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irreversibility is mostly a negative for anyone who is interested in getting a scam/fraudulent charge taken back. What happens when you purchase an item from so

by judge2020 5y ago

irreversibility is mostly a negative for anyone who is interested in getting a scam/fraudulent charge taken back. What happens when you purchase an item from some web shop with ETH and it never arrives?

seibelj 5y ago
This is actually an argument I totally disagree with. Businesses are long-lived, have reputations to maintain, and need to build trust. They have every incentive possible to treat their customers right, and issue refunds on valid issues. It is the customers that are sketchy and usually one-offs, and thus use stolen credit cards to burn the business with chargebacks. Businesses lose a huge amount to fraudulent payments. I would rather let businesses decide whether to choose payment options that allow chargebacks or not, and then customers can choose which businesses to support. The method of payment becomes one factor in shopping decisions. Businesses that eliminate chargeback risk are ultimately more competitive and can pass savings onto consumers. The whole chargeback thing is a ridiculous byproduct of our antiquated payment rails.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > They have every incentive possible to treat their customers right, and issue refunds on valid issues. There are plenty of fly-by-night operations that will smash and grab as many transactions as they can and not care about their reputations because they'll just set up under another alias. Further, if your account/wallet gets compromised there is also no irreversibility. Whereas with the 'regular' banking system transactions can usually get reversed.
  - herendin2 5y ago
    So, just don't do business with those obvious fly-by-night companies who have no established reputation or brand? From a company's point of view almost every individual consumer looks like a potential fly-by-nighter, so companies are forced to accept that risk, and we all share the costs of that. It could be useful to offer an alternative to this paradigm.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - throw0101a 5y ago
      > So, just don't do business with those obvious fly-by-night companies who have no established reputation or brand? You're telling people to "just" be rational. Or to not be susceptible to slick marketing gimmicks, or to not be bamboozled by a fast-talking salesman.
Brian_K_White 5y ago
Another way to think about that is like cash. When someone gives you some cash, should they be able to sneak into your sock drawer and take it back? Would you accept payment that came with a remote control held by someone else when you have no such way to recover your goods or services or time? Insurance and dispute resolution are separate jobs from the job of the money itself.
- SahAssar 5y ago
  > Insurance and dispute resolution are separate jobs from the job of the money itself. But if you layer those on top of the money does not the whole stack loose the purported benefits of crypto-currency? What I mean is if you have intermediaries to handle Insurance and dispute resolution (which are needed since people want that) do you still get any anonymization or irreversibility benefits from crypto-currency? What's the point of crypto-currency if we need to add layers on top of it that remove all the benefits?
  - Brian_K_White 5y ago
    "But if you layer those on top of the money does not the whole stack loose the purported benefits of crypto-currency?" No. I don't even know where to begin with unpacking all the invalid assumptions you just made. The job of the money is just to be a counting system. It's just a variable that holds a value. What you do with that value is whatever you want. You want to make some transaction be tentative and have recourse and strings? You can arrange for that an infinite number of ways besides processing through Visa in exactly the same way Visa does it this moment. And of course you don't always want recourse. Eventually you want a transaction to be done and irrevokable.
tluyben2 5y ago
While I agree with this, the ease of chargeback will make you pause if you ever tried being a merchant. We ran a successful e-commerce operation about 10 years ago and our product was digital but every one of them cost us money and single use (think gift cards); by definition the product could not be faulty itself. Maybe you can expect a few mistakes (no clue how but let's say) and yet we got a lot of chargebacks, of course after they used the product. That is the risk of the business, but it should not be. If I can reasonable show you got the product (activation location matches your CC zip code let's say in this case) chargeback should not be possible and, after experiences like this, actually punishable IMHO. As in, if you chargeback and it is not the merchant fault your CC should be taken away as you are apparently a scammer. And do it again with another bank, the authorities should be notified. Chargeback in the US way (it is harder in the EU, they ask a lot more questions) is, in cases like ours, simply stealing which is a crime no? And yet allowed and people are even proud of it on forums etc. Consumer protection is great but as a b2c merchant I would only accept crypto from US customers if I would ever do this again (which I will not). (The person who bought the business, and knew all the details as we provided all the exact numbers from our e-commerce system and bank, actually burnt out and killed the business at great loss to himself when he saw how many people are actually down right thieves)

seibelj 5y ago

This is actually an argument I totally disagree with. Businesses are long-lived, have reputations to maintain, and need to build trust. They have every incentive possible to treat their customers right, and issue refunds on valid issues. It is the customers that are sketchy and usually one-offs, and thus use stolen credit cards to burn the business with chargebacks. Businesses lose a huge amount to fraudulent payments. I would rather let businesses decide whether to choose payment options that allow chargebacks or not, and then customers can choose which businesses to support. The method of payment becomes one factor in shopping decisions. Businesses that eliminate chargeback risk are ultimately more competitive and can pass savings onto consumers. The whole chargeback thing is a ridiculous byproduct of our antiquated payment rails.

throw0101a 5y ago
> They have every incentive possible to treat their customers right, and issue refunds on valid issues. There are plenty of fly-by-night operations that will smash and grab as many transactions as they can and not care about their reputations because they'll just set up under another alias. Further, if your account/wallet gets compromised there is also no irreversibility. Whereas with the 'regular' banking system transactions can usually get reversed.
- herendin2 5y ago
  So, just don't do business with those obvious fly-by-night companies who have no established reputation or brand? From a company's point of view almost every individual consumer looks like a potential fly-by-nighter, so companies are forced to accept that risk, and we all share the costs of that. It could be useful to offer an alternative to this paradigm.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - throw0101a 5y ago
    > So, just don't do business with those obvious fly-by-night companies who have no established reputation or brand? You're telling people to "just" be rational. Or to not be susceptible to slick marketing gimmicks, or to not be bamboozled by a fast-talking salesman.

Brian_K_White 5y ago

Another way to think about that is like cash. When someone gives you some cash, should they be able to sneak into your sock drawer and take it back? Would you accept payment that came with a remote control held by someone else when you have no such way to recover your goods or services or time? Insurance and dispute resolution are separate jobs from the job of the money itself.

SahAssar 5y ago
> Insurance and dispute resolution are separate jobs from the job of the money itself. But if you layer those on top of the money does not the whole stack loose the purported benefits of crypto-currency? What I mean is if you have intermediaries to handle Insurance and dispute resolution (which are needed since people want that) do you still get any anonymization or irreversibility benefits from crypto-currency? What's the point of crypto-currency if we need to add layers on top of it that remove all the benefits?
- Brian_K_White 5y ago
  "But if you layer those on top of the money does not the whole stack loose the purported benefits of crypto-currency?" No. I don't even know where to begin with unpacking all the invalid assumptions you just made. The job of the money is just to be a counting system. It's just a variable that holds a value. What you do with that value is whatever you want. You want to make some transaction be tentative and have recourse and strings? You can arrange for that an infinite number of ways besides processing through Visa in exactly the same way Visa does it this moment. And of course you don't always want recourse. Eventually you want a transaction to be done and irrevokable.

tluyben2 5y ago

While I agree with this, the ease of chargeback will make you pause if you ever tried being a merchant. We ran a successful e-commerce operation about 10 years ago and our product was digital but every one of them cost us money and single use (think gift cards); by definition the product could not be faulty itself. Maybe you can expect a few mistakes (no clue how but let's say) and yet we got a lot of chargebacks, of course after they used the product. That is the risk of the business, but it should not be. If I can reasonable show you got the product (activation location matches your CC zip code let's say in this case) chargeback should not be possible and, after experiences like this, actually punishable IMHO. As in, if you chargeback and it is not the merchant fault your CC should be taken away as you are apparently a scammer. And do it again with another bank, the authorities should be notified. Chargeback in the US way (it is harder in the EU, they ask a lot more questions) is, in cases like ours, simply stealing which is a crime no? And yet allowed and people are even proud of it on forums etc. Consumer protection is great but as a b2c merchant I would only accept crypto from US customers if I would ever do this again (which I will not). (The person who bought the business, and knew all the details as we provided all the exact numbers from our e-commerce system and bank, actually burnt out and killed the business at great loss to himself when he saw how many people are actually down right thieves)