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Coin: A step in the wrong direction
81–90 of 193 posts
Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Coin is like "Google Voice for Credit Card". Its a layer that sits on top of an old, crusty infrastructure that hopefully crumbles with time, but until then, we have to deal with it somehow.
> Coin is like "Google Voice for Credit Card" Hopefully not "Google Wave for Credit Card"
or G+ for credit card
Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction
#83I dislike this article: it seems to suffer from 'perfect is the enemy of good'-itis and willful misunderstanding of how complex -- and difficult -- commerce can be. The author basically argues that things should be wonderful and easy and the service providers should handle it all (ignoring the difficulties of such a provision): I should use a plastic card, cheap, easily replaceable, low cost (free in most cases), and…
I used to work at the Federal Trade Commission, so I'm quite familiar with this particular legal issue. What Coin is doing violates neither the spirit nor the letter of the Mail Order Rule. The law states that orders must be shipped within the time stated by the company, and there is a default of 30 days if no other shipping estimate is given. In this case, Coin clearly and conspicuously states that they will ship in…
I don't think the authors issue is with the Mail Order Rule, but instead card processing networks.
Visa and MasterCard will allow you to authorize cards for a pre-order (actually for any transaction, they don't care if it is a pre-order ot not), and then finalize the purchase when you ship. They do not allow you to use finalized funds as a business loan.
Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction
#84To clarify about the pre-order issue: There's nothing inherently wrong with asking for funds to push the development of a product forward. Kickstarter has done a great job of promoting that model, and the world has seen a lot of good come out of it. However, Kickstarter has also done a lot of work to educate the public about the risk of this type of funding (certainly to their own legal benefit or otherwise), and thu…
Actually this is very much illegal. You cannot charge someone for a product and then not deliver it. Kickstarter doesn't charge you for a product, you pledge or donate to a project on Kickstarter and if it's successful, you get the item(s) for the level you pledged to for free.
Wrong. Per the FTC, all you need is a "reasonable basis" for an express or implied shipping date.
http://www.business.ftc.gov/documents/bus02-business-guide-m...
Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction
#85I am reasonably confident that people pre-order items, and are charged for them before they ship, all the darn time.
For the OP to combine two entirely separate things--1) I think it's a bad solution, and 2) and it's illegal to charge money that way--makes it just seem like he has an axe to grind. Those things have nothing to do with each other. The security issues are at least related to the technology, and he could have brought them together: "I think it's a bad solution because it involves challenges to doing it securely, as demonstrated by..."
But the payment stuff? Come on.
Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some of the 'hate' is coming from places (eg. Canada) that have already moved on to chip cards (which won't and probably can't work with this) and are now slowly moving on to nfc. It's just already late for this kind of development. 5 years ago? I'd have been all over this. Now? I'm just waiting for Apple to adopt NFC so we can all move forward on better solutions.
Their FAQ says that future versions will support chip cards. https://onlycoin.com/support/faq/
The whole point of chips is they can't be cloned. This whole product works by cloning.
Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction
#87Plastic credit card costs next to nothing to manufacture, can be dropped from a 10 story building (good luck finding it afterwards though), can get wet with me in a heavy rain, can be replaced in 24 hours (at my bank) and I have $0 liability if I lose it or someone steals it from me. Compare this to Coin (or other solutions like phone based payments) and you will see that it is indeed a step in the wrong direction th…
Credit/Debit Card can be replaced on the spot at some bank.
Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Coin is like "Google Voice for Credit Card". Its a layer that sits on top of an old, crusty infrastructure that hopefully crumbles with time, but until then, we have to deal with it somehow.
Without a doubt. Coin actually increases the complexity of an already complex and archaic system. The product manages to create more headaches for the consumer and the merchant by consolidating various credit cards in a digital device with a nice "cool" factor but lacking any real solution to the many problems associated with the complex back-ends in the payments space. Conceptually, it's not a bad product, and it su…
The product manages to create more headaches for the consumer
Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction
#89To clarify about the pre-order issue: There's nothing inherently wrong with asking for funds to push the development of a product forward. Kickstarter has done a great job of promoting that model, and the world has seen a lot of good come out of it. However, Kickstarter has also done a lot of work to educate the public about the risk of this type of funding (certainly to their own legal benefit or otherwise), and thu…
Actually this is very much illegal. You cannot charge someone for a product and then not deliver it. Kickstarter doesn't charge you for a product, you pledge or donate to a project on Kickstarter and if it's successful, you get the item(s) for the level you pledged to for free.
Well, of course if you charge someone for a product and don't ship it, then you owe them their money back.
I'm not sure there's anything illegal about it if you give them their money back -- I'm pretty sure I've tried to buy something from a seller on Amazon, been charged, it turned out they were unable to fulfill, they refunded. It happens.
Now, if you run out of money and go out of business without giving everyone their money back -- that's still not exactly 'illegal', it's not in and of itself fraud. Companies go out of business with creditors all the time, almost any time anyone does go out of business they owe someone something (I mean, in a sense, that's what makes you go out of business!)
Re: Coin: A step in the wrong direction
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their FAQ says that future versions will support chip cards. https://onlycoin.com/support/faq/
The whole point of chips is they can't be cloned. This whole product works by cloning.
It's probably too strong to say that they can't be cloned, but I don't think the banks would be very happy at all with someone selling chip skimmers to end users. I'm not sure if users should be happy with that either.