>much as new eBay sellers offer the first few items at a discount You don't understand eBay. Maybe when eBay was the wild west new sellers would offer a disco

>much as new eBay sellers offer the first few items at a discount You don't understand eBay. Maybe when eBay was the wild west new sellers would offer a discount. This just doesn't happen anymore and not in many years. Why would they? The buyers know they are protected by eBay's buyer protection program so buying from eBay is very safe, it is safer than selling on eBay. Sellers need insurance on what they sell (or they self insure) because a buyer can claim they didn't get the package or it was damaged and eBay will always side with the buyer and burn the seller. This is a fairly well known scam. Feedback is almost completely meaningless anyway. I've been burned by eBay sellers who had 50,000 feedback. They sent me a beat up broken case DVD with possible water damaged when it was supposed to be brand new. When I complained to them they wanted me to either 1)ship it back at my expense or 2)keep it with a 30% refund. Neither are acceptable in eBay's eyes, so I opened up a dispute and got my money back the next day. I also bought mislabeled batteries that were advertised as a different (reputable) brand on eBay from a scam seller with thousands of feedback. The second I complained the seller refunded me. eBay is very clear on their buyer protections. So sellers would be cutting into their profit margins for what? Selling on eBay is already fairly expensive, there is lots of fees. Quite a few sellers don't make it a business, I know I just use eBay once in a while to get rid of some stuff I would get rid of anyway, so just trying to get a few bucks off of something I would otherwise get $0 for. If every seller who used eBay that way had to sell their stuff at a discount, it wouldn't be appealing to the sometimes-sellers. If I saw a new seller with discounted merchandise, it would look shady, I would think it might be possibly stolen. Don't compare it to something that doesn't exist. >6. We use flat rates not in order to deceive, but simply because they are more intuitive to borrowers and lenders than APR. So how come the US outlawed them with the Truth in Lending Act? Because they wanted to bring transparency to lending. Flat rates hide the true cost. Edited to add: You write: >Zidisha has lowered the interest rate to borrowers throughout Africa and other developing nations to under 10 percent. There is also a 5 percent service fee, which covers messaging costs and and transfer fees. Africa isn't a country, stop treating it like one.