Live data from Hacker News

PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute

regretsy.com

151–160 of 303 posts

Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute

#151
post #14

Wait, isn't $2500 very cheap for a violin? I seem to remember the rather mediocre violin I had as a kid costing more than that (such hopeful tiger parents).

The violin in the article supposedly made it through WWII.

Lots of things made it through WWII. Bringing that up (it survived the Arab oil embargo, Iran-Contra, WWI, the Spanish-American Influenza, 9/11...) is just rhetoric to drive home that it was more than a century old.

Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute

#152
The thing is if an item is counterfeit and paypal allowed payment to proceed they could be litigated. If a third party imported counterfit goods and didn't take due action they could be fined and / or lose their license. Paypal does this to minimize risk and effort (cost) involved, whether this is a good way to minimize risk is apparent but than again this is paypal.

Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute

#153
post #86
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I think my childhood violin cost less than $200.

I have a friend who teaches violin to kids. He says that really cheap violins won't stay in tune at all, which makes teaching very difficult; it's impossible to tell the difference between poor playing and poor performance from the instrument. $200 (today) is most likely still in that category, with cheap but usable starting somewhere over $500.

This. The violin, bow, and strings all affect the sound produced.

In high school, I bought my violin and bow used for around $750. While it was fine for orchestral/symphonic stuff, it definitely paled in tone, volume, and responsiveness compared to some of my friends' more expensive violins.

When I got to be the soloist during my senior year, I borrowed a much nicer violin from my director and bought a new bow because I simply couldn't get the right sound out of my own violin.

Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute

#154
I took violin in 6th grade and all of our student models had the "Stradivarius" label. The teacher said about half the violins in the world had a label like that, it was just the style.

PayPal's actions and those of these anti-counterfeiting fascists make me sick. How long until they start organizing "counterfeit violin" burnings in the streets?

Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I froze for a second after reading that statement, which I was completely unaware of. I sometimes buy and sell rare coins (particularly US Morgan dollars), which regularly go for thousands of dollars. I have one on eBay at this very moment that I'm attempting to get $3000+ for. I've never heard of such a dispute happening before, or have I had any issues in the past, but now knowing this, i'm really scared of what mi…

Out of curiosity, how do you destroy a coin?

The easiest way to destroy the value of numismatic coin would probably be to clean it. A coin at the highest level of grading would be "destroyed" (lowered to a less valuable rating) by simply picking it up outside of its sealed, graded holder.

There are plenty of ways to destroy it physically (throw it in a forge, bend it with pliers, etc).

I'm a bit more concerned that a scammer wouldn't destroy the coin per se, but make a claim on authenticity, causing me to lose my money and also the coin.

Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute

#157
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The above clause of the TOS is the reason not to sue. The seller agreed to a TOS that says that if PayPal decides that it is counterfeit, they refund the money and the item is destroyed, without any restriction on what care PayPal has to take to decide that it's counterfeit. So PayPal acted within the terms of their agreement.

PayPal is not qualified to know if the Violin is real or not, So there would be grounds that it would be impossible for them to know without an expert.

Especially when the seller claims he had a professional appraisal done on it.

Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute

#159

Yeah, Regretsy.com is a bastion of fine journalism. I'd wait to get your panties in a knot until a real news site reports this.

Hard to understand the down voting. Are people actually that stupid that they believe the story is true?

The story is self-consistent and it's consistent with PayPal's ToS. It's consistent with the destruction of other "counterfeit label" products.

Given PayPal's long history of nastiness I don't think there are many people remaining who would give them any benefit of the doubt.

Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute

#160

The funny part of this story is in the comments section. A bizarre number of strangers seem to be "cut up" or "I'm crying" over an inanimate object that isn't even theirs!

You should really try to appreciate how a musician relates to their antique violin.

Would you not understand peoples' sadness if a collection of great paintings were destroyed in a museum fire? The sickest part of it was that it was destroyed intentionally by humans for no good reason at all.

Sure, this was not the most valuable piece in the world but there are definitely a finite number of them remaining. My guess is a lot of them are moving to collectors in Asia never to be seen again in the West. Who would have thought that would be the safest place for them?

Oooh this makes me sick.

Post reply on HN