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

#291

Post by jpitz » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 4:46 AM UTC

yoos wrote: post #289

jpitz wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, I can buy. More so even lossy codecs over crappy speakers. I am wary of the argument that there exists this great gap between average listeners and trained musicians. There is a training gap, surely, but IMHO the raw auditory discrimination capacity just isn't all that different. I'm just a dumb brass player, but trumpets all sounds very, VERY distinct from one another to me, generally. I attribute that to prac…

Hmm.. I'm not entirely sure if by the "gap", you were referring to this, but just to clarify: When I said there are sounds the musician hears and feels the audience cannot, I wasn't referring to the ability to pick out different sounds, but rather the physical impossibility of certain sounds (e.g., higher-frequency overtones, squeaking strings, rasping strings) to be heard beyond a certain distance away from the inst…

re: the gap: I wondered that a little too, but being a dumb brute of a brass player, not too much. My command of the dynamic range dominates the loud end, I'm afraid.

I agree that performances are vastly better experienced in person.

A doctor recently was allowed to subject a museum Stradivarius to a CAT scan. Hopefully we'll be learning more about what truly distinguishes these instruments.

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

#292

Post by pbreit » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 5:25 AM UTC

ryan-allen wrote: post #193

pbreit wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can assure you they do not do it to earn interest. PayPal loses far more money on chargebacks, fraud, payment reversals, dispute resolutions, etc. than it makes on a measly 21 days of interest. Further, "hold backs" (aka "reserves") are very common in bank-operated credit card merchant accounts.

I wonder how much money they actually lose on a chargeback though? Chargebacks are debited from the merchants account (i.e. the merchant wears the cost of the fraud). So despite the origin of the fraud, the merchant wears it. This is at least true with digital goods that can't be returned, I don't know what the policy is in regards to physical goods and PayPal.

PayPal losses are somewhere in the teens of basis points. Not all chargebacks are passed on to merchants.

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

#293

Post by pbreit » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 5:27 AM UTC

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #277

pbreit wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's not very user-friendly.

Bait and switch.

That's a harsh description, I think. But it's true that PayPal does some things over time that other payment processors do upfront. That is one of the primary reasons PayPal has been so successful.

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

#294

Post by waqf » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 6:08 AM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #134

Shenglong wrote: post #54

It seems to be, that most of PayPal's PR blunders result from heavily regulation of stupid employees. I know we don't tolerate personal insults here on HN, but those of you who have spoken to as many PayPal reps as I have, will probably agree that there are few other ways to describe them. I guess their logic is: "If we can hire dumb people for less money, and regulate them so they can't make mistakes, we can save mo…

It seems to be, that most of PayPal's PR blunders result from heavily regulation of stupid employees. Funny, but heavily regulation of stupid employees seems to be the source of many complaints about the TSA, government agencies in general, traffic enforcement, customer service reps, etc...

Are they stupid? Or has heavy regulation made them afraid to use common sense they in fact possess?

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

#295

Post by waqf » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 6:16 AM UTC

andrewcooke wrote: post #283

StavrosK wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are overtones picked up by the ear that you can't capture with a microphone. Is that true? Shannon-Nyquist seems to disagree.

after reading the other responses, my guess is that there could be something to this if the ear's response is non-linear in some way that makes non-audible frequencies affect audible ones. that might sound crazy, so let me give an example. cheap active speakers (the kind you plug into a computer) will often pick up radio transmissions from passing emergency vehicles. the speaker cable acts like an antenna and picks u…

For those who don't know, if there weren't nonlinearities in the ear you wouldn't hear difference tones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_tone). Those nonlinearities are interactions within the audible range though, not interactions between audible frequencies and ultrasound.

(Difference tones are a convenient way to tune a violin: when two strings are a fifth apart (as they should be), the difference tone is at the octave, and it's easier to get an octave right than a fifth.)

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

#296

Post by marshray » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 7:00 AM UTC

bmuon wrote: post #229

prawn wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's why PayPal insists on you destroying the counterfeit item and providing proof that you did.

Except that the destruction is far easier to prove than the counterfeitness of the item.

This is just the "kill them all and let God sort them out" mentality applied to property.

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

#297

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 9:06 AM UTC

scottdw2 wrote: post #268

stcredzero wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental principal behind common law contracts is the "bargain principal". Principle. (JSYK)

I wrote it on my iPhone @ 2 am....There are many typos. In any case, once someone posts a comment I can't edit a post, so by posting a reply about a typeo, you only ensure that it will never be fixed....

Better than it be out there, posing as correct.

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

#298

Post by gwern » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 10:45 PM UTC

darklajid wrote: post #206

gwern wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

WWII treated France pretty well on the brute destruction scale. France didn't even lose most of its sovereignty after the invasion, with the Vichy regime resisting German demands when it wished to.

They didn't go through anything like what Japan, Germany, or Russia did, with the cities razed by fighting (Stalingrad), fire-bombing (Tokyo or Dresden), or atomic bombs (Hiroshima & Nagasaki). If a French violin had survived the siege of Stalingrad - now that would be impressive. But just being in France? That's about as impressive as a random Englishman surviving the Battle of Britain.

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

#299

Post by Shenglong » Fri, Jan 06, 2012, 6:07 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #262

dasil003 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Understandably. Stupid people need jobs too, and they apply to a lot more of them than average people.

So our social organization tends to place stupid people into customer service positions. This is why a company like Zappos that puts non-stupid and caring people into such positions distinguishes itself.

Somewhat entertaining example:

A company I worked for briefly that services the UK had its sales team in Canada, and its customer service team in India. Not saying Indians are stupid of course, but labor is certainly cheaper there, as compared to Canada.

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

#300

Post by anigbrowl » Sat, Jan 07, 2012, 7:08 PM UTC

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #276

anigbrowl wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're wrong. Nobody is forcing you to use Paypal, you accept payment that way because it's convenient for both buyer and seller. You could advertise on Craigslist, but would you feel comfortable if someone says, 'I will send you a check, please ship to this address'? No, because the check may be bad and you could have a big financial headache. Likewise, many buyers would not be comfortable sending a check or tak…

Well, your post pretty much embodies everything that is wrong with the world these days. "Cost of doing business"? ROTFL, I'm just a dude selling a handful of trinkets and baubles on eBay, once in a blue moon. Your argument is like one of those math "proofs" that make sense internally, but are stemming from axioms utterly divorced from reality. You could "demonstrate" anything that way. You could even "demonstrate" h…

You make money from the sales, right? And the amount of money depends on your claims that the trinkets and baubles have some residual value (as opposed to being merely pretty junk sold for flea-market prices)? Then you are doing some business, even if it is only part-time business.

They're not superseding the law at all. You have no automatic legal right to enter a private marketplace; if you want eBay/Paypal's low fees, you accept their conditions. If you want the full-service luxury treatment of an established auctioneer like Sotheby's, then you pay their huge fees. If you want the no-questions-asked simplicity of a flea market, then you rent a table and stand in the cold for hours.