cputeq Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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plnelson wrote:
See I still don't get that. I go to FM to ask questions, or sometimes offer opinions on topics I have experience with. That doesn't say anything about my character or trustworthiness. We're all complete strangers here. As the famous New Yorker cartoon once said, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." So really what difference does it make that I have a thousand postings, or whatever it is? That seems like a weird metric to use to decide whether to send someone money. I wouldn't do it; why would someone else? There must be some detail about this that I'm not getting but everyone else thinks is so obvious that they don't think it needs explaining.
Which brings us to PayPal. How does Paypal make someone more willing to send money to a stranger thousands of miles away?
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Except you forgot about the part where I said usually scammers have new registrations and low post counts...meaning your history and post count here at FM is a good indicator (but yes not 100% proof) that you're at least not a scammer.
Also, I mentioned PayPal buyer protection, which is pretty generous on the buyer's side and can be abused. Which is why I said sell to a legit FM member who has a good feedback count and therefore, going by pretty good odds, isn't going to scam you just for the hell of it.
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Your problem is you seem to be focusing on just one aspect of the entire transaction and breaking it down ad infinitum, instead of looking at how the whole enchilada works. Yes, Latin and Spanish food in the same sentence.
Let me further break down how this could all go down here at FM (which IMO is the best place to sell/buy photographic gear). This all assumes you ship promptly and describe the item accurately:
Option 1 -- You sell to a 'nobody' with nearly no post count or feedback
Risky on both ends. You advertise lens, buyer pays with PayPal, you send to buyer, buyer then enacts buyer protection (claiming you didn't send them what they paid for and PayPal believes them) and the buyer keeps your lens and your money. Welcome to the internet, full of douches.
Option 2 -- You sell to a 'nobody' with nearly no post count or feedback
But you get lucky and it's a legit buyer. Congratulations, you rolled the dice and won. You each leave one another feedback and get a nice little number with a green background.
Option 3 -- You sell to an established FM member with respectable feedback
FMer pays, gets lens, both people are happy, positive feedback for both. FMer is protected by the generous PayPal buyer protection, so that if you DO try to scam him/her, he could easily recoup the money and now you've 100% ruined your rep here at FM, so you'll never be able to buy/sell again because someone is going to trust a high feedback FMer over you.
Conversely, a good transaction and feedback from the FMer means they took a slight chance on you and you delivered, so yay for you -- +1 feedback from an established member is much better than +1 feedback from a 'nobody'.
I'm not sure I can break it down any further. You are correct, nothing is guaranteed except death and taxes, but that applies everywhere, not just internet sales.
If seeing an FM member with 50+ feedback (or whatever number) and over 10 years of forum participation isn't enough to make you feel okay with buying or selling to them, then I'd suggest contacting KEH or heck a pawn shop.
Risk vs reward. Yes, the risk of using FM (or ebay or whatever) is going to be slightly higher than KEH, pawn shop, etc. but a heck of a lot more rewarding.
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