rip dealers, embezzlers, commercial burglars and opportunists. It didn't "get this bad" - it used to be much worse. Shrinkage is a cost of doing business and it's priced in to margins. If your business venture can't withstand a normal level of shrinkage that all your competitors deal with, then you didn't have a business to begin with.

user5994461 9y ago
Agreed. It was much worse before. Items were sold on craiglist or gumtree. They are completely filled with scams, send cash by mail and never receive the item. Noone sane would buy an item online.
- jstanley 9y ago
  > Noone sane would buy an item online. I buy almost everything online (normally eBay, because I like the convenient price comparison between different vendors, and the consistent search and checkout interfaces). I almost never have any issue.
  - Naga 9y ago
    I believe he was saying that it used to be much worse, not that it is like that now.
- icebraining 9y ago
  I, along with many thousands, regularly buy stuff on OLX (local equivalent of those sites) and pay by bank transfer (which is not reversible) or even cash-equivalents.
anoncoward111 9y ago
You place an order for an item from me. If you send me counterfeit cash or a bounced check, I'm not sending you the item. I don't do invoices. I don't do credit. And if the package is stolen from the mailing service I choose, then hopefully I purchased some type of tracking service for it to fulfill an insurance claim from the post office. There is no justification for the new "chargeback culture" that exists in our society. Only the most centralized sellers can eat these costs. This is a temporary win for consumers-- just wait until friendly indie sellers are pinched out of existence.
- jdietrich 9y ago
  >There is no justification for the new "chargeback culture" that exists in our society. Customer protection. A lot of those "friendly indie sellers" are selling substandard goods, failing to ship products or engaged in outright fraud. Chargebacks exist as a dispute resolution mechanism of last resort. If you can't eat those costs, you don't have a business. If your chargeback rate is over 1%, you're doing something seriously wrong and your merchant will eventually close your account. If you can't comfortably absorb the shrinkage from a chargeback rate of below 1%, your margins are far too small. There's nothing stopping you from running a mail-order business that only accepts cash, but customers will quite reasonably baulk at the risk and inconvenience. If you don't trust your customers enough to accept credit cards, why should they trust you enough to send you an envelope full of greenbacks?
  - Gargoyle 9y ago
    >If you can't eat those costs, you don't have a business. Everyone agrees on this point. >If your chargeback rate is over 1%, you're doing something seriously wrong Not everyone agrees on this point. The point the gp is making is that the chargeback rates are too high due to circumstances beyond his control. He can't stop people from taking advantage of the system as it currently operates and basically committing fraud against him at a higher rate. There's no policy he can implement to prevent this. Because he's not in control.
    - cepth 9y ago
derefr 9y ago
Shrinkage isn’t the problem; being locked out of using a payment processor because of your shrinkage (which you’re eating) is the problem. Ever asked a small retailer how they feel about chargebacks? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not that they care one whit about losing money on the individual transactions. It used to be that your storefront getting robbed—because that’s essentially what this is—was a temporary setback. As long as you had also made enough profit to afford to restock, and had taken appropriate precautions to deposit your revenue in the bank regularly, such losses cold be considered just a cost of “doing business in a bad neighbourhood.” Nowadays, though, a business that might regularly get robbed—digitally—is untenable, because even if you want to restock and continue on, and even if your business is profitable enough to always be able to afford to eat such losses, your payment processors will still “fire” you as a customer. (Or see the “neighbourhood” you’re in and never take you on as a customer at all.)
- syngrog66 9y ago
  thus, one strong clear use for cryptocurrency. a payment system that people cant get locked out of by the whims of the fiat middlemen

user5994461 9y ago

Agreed. It was much worse before. Items were sold on craiglist or gumtree. They are completely filled with scams, send cash by mail and never receive the item. Noone sane would buy an item online.

jstanley 9y ago
> Noone sane would buy an item online. I buy almost everything online (normally eBay, because I like the convenient price comparison between different vendors, and the consistent search and checkout interfaces). I almost never have any issue.
- Naga 9y ago
  I believe he was saying that it used to be much worse, not that it is like that now.
icebraining 9y ago
I, along with many thousands, regularly buy stuff on OLX (local equivalent of those sites) and pay by bank transfer (which is not reversible) or even cash-equivalents.

anoncoward111 9y ago

You place an order for an item from me. If you send me counterfeit cash or a bounced check, I'm not sending you the item. I don't do invoices. I don't do credit. And if the package is stolen from the mailing service I choose, then hopefully I purchased some type of tracking service for it to fulfill an insurance claim from the post office. There is no justification for the new "chargeback culture" that exists in our society. Only the most centralized sellers can eat these costs. This is a temporary win for consumers-- just wait until friendly indie sellers are pinched out of existence.

jdietrich 9y ago
>There is no justification for the new "chargeback culture" that exists in our society. Customer protection. A lot of those "friendly indie sellers" are selling substandard goods, failing to ship products or engaged in outright fraud. Chargebacks exist as a dispute resolution mechanism of last resort. If you can't eat those costs, you don't have a business. If your chargeback rate is over 1%, you're doing something seriously wrong and your merchant will eventually close your account. If you can't comfortably absorb the shrinkage from a chargeback rate of below 1%, your margins are far too small. There's nothing stopping you from running a mail-order business that only accepts cash, but customers will quite reasonably baulk at the risk and inconvenience. If you don't trust your customers enough to accept credit cards, why should they trust you enough to send you an envelope full of greenbacks?
- Gargoyle 9y ago
  >If you can't eat those costs, you don't have a business. Everyone agrees on this point. >If your chargeback rate is over 1%, you're doing something seriously wrong Not everyone agrees on this point. The point the gp is making is that the chargeback rates are too high due to circumstances beyond his control. He can't stop people from taking advantage of the system as it currently operates and basically committing fraud against him at a higher rate. There's no policy he can implement to prevent this. Because he's not in control.
  - cepth 9y ago

derefr 9y ago

Shrinkage isn’t the problem; being locked out of using a payment processor because of your shrinkage (which you’re eating) is the problem. Ever asked a small retailer how they feel about chargebacks? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not that they care one whit about losing money on the individual transactions. It used to be that your storefront getting robbed—because that’s essentially what this is—was a temporary setback. As long as you had also made enough profit to afford to restock, and had taken appropriate precautions to deposit your revenue in the bank regularly, such losses cold be considered just a cost of “doing business in a bad neighbourhood.” Nowadays, though, a business that might regularly get robbed—digitally—is untenable, because even if you want to restock and continue on, and even if your business is profitable enough to always be able to afford to eat such losses, your payment processors will still “fire” you as a customer. (Or see the “neighbourhood” you’re in and never take you on as a customer at all.)

syngrog66 9y ago
thus, one strong clear use for cryptocurrency. a payment system that people cant get locked out of by the whims of the fiat middlemen