[Milsurplus] eBay does it

[J Forster]

I disagree w/ you on this one. If you really add up all the time it
takes to reconcile electronic transactions and look for fraudulent
billings and such, it takes FAR more time. With MOs and cash, you do the
checking when you have everything right in front of you. There is no
having to go back and trying to figure out what really happened.  Also,
if someone screws up, it can be fixed then and there, or you can walk
away, before the problem propagates.

As to time, I go to the PO to pick up my mail anyway, having had far too
much of it stolen over the years. It's a small PO and it takes less than
a minute to get a MO. If I need to cash one, I get my $$$ right then and
there.

I am not concerned about latency in transactions, because if I have to
wait even a couple of weeks for something, it's no big deal. I may well
have already waited ten years or more. So what's the big deal? I can
play with my new toy in two weeks just as well as tomorrow.

FWIW,
-John

=======================

WA5CAB at cs.com wrote:

> Personally, I can't get too choked up about this.  We've always
> accepted checks and money orders (and for that matter currency after a
> few back and forths telling the prospective buyer that if the payment
> never arrived they would play Hell trying to blame us for it).  And I
> personally hate encountering a seller who won't take some form of
> electronic payment.  Writing a check, addressing an envelope and
> mailing it all take time which is in chronically short supply here.
> And it would have to be a damned rare part that I had been looking for
> years to locate before I would spend an hour and a half driving to the
> PO to buy an MO to pay for.  So basically I only object to eBay doing
> this because some of Susie's customers aren't too smart and haven't
> been able to maintain a secure PayPal or credit card account.
>
> But realistically, if we get six MO's a month it's a bumper crop.  And
> invariably, thanks to the poor reliability of First Class Mail these
> days (which should be renamed as Last Class Mail), at least one will
> take two weeks to arrive.  So we waste a lot of time asking the buyer
> whether they've actually sent payment.  And waiting for a response
> which we seldom get thanks to virulent spam blockers.  Which is
> another subject entirely.
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