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This also highlights one of the most ridiculous properties of many payment methods/how we handle money in general. Both credit cards and bank accounts allow oth

This also highlights one of the most ridiculous properties of many payment methods/how we handle money in general. Both credit cards and bank accounts allow others to just "pull" money from them [0]. To me this is such a silly feature (bug): it's like letting anyone send emails in your name if you don't regularly check your sent folder to cancel fraudulent outgoing mails. The story described in the article would not have happened if our payment methods were all "push"-based. E.g. if you want to protect buyer and seller, a protocol could look like this: 1. select items to buy 2. send money to a trusted 3rd party (e.g. amazon) 3. the vendor ships the items or you can claim back your money in a predefined time frame This could even be done without a trusted third party if the used money was programmable [1]. [0] having grown up in Germany where cash and debit cards are the main payment methods (and knowing much securer systems), finding out about this was quite a shock back then [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Multisignature https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Multisignature

calvano915 8y ago
I'm all for improving the consumer experience but I don't see how this case would have gone differently. The likeliest scenario is the woman making the purchase did not notice the shipping charge when adding to cart and going through checkout. Perhaps something happened where the seller was able to modify the free shipping to the actual charge but as someone who has used Amazon and sold on Amazon for years, this is not likely/usual. I've discovered deeper in the comments that using 1-click to purchase allows for sellers to add shipping fees later that do not appear to the purchaser unless they check their order history (It says shipping is FREE on the product page but this is not actually the case). I've never used 1-click so this is why I haven't experienced this problem before.
- sgeisler 8y ago
  > but I don't see how this case would have gone differently If you have to make a conscious decision to transfer money first before they ship anything I guess you would notice that $1000 for some plates is a bit much. A good example for this is paypal (even though I don't like them as a middleman): whenever I pay something using it I am redirected to their website and am shown what I will pay to whom in return for what and money only leaves my account if I confirm the transfer. > 1-click to purchase Well, 1-click buying is an anti-feature for me: it promotes impulsive, non-batched and probably quite often unnecessary buying and makes the whole process less transparent (what lead to this incident).

calvano915 8y ago

I'm all for improving the consumer experience but I don't see how this case would have gone differently. The likeliest scenario is the woman making the purchase did not notice the shipping charge when adding to cart and going through checkout. Perhaps something happened where the seller was able to modify the free shipping to the actual charge but as someone who has used Amazon and sold on Amazon for years, this is not likely/usual. I've discovered deeper in the comments that using 1-click to purchase allows for sellers to add shipping fees later that do not appear to the purchaser unless they check their order history (It says shipping is FREE on the product page but this is not actually the case). I've never used 1-click so this is why I haven't experienced this problem before.

sgeisler 8y ago
> but I don't see how this case would have gone differently If you have to make a conscious decision to transfer money first before they ship anything I guess you would notice that $1000 for some plates is a bit much. A good example for this is paypal (even though I don't like them as a middleman): whenever I pay something using it I am redirected to their website and am shown what I will pay to whom in return for what and money only leaves my account if I confirm the transfer. > 1-click to purchase Well, 1-click buying is an anti-feature for me: it promotes impulsive, non-batched and probably quite often unnecessary buying and makes the whole process less transparent (what lead to this incident).