From: toma@baritone (Thomas Arneberg)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.wanted
Subject: Re: Info on selling over the net?
Date: 16 Dec 92 15:37:15 GMT
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.

In article <1992Dec15.225659.29514@athena.mit.edu> rajiv@athena.mit.edu (Rajiv A Manglani) writes:
>
>I would like to know people's experiences with buying computers and making
>purchases over the net. Good/bad experiences? What if you pay COD for faulty
>equipment? Any comments would be welcome. Post or Email.
>
>rajiv@athena.mit.edu

Any time I'm buying something for less than $100, I immediately mail a 
check. Every time (I've done at least 20 net.deals), I get the merchandise
within a week. One time an external hard drive did not work with my Mac
Plus, and when I sent it back, the seller wrote me a check for refund. I've
never had any hint of a problem with this approach.

There are two things I am optimistic about: 
  (1) 99% of people are basically honest (goes up to 99.9% for net.people 
      and 99.99% for Mac net.people!). If you treat people like they are
      honest (i.e. trust them by sending the check first), people will
      honor that and good feelings will abound. IMHO!

  (2) If someone DOES screw you, I have high confidence in the ability of
      the net to track him down and eventually get the money back!! I know
      that if someone within 50 miles of me were accused to have ripped
      someone off, I'd drive over to his house and see what the deal is.
      Many, many people will go to great lengths to see that net.deals are
      kept honest. This has happened many times in the past few years.

HOWEVER...having said all that, I recently did a deal for $2500...and the
seller no longer had an email address. The combination of the high price
and lack of trackability prompted me to add a little complexity.

As many people have pointed out, COD shipment is no safer than anything
else -- you could have a box of rocks. Paying half up front and half after
shipment isn't the answer, either -- it only guarantees that you'll only 
lose half your money, but I don't want to lose $1250.

So my solution was to have the seller choose a "public" third party where I
could mail a cashier's check. He chose an Apple dealer in his area. I don't
want to start a discussion about the relative honesty of Apple dealers, but
the point is that he is a public figure and is trackable. I sent him a
cashier's check for $2500 made out to the seller (in certified mail), with 
the instructions that he can't give him the check until I recieve the 
merchandise and get it all set up and working.

(He's not charging anything to mediate the transaction, but I'm going to
send him a little replica of a Cray in a lear lucite cube for his
efforts, after the deal is settled, just to thank him.)

Obviously, there is still some trust involved, but as long as you're
dealing with someone who is trackable, I don't believe it's a big issue,
given the "long arm of the net".

(P.S. -- I'm still waiting for the computer to be shipped, but I'll bet
anyone 100:1 that it arrives just fine.)

Hope this helps,
  - Tom A.
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;-) I'd rather be ____  Thomas R. Arneberg   | Internet: toma@cray.com
:-) singing in a |____| Senior IC Design Eng.| UUCP: ...!uunet!cray!toma
:-) Barbershop  _|   _| Cray Research, Inc.  | CLAIM TO FAME: Loni Anderson 
:-) Quartet!   (_)  (_) Chippewa Falls, Wisc.|   went to my high school 
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