[Novice-Rigs] Slightly Off Topic: E-COMMERCE

[biz]

Hi Eddy,

Well go ahead and vent cause I thing you hit the nail on the head! - I am
thinking the same thing - clearly online trading is dying.

Like Global Warming - its the weaker species that are dying off first -
coral and frogs. In online commerace - small items are now being made to be
cost-ineffective.

My expereince with USPS is a bit different. You wait for about 30 minutes in
line then you come to the window. Clerk takes the Postal money order and
holds it to the light to see the water mark. Then she or he looks up the
numbers in a large "phone book" to see if it's invalid or stolen. When it
passes that test - they look in the money drawer and see if they have enough
to cover it - if not then you have to go and stand in line at another window
and start the process again.

What I have learned is it's alomst impossible to cash a US postal money
order over $150 unless you go to the larger post office and stand in line
just before closing to insure they have enough money in the till. You might
have to try several times if you have something large like $500.

There are other money orders. Just got one from "Wal-mart". Went to Wal-mart
and they said they could not cash it. You have to deposit it in a bank and
wait 15 days to clear. Albertsons food stores also have them as well as
Western Union so I figure anyone can start up a Money Order service and
print these things up. Cashing them in is another story...

I'll go further and say if our governments are as interested as they say
they are on e-commerace then they should be directly involved in an "E CASH"
alternative. Only governments can print and directly exchange money and they
have set up systems for larger banks which they control for exchanges
between countries. Clearly they are not interested in personal commerace and
just want to ride the golden goose for awhile till it falls down and dies.

"...seems they'd experienced a lot of fraud of late from some nasty
Americans forging money orders to rip-off trusting, dumb Canucks like me."

Well I can re-call a lot of Americans ripped off on eBay by Canadians.

I think it's fair to say that there are a few bad apples on both sides of
the boarder and leave it like that. Again, part of the problem is that law
enforcement agencies have given online commerace a low priority - they are
going for the big flash in the pan - publicity wise - to get more money for
their departmentss - news seldom reports they release all the people
arrested since it's almost impossible to make a strong case aginst them.

AS you said - hamfests and flea markets are coming back - maybe that's for
the best.

Biz  WDØHCO