From: cmk@athena.mit.edu (Charles M Kozierok)
Subject: Re: Thoughts....
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 07:20:20 GMT

In article <1992Nov6.154715.10016@aio.jsc.nasa.gov> mark@cheers.jsc.nasa.gov (Mark Manning) writes:
>After replying to the "RE:Vincent Poy....Please Reply!" thing I got
>to thinking about something.  I know this isn't a discussion place,
>but I feel this topic deserves some thought.
>
>I've sold several things through the Usenet (and plan to sell a lot
>more) but I've always been struck by the fact that some people treat
>sales here like they would over the counter sells.  In other words:
>Immediate gratification versus later gratification.  And I was
>wondering if anyone else had noticed this?
>
>To me, Usenet sales are three week sales at the minimum (7 days to
>send/receive a check, 7 days to process the check, and 7 days to
>receieve/send the item).  What with the normal life style of many
>people being one of: working very hard at work, coming home
>exhausted, and then maybe working on their own projects before
>falling into bed; the weekends are the only time for extra things
>like depositing money, wrapping things up to be mailed, and mailing
>things off.  So when people say they sent a check a week ago and
>haven't heard anything from the other person, or the other person
>has cashed the check but not responded and it has been a week; I have
>to sit back and wonder whether - in this age of nanoseconds - we
>aren't rushing things a bit too much.
>
>What do you think?
>

my $0.02 worth:

1. if you are conducting transactions on the net, you have a responsibility
   to check your e-mail regularly or provide a phone number to allow
   communication with the other party. other than a death in the family
   or natural disaster, i see no acceptable exception. after all, other
   people are trusting their money to you -- what right do you have to
   disappear for a week at a time? it takes 30 seconds to send out
   e-mail saying "i got your money, i'm still in the country, i'm
   shipping out your product on date X". anyone who can't find enough
   time to do that should not use this medium, IMHO.

2. from what i have read about mr. poy, your giving him the benefit of
   the doubt may not be justified for two (main) reasons: a) some people
   said he was deliberate about refusing COD orders; b) the problems
   happened with -so many- people

3. caveat emptor still applies out there folks. if you are buying a used
   printer cable, send the money and wait, sure. but if you are sending
   $500 for a hard disk, why not use COD? consider the $4 cost as insurance on
   your money - the same as paying a premium for travellers' cheques
   so you don't worry about losing your cash on vacation. this is not
   meant to be "i told you so" - rather, an opportunity for all of us
   to learn from this unfortunate circumstance.

(ok, $0.03 worth :-) )

i think that if there is any topic to be discussed here, this is a good
one, and it is good that it was raised. also, people who post here
should refer to the FAQ which covers many issues like this. some of them
sound almost paranoid, but then they end up in the category of "better
safe than sorry". the FAQ also covers non-intuitive situations, like
why "send half the money first, the rest after receiving the product" is
one of the *worst* things one can do.

--
charles
Newsgroups: misc.forsale.computers