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Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

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Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#41
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit card chargebacks have nothing to do with consumer protection laws. It is just a feature of the credit card payment system (good or bad, depending on point of view).

False. Here in the UK the credit card company, as a party to an incurred debt, has a legal responsibility to the consumer that encompasses various things like product quality and returns/refunds. If the retailer does not live up to their responsibilities then the CC provider has a legal responsibility to return the money. This is under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act.

More info on these protections here:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/section75-protect-...

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lose all consumer protections Nonsense. Consumer protection laws apply no matter the payment method.

Yes I meant payment system features and reversibility without having to go to court(if its even an option for you on international orders).

The Bitcoin scripting language actually does provide a great foundation for payment reversibility and solutions for this do exists. I'm working on one such solution, https://www.bitrated.com/.

Edit: We're about to re-launch Bitrated in about a month, with a new system that's been written from the grounds up. If anyone reading this is interested in seeing what we've been working on and would like to provide some feedback before the public launch, please contact me (email in my profile).

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#43
post #2

Pay 1% more(or 3%-8% more if you have a cash back card and depending on where you bought your coins) to save them 2% and lose all consumer protections in the deal. It's no wonder there is almost no consumer growth in the bitcoin world while new merchants are announced every other day.

True there's no advantage to paying with bitcoin currently and most people are just using it for the novelty value. But enough growth and merchants will just have to offer discounts with bitcoin purchases to stay competitive.

That's not true, it's cheaper for me to buy things on Amazon with Bitcoin via Gyft (3% cashback) than using my credit card (1% cashback) or debit card (nada).

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#44
post #2

Pay 1% more(or 3%-8% more if you have a cash back card and depending on where you bought your coins) to save them 2% and lose all consumer protections in the deal. It's no wonder there is almost no consumer growth in the bitcoin world while new merchants are announced every other day.

To be honest, for some merchants (Amazon) I really don't need my credit card protections and I'd rather get the 2% back.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#45
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. Here in the UK the credit card company, as a party to an incurred debt, has a legal responsibility to the consumer that encompasses various things like product quality and returns/refunds. If the retailer does not live up to their responsibilities then the CC provider has a legal responsibility to return the money. This is under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act.

You get no additional protections regarding quality/returns/refunds when paying by credit card, that you wouldn't have if paying by bitcoin, or cash. You get the option of pulling the payment back unilaterally, but this is subject to those same consumer protection laws, so the merchant can still come after you if you do so without a valid reason as stipulated by the law.

>> You get no additional protections regarding quality/returns/refunds when paying by credit card, that you wouldn't have if paying by bitcoin, or cash.

I'm sorry, this is just not true here in the UK (which is what I originally said, it's not the same everywhere), you get assurances from another party in case the merchant disappears, goes bust or just finds a way not to play ball.

This goes well beyond chargebacks and can include things like the CC company being on the hook for repair charges etc. if the goods are not up to scratch, long after the original transaction.

If you need further information then try looking up Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act. It's all in there and there are loads of consumers' rights guides on the net that will give you the layman's interpretation of the law.

Yes, chargebacks are the usual method a CC company uses in a variety of circumstances, but that doesn't change the validity of my statement - in some places some payment methods will get you a whole load of extra rights compared to BTC or cash.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#47
post #46

[deleted]

Please don't comment unless you have something to contribute other than an unsupported opinion.

Payment processors like bitpay put cash right into bank accounts, and people at newegg will likely never even deal with a single bitcoin themselves.

If you're sorry a business has found another way to make money with little effort, you're probably not the audience for this forum.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#48
Great. So, when can customers expect their money to be protected after they convert their savings into bitcoin, without trusting their coins to a third party service like Coinbase, and without spending a solid week learning how to safely store their coins themselves?

This is exactly a "schlep blindness" problem that a startup could be solving. Deliver a turnkey solution for consumers to store their own coins. Don't make them learn a labyrinthian set of rules, or worry about what's dangerous or what isn't. Protect consumers, and bitcoin adoption will follow. Large-scale bitcoin adoption can't occur until bitcoin is made safe.

Did you hear about the guy who took his macbook into an Apple store for some routine repairs, and one of their employees made off with his 15 BTC? The employee hooked his harddrive up to a different computer, scanned it for a "wallet.dat" file, saw it was unencrypted, and robbed him. Was it dumb of this customer not to be using encryption? Yes. On the other hand, was it dumb of him to be storing so much wealth in bitcoin right now, given how easy it is to lose your money? Objectively, yes.

This isn't an insurmountable problem, but people have to start working on it in order to solve it.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#49
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you seeing it? Overstock the most regularly promoted name as a retailer has only seen dropping numbers since they started. Notice bitpay stopped reporting 7 months ago? Coinbase has also been called out on posting contradictory numbers on their blog posts in the past which lead to them deleting most of their posts related to numbers.

Overstock is just one merchant, one data point. Not enough to draw a conclusion. On the other hand, BitPay represents 30k merchants. And they did not stop releasing numbers. They recently announced processing $1 million every single day. This is 3.3x their daily average of 2013. Source: http://www.pfhub.com/bitpay-processing-1-million-per-day-ove...

Your source is a link to a story which sources some random bitcoin news blog which sources...nothing but their own claim that they were told that. Every other news source references it or doesn't give a source for the claim. This is common in bitcoin reporting. One blog makes something up, misunderstands something, or makes a mistake and the rest report it as fact.

Re: Newegg is now accepting Bitcoin

#50
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True there's no advantage to paying with bitcoin currently and most people are just using it for the novelty value. But enough growth and merchants will just have to offer discounts with bitcoin purchases to stay competitive.

If the numerous and massive data breaches, and subsequent credit card theft and fraud events of the last few years have taught us anything, it is that yes paying in bitcoins has one fundamental advantage: you are never handing the store your full billing info which can be stolen and reused by fraudsters. Now, Bitcoin also has its own security challenges (eg. how to secure a wallet), but there are solutions (hardware…

Except when that happens with credit cards you're protected from loss so it doesn't matter as a consumer.
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