6 ms·
Didn't know this 10.1 b clause until now but it makes it VERY clear to me: NEVER use PayPal to sell anything that could in anyway be disputed as counterfeit gi
by dotBen 15y ago
Didn't know this 10.1 b clause until now but it makes it VERY clear to me:
NEVER use PayPal to sell anything that could in anyway be disputed as counterfeit given that the terms allow PayPal to deems what is genuine/fake remotely, without physical inspection and results in not only money witheld but a potentially genuine item being destroyed.
So so crazy.
- walexander 15y agoI froze for a second after reading that statement, which I was completely unaware of. I sometimes buy and sell rare coins (particularly US Morgan dollars), which regularly go for thousands of dollars. I have one on eBay at this very moment that I'm attempting to get $3000+ for. I've never heard of such a dispute happening before, or have I had any issues in the past, but now knowing this, i'm really scared of what might happen. We seriously need a viable competitor to the paypal/ebay system yesterday.
- psychotik 15y agoOut of curiosity, how do you destroy a coin?
- andrewkreid 15y agoTraditionally, by leaving it on the train tracks.
- kd5bjo 15y agoMelting.
- burgerbrain 15y agoI remember a year or three ago there was a story going around about Chinese scrap metal recyclers getting shipments of "destroyed" euro coins and reassembling them to pass off as intact money. Turns out at the time the official method to decommission the coins was to pop out the center piece. So to answer your question: In some cases, not well enough. ;) EDIT: source: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/04/euro_coin_recyc.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/04/euro_coin_recy...
- walexander 15y agoThe easiest way to destroy the value of numismatic coin would probably be to clean it. A coin at the highest level of grading would be "destroyed" (lowered to a less valuable rating) by simply picking it up outside of its sealed, graded holder. There are plenty of ways to destroy it physically (throw it in a forge, bend it with pliers, etc). I'm a bit more concerned that a scammer wouldn't destroy the coin per se, but make a claim on authenticity, causing me to lose my money and also the coin.
- prawn 15y agoWould it be trivial for someone to dispute the authenticity of the coin, receive PayPal's request for its destruction, photograph something that looked like a mangled coin, and then essentially get the coin for free?
- sitkack 15y agoLets do this?! We could buy anything, dispute the validity of said item, send them pictures of the destruction (keeping the original) and PROFIT! All these years of collecting underpants have paid off.
- walexander 15y agoConsidering the amount of money to be made, I think it's reasonable. I present the following: 1) Get the original (say, $3000 coin) carefully out of the holder - then smash the holder with a hammer. 2) Find a replica of that year coin, which really is a fake, for $10-$50. Scratch it up, bend it, whatever. 3) Send the original coin back for grading to be certified with a new graded coin holder and serial number, to be sold for $3000.
- kls 15y agoRight which is what seems so illogical to me about this policy. I having little experience with coins could probably come up with that one pretty quickly. As well with the subject of this post a violin. I could easily go get a kids First Start violin for under $100 and smash it, take a photo and send it in. This to me seems like the most ill conceived business process ever dreamed up. Hell 20 minutes in Photoshop and I could destroy anything.
- catwell 15y agoA physics teacher of mine destroyed one in class by putting it in acid for an experiment. Funny fact: at that time it was illegal in my country (France). This law has been abrogated since then to allow machines that crush coins to make souvenirs.
- rmc 15y agoI presume you could take a bolt cutters to it and cut it up?
- kilburn 15y agoI'm pretty sure it would blend...
- tokenadult 15y agoWe seriously need a viable competitor to the paypal/ebay system yesterday. That may be, and I make extremely little use of PayPal (only as a processor of credit card payments for merchants I trust on other grounds, and never as a seller of goods). But any new viable competitor to PayPal will have to solve all over all the cases of fraud and abuse that were responded to over the years by PayPal's current policies. "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Common Law (1881), page 1.
- rzbn 15y agoI think they need to be separate. Paypal is still a great tool for transactions and I don't see a true competitor any time soon. Ebay on the other hand is getting worst everyday. I visited their own forum and it is filled with extremely disgruntled sellers. The entire site is a complete mess. I saw post on /r/startups about a ebay competitor in the works.
- wcoenen 15y agoI think that the problem is exactly that paypal and credit cards try to solve the trust issue, but they do it in a simplistic way that heavily favors the buyer. Let payments be payments like cash, and solve trust issues separately with things like escrow services.
- epscylonb 15y agoThis is where bitcoin may be useful.
- JumpCrisscross 15y agoIt seems like this rule is designed to benefit not the buyer but an extra-transactional party, namely, the IP owner - that is usually the case in anti-counterfeit programmes. The case of the violin is just a perversion of a rule that was probably implemented to prevent the sale of fake watches, handbags, and the like.
- WettowelReactor 15y agoExcept that Paypal has only solved fraud from the consumer side. Policies like this leave the sellers ripe for fraud.
- MPSimmons 15y agoSquare. Authorize payment via phone.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- _rknLA 15y agouhm, http://dwolla.com/ http://dwolla.com/ ?
- kls 15y agoIf I where in your situation, I would immediately add that text to all of my auctions with a justification as to why you will not accept pay-pal for your particular transactions. I would then use a third party escrow service for anything that pay-pal could consider a counterfeit. This sounds to me like Pay-Pal is doing the bidding of trademark holders. When that is not it's role in society. It's not the counterfeit police and it should not be in the business of destroying counterfeit merchandise. They should require it be returned and if they feel like being good Samaritans, notify the trademark holder of the infringement. Let the holder police their own crap.
- rlpb 15y agoThe terms don't allow that. It says that Paypal must reasonably believe the item to be counterfeit. For this kind of item, clearly only a physical inspection would be reasonable, and I would sue them over it. But I agree - it's clearly better not to use Paypal at all.