RFF Classified Guidelines Revised

[35mmdelux]

Curious why they reversed it?

Anything over $250 needs a signature release, delivery confirmation is not good enough. This is all spelled out in the ebay/paypal seller protection guidelines.

Insured packages must be signed for and its posted on the Postal Sevice website for easy retrieval. I did this and paypal could have viewed it as well if they wanted to.

Why were the charges reversed after paypal approved? I speculate that the buyer's CC may have been shy a few bucks of the total (Christmas season) and therefore the whole thing bounced. With the Billions transacted by PP they should have a system in place to catch insufficent funds.

Today, I look at the whole package before I ship. Number of buys, amount transacted, location, and the value of the item sold. Any of these dont look right I wont ship.

 

[35mmdelux]

sure, after you have received the money and your bank tells you it is good.

I've made several 'Blad shipments to the Ukraine, bless their hearts. Each time I received Western Union substantial pmts and ship Express Global. They come in under Europe, since ePrey doesnt have a EurAsia check box. However, I no longer ship to Ubekistan given the political turmoil, sorry.

 

[dcsang]

i sure don't want to insult anyone. this is by far the best photography website around and i would hate to see it start to resemble pnet or the leica user forum, or whatever it's called.
it is supposed to be a community and i don't consider people selling
a.imaginary gear,
b.their grandfathers precious leica full of fungus, or
c.a 'brand new, 2 rolls i swear!' m7 for $1200
to be part of the community.
i'm not an isolationist by any means, but these ads seem to be 1 step away from being inundated with daily threads asking 'what is this leica i found in my fathers closet worth?'

just my .02

bob

I agree with Bob here regarding this being a COMMUNITY - this is how I personally treat it, and, I believe, others treat it as well. It is, by far, the most civil Net/Web forum I've visited save for the old PDML (which was EXTREMELY civil for a mailing list). I would hope it will continue to stay that way but there's been enough posts recently regarding the classifieds that seem to suggest, at least to me, that something needs "tweaking" (be it the process, the rules, the potential buyers being more informed before buying/trying to buy, etc.)

As stated earlier in this thread - there will be no changes and Stephen mentioned that some folks strictly join "just to sell gear" - and that's fine - let's remember, Stephen's not "losing" anything by allowing these folks to sell and, in fact, it would be to financial detriment were he to consider holding back or barring any 0 post member to do so; but seeing as how these folks are not contributing, I don't think I'll be chancing my hard earned (and slowly declining) bucks by trying to purchase their wares.

You rolls the dice and you takes your chances...... just follow your gut instinct and listen to your significant other and you'll usually be fine 😀

Cheers,
Dave

 

[jamiewakeham]

...who would you deem as more trustworthy -- a four year member with 100 posts or a four month member with 400 posts?

A fair point - there are quite a few semi-lurkers with records such as mine. References are worth their weight in gold.

Cheers
Jamie

 

[yoyo22]

The only way of protection when doing business with strangers online is using an escrow service with a good reputation.

 

[Spider67]

Actually I did it several times....

Actually I did it several times....

should i trust the guy in Russia with 0 posts that has PM'd me three times about buying my M6 in the classifieds and shipping it to a different address in Minnesota?

bob

Paying via Paypal from Europe and asking the American seller to send it to an American adress.......to make things easier for him!
Best regards
Des

 

[johannielscom]

...

Problems can happen at either end of the sale, to experienced and non experienced members alike. There will be no time or posting requirements in order to place ads.

Stephen

When using PayPal, ask the seller to send you an invoice, containing the exact item description and serial number of the item. These data should match the data shown in the ad. If not, don't pay.

When paying, reply with the same item data in the description of the payment.

When going about like this, if anything is fishy, you'll at least have the PayPal claims' conditions covered.

In the end, there's only so much you can do. Using the above approach has proven sufficient in my case, so far.

 

[splitimageview]

If the system were ill-designed, yes. Such a system wouldn't be designed to cajole those who are otherwise uncomfortable with online buying, rather, to give some sense of security to those who are.

Again, just a thought.

 

[peter_n]

I think a lot of angst could be avoided if PayPal users just read their User Agreement, understood the services provided by their shipping carrier of choice (enough so that they comply with eBay's "Seller Protection" policy for example) and did their due diligence on sellers when buying.

I bought something from an RFF'er last week and he was blazing because he'd been locked out of his PayPal account. Something had gone wrong with it and PayPal wanted his SSN as partial proof of his identity. He absolutely refused to give it so he's screwed. However the default "confirmation" setting in a PayPal profile is your Social, but it can be quite easily changed to a credit card number for example. He probably never scanned his profile so he didn't know what the company would ask for to determine his identity, now he's locked out of his account and very, very mad.

When I sell I always ship by USPS and use Delivery Confirmation and an electronic return receipt (costs $1.10) where necessary. The electronic return receipt service comes via a PDF email attachment and includes an image of the buyer’s signature. USPS tracking is now fairly respectable so you can cover the basics of the so called seller protection plan on eBay if you use these services.

A bit of research combined with due diligence while not perfect can really help. The problem is that the relevant information is very poorly organized on many carrier sites, the USPS site is a nightmare for example. Finding information on eBay isn't much easier. It is easy to give up and rely on "trust" but if you stick to it you can lower the probability of losing money quite dramatically.

 

[CameraQuest]

Its a holiday weekend so I won't contact Paypal to get the details till next week.

However I know that Paypal buyers can hold up or reverse payments OUTSIDE of Ebay because it has happened to me.

If there is some sort of multi tiered levels of responsibility going on with Paypal between professional and private sellers, I don't know -- yet.

Stephen

 

[__hh]

Trust, commonsense, and some background checks go a long way. I have sold items here a number of times to RFF members who have a PayPal US address, yet they have requested that the item be shipped to a different location (country) because they are either dual citizens or they are there for work.

Alarm bells ring of course, but after a few discussions and background checks I was satisfied that the RFF members were genuine.

At the end of the day, no hard & fast rule will work for all occasions. Use the most valuable tool - our noggins....

 

[davelrods]

I joined this forum to purchase a Bessa and lens

I joined this forum to purchase a Bessa and lens

My first couple posts were to negotiate that sale. It went extremely
well and I've been here ever since.