eBay and the Manx Cat

The marketing consultants have a great liking for acronyms, collections of initials that are essentially meaningless unless you are one of the 'in' crowd. They use them to dazzle prospective pigeons ripe for plucking, erm, clients.

If you would like to read more please go to the new Red INK Diary site, and remember to change your bookmark!

See you there,

The Niche Book

Generally speaking I am not a huge fan of eBooks. Most of the time they are a complete waste, both of my time to read them and my hard earned cash to buy them.

If you would like to read more please go to the new Red INK Diary site.

See you there!

That Was The Week

Red Ink Diary has moved, lock stock and barrel (all past posts and comments are on the new site) please click on the link to go there.

Red Ink Diary has Moved

Red Ink Diary has moved, lock stock and barrel (all past posts and comments are on the new site) please click on the logo or the link to go there.

It has been 'interesting' making the transition to WordPress. On the whole I like it.

I have put a feed subscription button in the sidebar, let me know if it works!

See y'all over there!

Security Spotlight PayPal Questions

My friends at the Brews News noted glitches at PayPal in their blog earlier this week. The eBay boards have been in uproar about it since the morning of October 28th.

Well so far PayPal has not manually released my funds from my unclaimed eChecks, as they had promised. My Buyers are not happy, as they of course already see their funds cleared from their account.

I ask PayPal if they would as least send emails to the buyers affected to explain. They acted like, "why?". I had to explain it three times before they even understood how the buyers expect shipments after they pay. It's like they don't even understand how eBay works!

PayPal now has $1000 of mine on hold FOR NO REASON AT ALL, which makes it pretty hard to run a business. If they, for example, have only 2000 $250 'holds' at any time, that's half a million of our money they are earning interest on.

That is five days ago and co-incidentally the same morning John Canfield eBays' Senior Director for Fraud Prevention Policy made an announcement regarding eBays Shill Bidding Initiative

Based on the positive results we’ve seen by anonymizing bidder User IDs, as well as our commitment to protecting all bidders from becoming targets for fraudsters, we’ve decided to extend anonymized User IDs to winning bidders, as well. This change will be implemented sometime this week.

and the Trusted Selling with Identity Confirmation plan. That is the one where if you attempt to use eBay with a computer they have not seen before, they freeze your account and make an automated telephone call. If you are not home, or like me, do not have touch tone telephone service, you get to deal with Live Helpless. Hello hello!

But I digress!

I asked a question on eBayInkBlog several times this year to which

Richard Brewer-Hay was unable to get a sensible (to me) answer, although he did try. A post introducing Rich LaMagna this week offered an opportunity which I took. Much to my surprise Mr LaMagna responded. In fact, he responded to everyone who posted not just the cheerleaders. Positive Feedback to him.

Remember the minor news item earlier this year about fake Skype subscriptions being used to defraud PayPal accounts? Here is a well written complaint dating back to March 2008.

The Industry Standard, a San Francisco based publication, features news and analysis that covers emerging technologies and companies, venture funding, acquisitions, site launches, and other developments in the internet space. An article goes into great detail including many screenshots.

I am wondering if there is any connection to the 'glitch' above. What do you think?


Y'all come back!







Links & Related Articles

The Industry Standard 10.28.2008

Orange County Register June 2007