PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by AnthonBerg » Wed, Jan 04, 2012, 8:57 AM UTC

marshray wrote: post #160

petercooper wrote: post #92

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 i…

If only we were as compassionate towards, say, starving people.

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

#202

Post by catwell » Wed, Jan 04, 2012, 9:06 AM UTC

psychotik wrote: post #138

walexander wrote: post #123

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?

A physics teacher of mine destroyed one in class by putting it in acid for an experiment.

Funny fact: at that time it was illegal in my country (France). This law has been abrogated since then to allow machines that crush coins to make souvenirs.

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

#203

Post by Mordor » Wed, Jan 04, 2012, 9:17 AM UTC

Even something counterfeit is worth something, so the seller is still entitled to sue (for the value of the counterfeit good). The object would then be re-valued during the trial and the seller liable for the full amount. Is this correct?

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

#204

Post by wcoenen » Wed, Jan 04, 2012, 9:18 AM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #139

walexander wrote: post #123

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…

We seriously need a viable competitor to the paypal/ebay system yesterday. That may be, and I make extremely little use of PayPal (only as a processor of credit card payments for merchants I trust on other grounds, and never as a seller of goods). But any new viable competitor to PayPal will have to solve all over all the cases of fraud and abuse that were responded to over the years by PayPal's current policies. "Th…

I think that the problem is exactly that paypal and credit cards try to solve the trust issue, but they do it in a simplistic way that heavily favors the buyer.

Let payments be payments like cash, and solve trust issues separately with things like escrow services.

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

#205

Post by praptak » Wed, Jan 04, 2012, 9:18 AM UTC

prawn wrote: post #172

walexander wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, bu…

Would it be trivial for someone to dispute the authenticity of the coin, receive PayPal's request for its destruction, photograph something that looked like a mangled coin, and then essentially get the coin for free?

Heck, with ones made of precious metals you can even actually destroy them and still make a good buck selling the gold.

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

#206

Post by darklajid » Wed, Jan 04, 2012, 9:19 AM UTC

gwern wrote: post #151

chris_gogreen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

'Erica' is selling a "French violin". WW II had a couple of unfortunate local consequences for France. Most of the list of things you mentioned might be perfectly irrational to name in a letter. WW I or II are good examples for 'Wow, it survived' remarks on local pieces of craftsmanship or art.

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

#207

Post by Confusion » Wed, Jan 04, 2012, 9:28 AM UTC

ars wrote: post #57

udp wrote: post #37

As a musician, there's something genuinely horrific about the destruction of a musical instrument. Whether it's the fault of PayPal or not, I really hope whoever has done this gets what they deserve.

> I really hope whoever has done this gets what they deserve I think they did. They got $2,500. For some reason I believe the buyer and not the seller. I think the seller fraudulently listed the violin as not what it really was, and got called on it. My reasons are: a: The buyer has only a minimal reason to lie (if they didn't like the product and tried to return it but couldn't). b: The seller refused the return, wh…

There's all kinds of reasons someone would want to refuse a violin. Sudden financial hardship. Learning that new violins are actually better than old violins (I'm not arguing that this is true: someone might become convinced of it in a matter of days). A daughter that suddenly doesn't care about violins anymore. This is an incident and there are numerous explanations to believe someone who is anonymously complaining about what happened.

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

#208

Post by Confusion » Wed, Jan 04, 2012, 9:34 AM UTC

The initial problem here is a single PayPal employee that either didn't read the case well enough to understand the item involved or just doesn't care about antiques or violins (or both). Either way: an employee that doesn't actually care about customers and only abstractly cares about getting his job done, which is probably handling hundreds of similar complaints a day. I can't really blame him. The result sucks, but the system necessarily produces some excesses, because guarding against them is too expensive. Welcome to an corporatist, capitalist world with individualistic employees. It doesn't optimize for human happiness, only for added economic value, independent of who benefits from that value.

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

#209

Post by TomAnthony » Wed, Jan 04, 2012, 9:41 AM UTC

scottdw2 wrote: post #188

jackowayed wrote: post #74

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.

Generally speaking, unilateral provisions in contracts render the contract unenforceable by the party they benefit. The fundamental principal behind common law contracts is the "bargain principal". There must be some "consideration" paid by both parties before a contract is valid (I will give you this, in consideration for your giving me that). A clause in a contract that said, "we have the right to breach this contr…

Even aside of the present article I found this interesting and useful. Thanks for the informative comment.

Its a shame that contracts have these kinds of protections in them that most people are unaware of as they get pummelled by these sorts of contracts.

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

#210

Post by buff-a » Wed, Jan 04, 2012, 9:44 AM UTC

invisible wrote: post #191

buff-a wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a lawyer? You appear to believe that a signed contract is inviolate. I am not a lawyer either, but I've dealt with contracts enough to know that the clause in this contract has "reasonable" in it for a reason, and that "reasonable" does not mean "whatever we think is reasonable".

It does say "in our sole discretion," though... Which is pretty much "whatever we think is reasonable." So there's that.

The contract does not say, for example, "when we, at our sole discretion, toss a coin and arbitrarily decide one way or the other".

I think that tossing a coin and using reason are different, and I believe that a court would uphold my expectation that reason was used. Paypal will then have an opportunity to present their reasons. In this case, IMHO, it would appear that a "reasonable standard" of "reason" was not used.