Slashdot Mirror
Paypal Orders Buyer of Violin To Destroy It For a Refund
An anonymous reader writes "Erica was once the owner of an old violin that had survived through WWII, and decided to sell it on Ebay for $2500. The person who bought it decided it was a counterfeit and wanted his money back. Paypal decided to honor the request for a refund on the condition that the buyer destroy the violin and provided photographic evidence of the destruction. Couldn't he have just returned it?" Sounds like a hoax to me, but I guess it's possible.
Comply with PayPal's shipping requests in a timely manner.
For SNAD Claims, PayPal may require you to ship the item back to the seller - or to PayPal - or to a third party at your expense, and to provide proof of delivery. Please take reasonable precautions in re-packing the item to reduce the risk of damage to the item during transit. PayPal may also require you to destroy the item and to provide evidence of its destruction.
For transactions that total less than USD $250 (or local currency equivalent), proof of delivery is confirmation that can be viewed online and includes: recipient's (seller's) address, showing at least city, postal code, state, or country (or equivalent), delivery date, and the URL to the shipping company's web site if you've selected "Other" in the shipping drop down menu. For transactions that total USD $250 or more, you must get signature confirmation of the delivery.
Emphasis mine. Note, I found this at the original article over at Regretsy along with a picture for those of you who are lazy.
..."
Well, at least everyone involved has a crazy story to tell: "Gather 'round children and let me tell you about the time I had to destroy a hundred year old violin in a timely manner. FuhrerMarks had instructed me -- back then they were known as 'PayPal' -- to destroy the violin after a dispute about its label
My work here is dung.
Hey PayPal, ever heard of Photoshop?
The point is that it wasn't a fake, so PayPal royally screwed the seller.
But PayPal is entirely composed of evil douchebags, so I agree that it's not really surprising.
Having read the article from other sites, the item wasn't fake, and the buyer couldn't be trouble to find out either.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Yes and no... if it is a fake, then presumably there'd be no great loss in destroying it. However, it could also be that the buyer is mistaken, and the article is authentic. In that case, it makes more sense to nullify the deal (ie: return the merchandise and refund the money) rather than "nullifying" the merchandise.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
It isn't so much that the item wasn't a fake (though an expert did claim it was genuine), so much as that in the case of antique violins, being fake doesn't mean its worthless by any stretch of the imagination. So, PayPal had someone destroy an irreplaceable piece of history out of their own ignorant policies.
And if it's not a fake...?
Buyer changes his mind, decides he wants a refund, and claims it's a fake. PayPal should have required an independent expert to verify the claim before they told him to destroy it.
She needs to get lawyered up and sue the pants off both the buyer and PayPal.
the point is that a "counterfeit" violin can still be an antique item worth $2500 and such things are common with violins.
1. But $100 violin, then claim it's a fake
2. Buy $5 violin, smash it up, send photo to PayPal
3. Profit!
I'm not sure if I should tell you to RTFM, or if you're just trolling.
Whats to stop the person making the claim from popping out to a thrift shop, buying an old educational violin for peanuts (or lashing out a slightly larger sum on a cheap Chinese violin), and "destroying" that? For a $2500 refund, I'm surprised thay don't require the whole, unbroken violin to be returned to PayPal.
If it's a fake, there's no real value and hence not worth to return.
But if it was real, then they should be broken to bits too.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's (ostensibly) a prewar antique. This isn't a fungible item. Paypal orders someone to destroy a counterfeit handbag, you might get reimbursed the cost of the bag if your take them to court, but that violin isn't coming back.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I had to destroy paintings and photographs damaged during shipping as well in the past to get replacement.
Said painting and photographs wouldn't happen to have been prints, right? Artists often request proof of destruction to be sure you aren't trying to get a free print from them.
But this was a WWII era violin. The buyer isn't going to be getting a replacement from the seller.
And plus, it wasn't fake. The labels are often incorrect and there are often disputes over them, but this is the first time I've seen one destroyed. Even if it was fake, the seller might not have known and would love to have it back either way. It's not a waste of money for the seller.
You just don't destroy old instruments. It boggles the mind. You can't create new old instruments.
If it's a fake, there's no real value and hence not worth to return.
And what if it's not a fake? Then this person just lost $2500 because somebody 'decided' it was. Who is this somebody? The world's leader on counterfeit violin detection? What was the benefit of destroying it? Even a 'fake' violin will continue to play music, and somebody would have been happy to have it. If I were the seller, and eBay took the $2500 back from me after ordering the destruction of the property, I'd be in court so fast you would swear you heard flight of the bumblebee floating on the wind...
If the seller doesn't want to pay for the return, fine they can agree to proof of destruction instead. But if the seller would rather have the item back, they should have the option to pay the shipping charges to have it returned.
Paypal doesn't have the ability to determine if the violin is really a fake, they shouldn't be the ones insisting on destruction of counterfeits.
If it's a fake, there's no real value and hence not worth to return.
Not true. This was a violin, not merely art. Even a basic violin is worth several hundred bucks, provided it's functional.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Sure, ya, i destroyed the original.. Ya.. see here in this picture..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There is a site called "regretsy.com"... And here I was thinking I would get some work done this afternoon. Oh shit, they have a sister site called "uhpinions", too?
Problem is, with a violin, there is no such thing as a "fake". Even if it was not a WWII era violin, it's still a working instrument that is quite valuable. A few articles mention that the seller had multiple experts verify that the violin was being sold was WWII era and labeled (branded) properly.
Idiot.
I sold a 24-port Fax board on eBay via PayPal when I decommissioned our internal fax server and went to an outsourced model about 3 years ago. The purchaser filed a claim with PayPal and said they could not get it to work. I asked for the item to be returned and I would refund. Instead PayPal reversed the money without them returning the product. I am not sure if they required them to destroy it but I lost the money and the fax board and it was a working device when it shipped. I have not sold on eBay or used PayPal as a seller since.
Yes and no... if it is a fake, then presumably there'd be no great loss in destroying it. However, it could also be that the buyer is mistaken, and the article is authentic. In that case, it makes more sense to nullify the deal (ie: return the merchandise and refund the money) rather than "nullifying" the merchandise.
There are quite a few very valuable fakes. For example, in the 18th century quite a lot of fake 16th century china was created. So you have stuff that is worth maybe £4,000 because it is an 18th century fake, but would be worth £20,000 if it was the genuine 16th century fake.
Hell, I'm surprised that PayPal didn't just ask for it to be shipped to them, and then turn around and sell it for another $2500.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
But old reproduction violins DO have real value. Whether the seller misrepresented it is another matter. Would you be happy if Paypal told your buyer to destroy your Galaxy Tab because you mistakenly advertised it as an iPad?
This policy probably stems from modern counterfeit goods such as Rolex/Coach or whatever else knockoffs of expensive products are floating around. And it's bad enough there, let alone antiques, since companies of modern goods have a good incentive to suppress any secondhand market of their own products and some will flag listings as counterfeit just for the sake of it.
But I have relatives in the antique business and in certain areas, you can really ask 10 experts and get 10 different opinions. Really. Or appraisers tell you different opinions based on what you pay and want to hear or their own agendas (if you didn't buy it from them, it becomes more suspect in some cases, petty politics like that, etc.)
But that is besides the point. Here, Paypal broke the piece, they should buy it, at full price. It's not their place to determine what's fake or not. Even if it was, they are not law enforcement, they are acting as self-appointed vigilantes. Return shipping in the condition it was sent should be a requirement. And moreso, if they determine the seller is out their to sell counterfeit goods or defraud someone, they should shut down the account and forward evidence to the proper authorities.
I hope the lady sues them and gets extra damages.
My work here is dung.
She is screwed. I am sure the case would win agents PayPal as you could say they didn't have the technical expertise to verify it was fake. IANAL, but I cannot believe a judge in small clams court would deny that Paypal was stupid in this case.
I am curious, any lawyers out there familiar with small clams? Would you sue the buyer, who lives out of country, because he is stupid and doesn't know a real from a fake or Paypal who ordered the destruction of the violin? If you do sue Paypal, do you just go to your local court for it, it doesn't seem like they would bother to send anyone there as it just be cheaper to pay her off.
It all could be bogus though. Someone paying 2500 for a violin, even an amateur, might understand something "Made in Japan" doesn't make it 100 years old.
It's the world's smallest violin, playing just for... DAMMIT, PAYPAL!
Smashing idea! Simply smashing!
According to some people, the violin should have been sent back instead.
1. Buy $2500 violin, then claim it's a fake.
2. Buy a $100 fake violin, return it instead of the real one.
3. Profit!
Only possible option would be for Paypal to let an independant expert verify the violin's authenticity, then let the losing party pay for the expert.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Wow, you're a self-righteous fucking grade A idiot.
FTA: "It is beyond me why PayPal simply didn't have the violin returned to me."
It is beyond me why anyone uses PayPal. I feel genuinely sorry for the seller, but then again, caveat emptor. It's not as though there aren't thousands of well-publicized horror stories about these fuckwit douchebags - if you need a citation, just Google "paypal sucks" and check out a few of the 189,000 results. If PayPal were the last financial institution on earth I'd be keeping my money in my mattress.
It's said that we get the government we deserve - I guess that applies to companies as well. If people would just stop using PayPal then they'd change their ways or go out of business. But I guess expecting the majority of people to get their heads out of their asses, do a little research, and take a principled stand on something is asking too much.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
That's probably the best course of actions, small claims court against PayPal (and perhaps against the buyer). Especially if the seller has authentication from 3rd party that it was authentic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NAkIUToW5Q
There is probably an orchestra program at a local school who would have loved the donation of a knockoff violin but instead paypal (if the story is true) decided to be a douche--and they wonder why people don't like them?
Paypal really needs to fix the gaping holes in their dispute resolution process. I could order an expensive cashmere sweater from you, wait until it arrives and then say "hey, WTF is with this t-shirt you sent me instead of the sweater, I demand a refund". You will know that you put the sweater in the box, but paypal will ask me to return the item with shipping confirmation and then give me a refund. You'll get a box a few days later with a $2 t-shirt from a thrift store and I'll get to keep the sweater and the money.
This happens all of the time...I don't know what the best defense is (except transferring money out of paypal immediately upon receipt so the worst that can happen is you end up with a frozen paypal account with a negative balance)--I suppose your best bet would be to insure the package for the full value and then claim that someone must have stolen it in transit and replaced it with a t-shirt (either that or they are a scammer). That should get the postal inspectors to show up who are more likely to look at the evidence and decide that the scammer is a felon for attempting mail-fraud.
Bottles.
That's what you get for dealing with Paypal.
Maybe one day people will learn.
Were this just an isolated incident, I would be screaming hoax with the best of you; however, given PayPal's handling of a recent charity case, where a group had their account suspended after trying to raise money to buy presents for poor children, I'm not so sure. Quote PayPal's support: "You can use the donate button to raise money for a sick cat, but not poor people."
http://www.regretsy.com/2011/12/05/cats-1-kids-0/
Maybe it was a fake maybe not. If it was indeed genuine, then the original owner can probably claim damages as soon as she gets a trustworthy expert to examine... hmm. Perhaps that is why they ordered it destroyed?
destroy an irreplaceable piece of history
Well, it is quite replaceable, just buy a violin and wait. Voila, an old violin. Personally I don't really see why anything old has an excessive value beyond its use.
Fear is the mind killer.
I am sure that somewhere in the PayPal contract is a clause forbidding customers from sueing, in as much as is allowed by state law. It is a fairly common thing for companies to do.
From listening to other merchants, turns out this is a known scam. Buyers take advantage of PayPal's policy of 'buyer is always right' and end up with both the money and the item, which they often turn around and resell. There have also been cases of people buying stuff, returning for a refund, and shipping back something else of much less value... with again PayPal supporting the buyer.
Paypal is not regulated like banks are, in the US.
Paypal makes it way too easy for a buyer to rip off a seller.
Why would you use PayPal after knowing the two facts
above ? The answer is that you'd use it because you
are willing to ignore good reasons to avoid it, in which case
you deserve whatever you get.
The problem in any case is, if the buyer swaps the violin, how do you prove the buy swapped it, or didn't?
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Apparently years ago they used to do just that.. but now that they have a stranglehold on eBay they have dropped such complexity for a simpler system that screws merchants over pretty badly.
My Parents bought some ipods off of Ebay, I knew by looking at them they were fake and they also didn't work. My dad went through PayPal so they reimbursed him, but they did have him destroy the fake iPods and in the process. With something like this, I think it is viable to to know counterfeit and real, but with something like an antique, I would have said just return it or at least have it sent to an expert.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
Here's an old 2-man scam for you.
The two of you are eating at a restaurant, separately. The first of you is dressed decently--not super well, but not shabby-- and has an old-looking violin. Personally, I make it a point of pride never to spend more than $10 on the violin. Anyways, after the meal, lament that you've forgotten your wallet, but here, hold onto my violin as collateral, and I'll be back in an hour.
After you leave, the second fellow pulls aside the waiter and asks to inspect the violin. He then declares that this is a genuine so-and-so, worth thousands, and you'd be ever-so-interested in buying it and when did the violinist say he'd return? Oh no! I can't wait that long, I've a plane to catch. Here, give the man my card and let him know that I'm very interested in his violin.
When the first person returns, the waiter in all likelihood will offer whatever he can scrounge up, perhaps a few hundred dollars, for the violin, keeping the other gentleman's offer to himself. The worst case scenario, the waiter simply passes the card along and you're out no more than the cost of lunch.
(Kudos if you know where this is from)
Perhaps, but they can fall. They are huge because for a long time they were really the only option and they had lock-in with eBay. Now though other options are starting to gain traction, and sooner or later the DoJ is going to stop overlooking PayPay (who exist mostly through a legal loophole combined with doing favors for the DoJ that would be illegal to require) and start regulating (or even arresting) them. There have been too many cases of 'we will just keep your money with no resolution' over the years. Instances like this where they give someone's money to someone else without resolution also stand a chance of getting them in legal trouble eventually, even if their ToS says they can do it.
that PayPal sucks
As someone who sells thousands of dollars worth of merchandise a month, with processing going through Paypal, I can't emphasis enough how much I want to move away from those bastards. Already talking to other processors to get the hell away from Paypal. Can't wait...
if it is a fake, then presumably there'd be no great loss in destroying it.
Maybe. Maybe not. It depends on what sort of "fake" it is. A seller might claim that it is a violin by great violin-maker X, but it might instead be a centuries-old violin made by pretty good violin-maker Y. In that case, destroying the "fake" could still very well be destroying a significant piece of history.
Just because an item isn't exactly what someone said it was doesn't mean that it's completely worthless. Merchandise may not live up to expectations, but unless there is a provable case for fraud (which there seems to be no evidence of here), it should not even be a candidate for destruction... and if there were serious evidence of fraud, it should have been turned over to the police anyway.
PayPal isn't in the business of being a reseller. It's far more profitable to be just the middle man holding all the money.
Pity the buyer was in Canada, otherwise the seller could take them to small claims court. Taking PayPal probably will not work since they have their ToS written in such a way that they own both the item and the money till they say otherwise, so they are free to do whatever they want with them. Challenging THAT in court is no small deal and will take millions to fight.
What idiot would pay $2500 for a violin online without hearing it. For that amount of money I'd have to have physically inspected it first.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
And to play devil's advocate, the seller could have just as easily authenticated the $2500 violin and then shipped the buyer a $100 fake.
Long signatures suck.
destroy an irreplaceable piece of history
Well, it is quite replaceable, just buy a violin and wait. Voila, an old violin. Personally I don't really see why anything old has an excessive value beyond its use.
Until someone invents a time machine, yes the law of supply and demand is pretty strict about the idea that old things can't simply appear in sufficient quantity to offset a high price due to scarcity. I suppose you would also like to insist that Jack Daniels tastes just fine as day old corn mash and that letting it sit in a barrel in an old building in the middle of nowhere for 11 years adds nothing to the value; a good number of people would disagree with that, too.
Zombieland, the girls did it with a ring in the gas station.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
You have it backwards:
(1) Buy $5 violin.
(2) Fraudulently advertise that it survived WWII, and sell it for $2500.
(3) Piss and moan when accused of fraud and the violin is destroyed buy mark at request of PayPal.
(4) Out $5, but not in jail.
(5) Deal with it.
If it is true it is possible that the conversation went something like this;
Buyer: the seller sent me bogus merchandise and I want a refund.
PP: Send it back and provide proof of reciept and we will refund the money.
Buyer: No, I do not want to aid in the duping of the next unsuspecting buyer by sending the item back.
PP; We can not allow you to keep both the item and the refund so the only option would be for you to destroy the item, provide proof and we will refund.
I am not saying this is right but is within the TOS.
The seller needs a Canadian court to acknowledge the contract that was made when the item was sold on ebay. Then the seller can claim his payment, which is due.
... and there are those "f-holes" ...
but photographic evidence?
Oh.. sorry.
the bass bar shape has changed, the neck has been lengthened, the fingerboard has been lengthened, the neck has been mortised, the tailpiece, bridge, pegs, have had their shape changed. It doesn't even have original catgut strings! Antonio Stradivari wouldn't recognize this. Burn it, so that others may not have it, either.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
The pendulum of balance has been swinging wildly back and forth between buyer and seller at ebay. It wasn't too long ago that sellers were routinely screwing over buyers and leaving scathing negative feedback if they tried to get any resolution. (a buyer with ~25 feedback gets hurt a lot more than a seller with 10,000 feedback when each leaves the other a negative, and they knew it) That's why sellers can't leave buyers negative feedback anymore - too much abuse. I personally got burnt by a seller on two occasions there before they started adjusting things. (one cost me $156 - wound up with no product and no cash, PLUS a negative feedback, with a comment that made me look like the bad guy)
In a local sale, the seller is usually at a disadvantage - in most cases returning items is very easy, so much so that for common issues sellers have to specifically exclude returns due to abuse - like water pumps and generators in times of flooding and ice storms. Lots of abuse of buy-use-return abuse on tools too. A properly working buyer/seller system doesn't appear "balanced and fair" from a casual glance, it appears to be tilted toward the buyer. But in reality, that's where fairness lives.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
With the prevalence of cameras, why does the seller not record said item being packed, and end with it having the shipping label affixed where you can see the label tracking numbers time stamp etc clearly. This is by no means a bulletproof system and would also be abused but would seem to me offer some sort of protection to a seller in the event of buyer fraud.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
I think it would be a good idea to sue Ebay Canada/PayPal Canada in small claims court.
The courts have already decided http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/fct/doc/2007/2007fc930/2007fc930.html that EBay Canada is a distinct legal entity. It would be interesting to have them show up in court to explain themselves. They would likely lose, and would definitely be out of pocket more that $2.5K just to put in an appearance.
Just because their dispute resolution policy says that they "MAY ask for destruction" does not defend them that they have applied this policy reasonably. The seller could reasonably obtain a judgment that the application of that policy was improper, in this instance, and that EBay has to cough up the $2.5K.
No, it's from Neil Gaiman's American Gods
No sig for the moment.
I don't really see why anything old has an excessive value beyond its use.
Oddly, the type of people who appreciate and create music and art are also the type of people who might value form over function.
For violins in particular, as wood ages its tonal qualities change. Therefore, older violins are more valuable than new violins because they sound better. Well... not necessarily better but they have a more desirable sound and warm.
More importantly, a violin made in a factory in china is going to sound like crap compared to a hand made violin by a skilled luthier, even if it is brand new. An old violin was most likely made with great skill and care, and taken care of through the ages. To play something that is centuries old with a rich history is an amazing experience. This is why, while the Stradivari violins might not necessarily sound better than a modern violin from a master luthier, it's worth millions of dollars more.
The wood tends to resonate better with age. The same is generally true with well made acoustic guitars, the older they get the better the sound.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Yes. Hell yes. Defamation among many other charges should be filed against the buyer. The buyer is, as far as I can tell, were the real tragedy started. The buyer and the seller needed to work it out. Now if the seller decided not to deal with the buyer for the return of the item it's a problem but it would be understandable.
In the end, as far as I'm concerned, when dealing with transactions of over anything I can't afford to lose, I would take steps to ensure and insure the transaction. Among these would be, if it were an antique, to have it professionally identified and certified as such. Shipping such an item becomes a tricky thing... what's to prevent a seller from shipping a fake thing after having a thing identified as genuine? And then, what is to prevent the recipient from getting the genuine article and claiming it's fake, presenting a fake as their evidence? But by having a professional certify it before shipping and sealing the box himself perhaps that would offer a measure of security to the transaction.
This is all a very tricky situation where trust and convenience are at odds with one another. To achieve balance, "someone" has to assume risk over the transaction and hopefully they will be aware of who bears the risk. This way, the risk taker can then do his due diligence to ensure and insure the transaction.
It sounds as if in this and all cases, the seller is the risk bearer. And this is a good lesson for ALL of us whether we are buyers or sellers. Knowing in advance where the risk lies, one can decide for one's self how to mitigate and reduce risk or to decide if something is simply too risky to proceed in the first place.
This situation is tragic as it does not take into account the possible forms of loss which PayPal has created through its policies. They need to be fixed. But in the mean time, people need to be fully aware of the risks and who owns them. (For example, *NEVER* use ACH as the means of money transfers.)
It's Paypal's job to move money. That's it. It's neither their job nor their right to tell people to destroy goods or to refuse to honor a payment to wikileaks or anything else of that nature. They are going down the same path that health insurance companies were somehow allowed to go down, and they need a serious dose of financial damage in the form of boycotts or disruptive alternative payment systems to put them in their place.
Cuz that one guy has a buddy who's an expert in violins...
What idiot would pay $2500 for a violin online without hearing it. For that amount of money I'd have to have physically inspected it first.
The kind that is scamming the seller?
Anyone who buys or sells antique violins per EBay and PayPal didn't deserve to have it in the first place. I thought those kind instruments were passed on personally to the most talented players by previous owners or music societies. Maybe that's just the Paganini violins, which are truly priceless except for when they are for sale and then they go for millions. I almost choked on my morning coffee when I read this earlier, thinking it was one of Paganini's!
And holy shit, reading from other comments here, here's a protip: Do Not Use Paypal,Ebay And Fedex For Important Stuff That Actually Matters In Real Life I thought everyone knew this by now.
Can I light a sig ?
I bet you think Neil Gaiman came up with the concept of Gods, too.
The instrument repair shop where my wife works does appraisals for free. I imagine there are plenty of luthiers who could look at the violin and let you know in about 5 minutes (or less) if it was a $2500 violin or not.
Or you could knowingly buy a fake violin for $1, 000,000 if you want to launder some money. The possibilities for crime on eBay are almost limitless!
True, and eBay still has many scammer sellers on it (though often the scamming has moved up and is sellers scamming resellers)... but I think the big thing here is they do not even seem to have a resolution process... PayPal is infamous for 'we internally decided X, you have no recourse, we legally own your money, you are not getting it back'. Their whole model is crummy.
I sweep the funds out of my Paypal account immediately, then transfer them to another bank. Paypal's got no recourse except to sue me, and I take pictures of everything I send.
Given the "or didn't" at the end, that really isn't devil's advocate.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Sounds more like a fiddle to me.
Even then there's nothing to stop the buyer picking up a cheap violin from a charity store and sending that back while he keeps the money AND the violin. How do you prove that the item you sent is the item they returned short of having it witnessed by a lawyer or something?
PayPal may also require you to destroy the item and to provide evidence of its destruction.
This sounds like a job for Pete Townsend.
Whenever humanly possible I mark my items with a blacklight pen. I don't say that in the listing.
Then if someone wants to return it and get a refund, no problem. Once I receive it in the same condition I sent it AND I verify it with that mark I'll gladly refund.
Funny how people suddenly don't want their refund when they find out I've put some kind of identifier on it that they can't duplicate.
Hey, this isn't a violin! It's a banjo with some molding tacked on! FAKE!
I think you best bet would still be to try to claim insurance on your package and then use the video of it being packed as evidence. If you go through the USPS, you are accusing *someone* of being a felon (either the recipient or the postal worker who stole your sweater and inexplicably replaced it with a t-shirt) while if you go through the paypal dispute process, you are agreeing to paypal's arbitration of a he-said-she-said argument where they spoke first (and your only come back is, "No I'm not a scammer, he's a scammer!"). And paypal prefers to side with the buyer since a buyer who gets screwed will probably stop using them but a lot of sellers depend on them for income and will have to keep using paypal even after getting scammed.
Bottles.
(a buyer with ~25 feedback gets hurt a lot more than a seller with 10,000 feedback when each leaves the other a negative, and they knew it)
eBay's whole feedback system is a circle jerk anyway. You give me good feedback and I'll give you good feedback. It's designed to bury negative feedback in positive feedback. Basically, most buyers don't care what good feedback a seller gets. Maybe neutral, but you want to see what kind of negatives a seller has. A much better system would be showing neutrals and negatives but only counting positives. Then a prospective buyer could see what neutral/negative feedback was received over how many successful/positive auctions. Currently you have to wade through thousands of A+++++++++++++++++++++ useless feedback to see how a seller handles an auction where both parties weren't happy. And if you were going to display ANY positive feedback, it would be from buyers who initially posted neutral/negative and choose to change it to positive after resolution.
Another day, another update to a Google android app.
In a double-blind test, even experienced violinists and violin makers cannot reliably identify the sound of a Stradivarius over a newly-made violin.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/01/02/violinists-can%E2%80%99t-tell-the-difference-between-stradivarius-violins-and-new-ones/
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
The entire post (aside from the parenthetical comment at the end) was a direct quote from American Gods.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
OT trivia: PayPal is infamous for 'we internally decided X
coincidentally, X.COM is PayPal!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
That doesn't really work, as the point of laundering money isn't to just give it away, but to exchange it for something that can eventually be reconverted back into cash for as as close to [or more than] the original amount.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
There was a piece I saw somewhere talking about how the old violins from Stradivarius' times were made from trees grown in a more moderate climate and the wood was of a more consistent grain because of it.
And yes add in the agin the parent poster mentions and you get better sounding violins.
Grandparent doesn't/didn't understand that sometimes the function of something's use is related to its age and not just artificial scarcity.
I have a nice pocketwatch with crystal on both sides so you can watch the gears work, its not old or made with expensive materials. I like the function of it and it gives me more pleasure than a digital watch or more likely just the clock function on my smartphone. Would I buy an old pocketwatch made by an old timey craftsman years ago where the gears are hidden, probably not.
To bring this back on topic if I were a violinist would I buy an antique violin or maybe a carbon fiber new one, depends on my means and which ones sounds better.
Maybe it was made by a particularly skilled instrument maker, who is no longer alive. Or maybe it was made from some particular kind of old-growth wood, which is no longer available. There are plenty of reasons why old things can be valuable (and it's hardly ever just because it's old).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
So? That merely shows that Stradivarius violins really aren't specially wonderful sounding and throws into question their actual worth in terms of performing value. It says nothing about whether they can examine the thing and identify that it is indeed a Stradivarius as opposed to one made by some other guy.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Where are you getting a $100, much less $5, violin? I would be very interested to hear this. Just what do you suppose the average violin costs?
Uh, that's a good price for just about any decent-quality instrument, used or not. The seller probably could have got a lot more for it if they had done their homework.
I play the euphonium -- if I found a B&H Imperial or a Besson Sovereign for that price, I'd use Buy it Now.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
The hand crafting of fine violins often involves a master, journeymen and apprentices. Once crafted and approved the master applies his label to the instrument but the violin may have been made by a journeyman to the master's standards. Journeymen can become masters in their own right and apprentices become journeymen. It's possible for one shop to have several journeymen of varying experience over the years. After the instrument is sold and used it can require service. The bridges get broken, the peg holes wear, the neck might have to be reset so additional luthiers may have worked on the instrument. This is one way that labels can end up being disputed.
Yet somehow they can identify antique furniture without playing it. It is more than just sound to prove provenance.
A buyer who gets negative feedback just dumps his account and starts a new one. Sellers don't demand that buyers have extensive histories before they'll take the money. A seller who gets negative feedback is stuck. He needs his history, so buyers know he's a legitimate seller, but those black marks really hurt hium.
Since when did people have the right to claim foul and not send it back?
Man I'd love to see that in retail stores. Yea, I bought this 3000$ laptop. It didn't work, I'll get you photos of it being destroyed. You're just out a 3000g laptop tho.
Knowing this, paypal just hit my shit list. I'm not interested in having things stolen and paypal supporting the thief. Not only refunding it, which means the sale is incomplete, this means that they are /no/ longer the owner. Paypal just authorized someone to destroy my personal property? I don't think so.
I thought the point of money laundering was to conceal the source of or legitimize undisclosed money?
If I buy a fake violin for $1,000,000 the police are still going to say "Whoa whoa whoa there, where the hell did you get a million dollars?"
Long signatures suck.
But if it was real, then they should be broken to bits too.
Paypal, the buyer, or both?
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
No, it's exactly the same thing as people destroying priceless works of art to collect the insurance money. This is a little ass-backwards but essentially the same thing.
However, instead of destroying it, they could have privately sold it, recover some of the money, and blacklist that buyer.
I am not a lawyer, but a few rules of thumb:
In any legal dispute, the person that you usually take to court is the person that you have a direct relationship with. In this case, the buyer gave the money to PayPal and PayPal then did not give it to the seller, having agreed to, or took back the money for spurious reasons. PayPal should therefore be taken to court.
Filing in a small claims court is usually very cheap and does not require a lawyer. The purpose of these courts is to allow low-value disputes to be resolved without involving the full legal process. File near you and PayPal has to send someone to your local court if they wish to defend it. If they don't defend then the judge or magistrate will rule based purely on your testimony.
Small claims courts do not usually expect either party to be a lawyer (taking a lawyer to a small claims court can often prejudice the judge or magistrate against you) and are not expected to have detailed legal knowledge. They are simply expected to state their grievance and allow the judge to decide what statue and common law is applicable. In this case, the buyer would state that, as a result of PayPal's actions, they do not have the violin worth $2,500, nor do they have the money, and so they have lost $2,500. The judge would then decide whether PayPal had acted correctly in this case.
Once you have a judgement, if PayPal refuses to pay then you can usually just hand it over to a collections agency. They will add something on top and require PayPal to pay the collections fee as well as the total amount of the judgement. If they still don't pay, then they will arrange to have PayPal assets confiscated and sold until the amount is reached.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
If the buyer is trying to scam the seller, well there's not much you can do, it comes down to who's word you believe. But if it's a matter of the buyer honestly being unhappy with the item once they receive it, returning it should be the first option.
Depending on the bank, they can suck your account negative, and then the bank sues you. But the real problem is that you have to go to this much trouble to use them. Much easier to use someone else.
destroy an irreplaceable piece of history
Well, it is quite replaceable, just buy a violin and wait. Voila, an old violin. Personally I don't really see why anything old has an excessive value beyond its use.
lqtms
There's a lesson here: Don't use Paypal to sell any expensive items. If you're selling a bunch of things that are $10, then if you have a problem with some jerk-off buyer, it's no big loss. Plus, scamming buyers probably won't bother to scam you anyway, since they're not going to profit very much by scamming you out of a $10 item. If you're selling something that costs thousands at quantity 1, then use a different service; either have the buyer send a cashier's check, or set up a merchant account with Visa/MC (obviously not practical if you're only selling one expensive item, but if you have a business selling lots of expensive items it'll be feasible), or find a different service such as Google Payments.
Actually in this article it was a double-blind test, and not even the players could tell which was which. Most of them when asked which of the violins they'd take home, chose one that had been manufactured three days before.
I guess the point is a $2500 violin could easily sound just the same as a $100 violin. With that much money on the line . . . .
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Personally I don't really see why anything old has an excessive value beyond its use.
Next time you see a minor collision between a new car and a Chrysler from the 70's you will see that build quality has changed over the years.
So wait, I'm lost now.
Seller sells violin for lots
Buyer receives violin
Buyer thinks it's a fake - tells paypal
Paypal says to smash it.
If the violin isn't a fake, and this was verified... why would the buyer smash it? It's been authenticated... you have an authentic violin. You officially received exactly what you purchased. What, is paypal now controlling law enforcement, and he's legally unable to take back his claim that it's fake and forced to destroy it?
I just don't even slightly see the reason behind why he has to smash it.
She did have an expert examine it before the sale. Yes, she has a claim, but against who?
It's the seller of the violin, not the buyer, that needs their money laundered. Presume that you, the buyer of the violin, is a rich drug dealer who bought $1 million in cocaine from a drug supplying cartel. Since you're a bit short of untraceable cash at the moment, and for some reason your cartel wants to legitimize their income and pay capital gains taxes on it, they sell you an "authentic" million dollar violin. You pay the money, get a crap violin and the drugs.
This assumes that your $1 million in cash had already been laundered, but needed to be used for a criminal purpose. If you had $1 million in untraceable dirty cash, you could have just bought your drugs with that cash and left the seller to launder his own money.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Same thing happened here. I bought a "used" iPod Nano off eBay for a good price, which had normal looking pictures of a genuine model taken out of the box. When it came in the mail... it was a different color, quite a bit larger, and when I turned it on a horribly pixelated screen showed the Apple logo and the text "HELLO" below it. Right.
I disputed the payment and got my refund from Paypal, and they asked that I destroy the iPod clone and take pictures. I proceeded to clamp it in my bench vise and saw it in half with a hacksaw, while my girlfriend took pictures of the process. Well, I struck the battery with the hacksaw - smoke and fire ensued. Once it died down and I had aired the smoke out of my basement, I finished sawing the now burnt and discolored iPod clone in half.
I'm pretty sure those pictures are thumbtacked to someone's cubicle wall at Paypal now.
This crap makes me very happy I play brass instruments. Forgeries of vintage trumpets like early Martin Committees and Olds Recordings are difficult to make. The "fake" horns on eBay are mostly bogus Chinese sound-a-like marques ("Selman" instead of "Selmer") or amusingly bad Indian replicas of vintage cornets that have misspelled or conflicting markings ("Boosey" and "Bessons" marked on the same instrument). Unfortunately, the few suckers for these aren't professional musicians, but often ignorant parents who are trying to get something playable for their kids to start on.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
really...
Much easier to use someone else.
Unless you want to use eBay, the defacto market.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
With the prevalence of cameras, why does the seller not record said item being packed, and end with it having the shipping label affixed where you can see the label tracking numbers time stamp etc clearly.
Film it up through the point where you hand it to the shipper. At least with the post office, it's my understanding that once they come to possess the item you're shipping, it is literally impossible for you to legally get it back before delivery.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Mis-labelling in the violin world is quite common. Both sellers and buyers are aware of this. There are some very nice violins falsely labeled as Strads, for example. If the seller correctly presented the provenance ("I have had this violin since I inherited it from my relative, who held it from the 1930s through the war"), and correctly presented the label ("there is a label which states XXX") I don't see either party has a ground for complaint. Once the violin is destroyed, the seller has great claims for destruction of property - it's not worthless.
Apparently the violin was already authenticated.
Or.. the buyer (the only one getting screwed) hires the expert, pays him and then takes the seller to court /arbitration for value + expert fees. Paypal should have nothing to do in an authenticity dispute IMHO. They are just a money service.
Some gold bullion sellers do exactly this. Not on ebay, however, as far as I know.
Not a direct quote, done from memory, but yes, American Gods. The key thing here, in my mind, is the point of pride. That, if nothing else, is unique to Gaiman's anecdote.
This is about brains. It takes brains and experience for a rep to decide how to resolve an issue. Paypal leans on policy to lessen its dependence on brains.
I don't remember PayPal having a "buyer is always right" policy. Of all the problems I've reported to PayPay, the response has always been a very slow investigation, sometimes culminating in "We have found out that you are in the right. We are able to recover $0.00, which we now return to you." Then I report the situation to my credit card, which refunds my money. Then PayPal sends me a "We wish you would have contacted us first about your dispute" letter.
I suppose in all that they nominally acknowledge that I'm right, but it's not exactly a vindication you can take to the bank, if you know what I mean.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Meh, Zombieland was better.
It wouldn't matter.
PayPal had the receiver destroy the item, then reversed the charges. Its not like you actually have any say in the matter.
There is one key thing that people tend to forget when these kinds of test results come out. As the wood in the violin ages its sound will change. After about 300 years or so (the average age of a Strad) the sound won't change much. With a new violin (average cost for a handmade one by an expert lutier being around $20,000) you have no way of knowing how the sound will change as it ages. Sure it might sound good today, but what happens in 10 years as the wood ages? There are violins made by Stradivarius that don't sound good because the wood didn't age well, and he was known to experiment with his instrument design a bit (for example the Chanot-Chardon Stradivarius violin is guitar shaped). That same problem could happen to a modern made violin leaving the musician out the price of a small car and a nearly worthless instrument. Safer to buy an older instrument that has had time to age.
And on another note chances are if anyone buys a $100 violin they've bought a cheap poorly setup piece of junk that is almost unplayable.
Hard to say about "average" - but I'd guess that $100 isn't far off. The world is filled with really terrible newly manufactured violins. They're dirt cheap. Not at all pleasant to play, but they're fine as decorations if you're into that sort of thing. You're more likely to find them at flea markets than music stores though.
I have the sudden urge to start buying antiques on Ebay, declaring them fakes, and having them destroyed for a full refund. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Then I post pictures of the destroyed treasures on the internet. Its like snuff films for antiquities dealers.
This policy makes sense for about five seconds--"Hey, instead of giving a counterfeit item back to a seller so they can just scam someone else with it, destroy it!"--until you think about about a) the possibility of mistakes and b) the potential for abuse. At that point you say "Oh, right, that's stupid" and no one ever speaks of it again. PayPal is RETARDED for keeping it in place.
Sadly, eBay is still a HUGE (the hugest?) market for many kinds of goods, and they're tied in with PayPal, so it's a chance you take when you do business there. Just as you shouldn't take anything rafting that you aren't willing to lose at the bottom of a river forever, you probably shouldn't sell anything on eBay that you're not willing to take a loss on.
But yeah... this particular incident totally sucks. There should never be any kind of punishment without some kind of proof. No claim of any kind should ever result in automatic long-term or permanent anything, just like with DMCA takedown notices.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Ah, I didn't check, but the point of pride was what made me think it was a direct quote.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You need to use a 3rd party escrow service that will appraise the item with their own experts. Clearly, that is something the buyer needs to pay for.
Alternatively, pick up the item yourself and/or have it verified by mutually agreed appraiser.
Again, this all ends up costing more than just UPS.
Anyway, selling items of any value on ebay is stupid idea. I would not buy/sell anything worth more than about $10 there, maybe $50 max.
Next time you see a minor collision between a new car and a Chrysler from the 70's you will see that build quality has changed over the years.
Or if you climb out of your new car after the accident and the people in the Chrysler don't. The clever thing about newer cars is that in an accident they will crumble except for the passenger cell, eating up the energy so that the driver and passenger don't have to.
You still want to do a visual inspection on anything or have a third party do it. I bought a C&R rifle from a guy in AZ and a friend who lived nearby looked at it and confirmed it's legit and that it was in good shape. Same applies for a guitar since you can easily hide cracks in the neck with a bit of nail polish for a photo or just about any kind of damage that isn't 100% obvious.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
I don't really see why anything old has an excessive value beyond its use.
Oddly, the type of people who appreciate and create music and art are also the type of people who might value form over function.
For violins in particular, as wood ages its tonal qualities change. Therefore, older violins are more valuable than new violins because they sound better. Well... not necessarily better but they have a more desirable sound and warm.
More importantly, a violin made in a factory in china is going to sound like crap compared to a hand made violin by a skilled luthier, even if it is brand new. An old violin was most likely made with great skill and care, and taken care of through the ages. To play something that is centuries old with a rich history is an amazing experience. This is why, while the Stradivari violins might not necessarily sound better than a modern violin from a master luthier, it's worth millions of dollars more.
As wood ages it decomposes, warps, etc., and the "tonal qualities" of a violin would do the same.
Older violins are more "valuable" only because people like you say they are. They don't sound better, they sound objectively worse.
And if that wasn't enough, you set off the bullshit bomb raid siren when you mentioned "desiareble" and "warm" sound.
Furthermore, I'd take a factory machined and produced violin over a hand-made one from a master any day. Given comparable materials and design, the machined version will be better. Of course, you had to throw in the "China" boogeyman to bolster your retarded claim by insinuating that it's going to be made of the cheapest materials possible and any manual steps are going to be performed by enslaved children who don't care about quality.
The simple fact is that an old violin was likely made with the exact amount of care as one made today. People made violins to sell.
Modern tools, processes, and designs are objectively better than those that are "centuries old", despite any "rich history".
There's value in preserving old things, and old techniques. There's even something to be said for replicating old techniques today.
But your post is ridiculous hyperbole, and is objectively wrong. There's no reason a violin should be "worth" millions of dollars simply due to age/brand/rarity. This goes for nearly all antiquities. The market is an extremely small set of collectors - a handful of individuals, museuems and libraries. The fact that they've all hyped themselves up to pay ridiculous prices for things is a joke that has auction houses laughing all the way to the bank.
I find it amusing that the true collectors will laud the rich history and cultural significance of their pieces, but will squirrel them away, coveting the possession of such a thing more than the thing itself. The rest of the market is split between the profiteers and those who actually care about the significance and historical value of things. The profiteers are the ones who hunt through garage sales, storage auctions, etc., and try to sell for profit as well as those who put their pieces up at a museum, "on loan" for money, status, ass kissing (receptive), etc.
The people who care about the value of the items are the ones who work at the libraries and museums, and they're in a perpetual state of desperation because their budgets have to include wine and cheese receptions for snobby fucks who think they're doing the museum a favor for lending them a piece for a month for the low low cost of a million of dollars.
Basically, your post does the following:
1: Make bullshit claims about quality.
2: Make valid claims of historical/cultural value ("is centuries old with a rich history").
3: Immediately slap a price tag on that historical/cultural value ("millions of dollars").
But anyone who actually cares about the historical/cultural value of a piece would share it with others freely.
The people in the Chrysler don't need to climb out of the car. The car is perfectly fine, and is ready to drive away with minor cosmetic damage.
(The above example presumes the 70s Chrysler arrived at the accident under its own power.)
Chinese sound-a-like marques ("Selman" instead of "Selmer")
Are they any good at all?
Unfortunately, the few suckers for these aren't professional musicians, but often ignorant parents who are trying to get something playable for their kids to start on.
I've been interested for a while to learn the basset horns but even a used one is about eight grand. That's in the cost territory where I have to consider if I could take a month off of work and make one for less money (i.e. not gotta happen).
Basically an $8000 entry-level instrument means I'm not going to learn it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
someone used paypal with a significant amount of money and got royally screwed by them, with direct verbal instructions by them to boot.
Why should I ever use paypal? Please. Convince me at $20, or $2000.
1. Buy $2500 violin, then claim it's a fake.
2. Buy a $100 fake violin.
4. Buy lotto ticket.
5. Win lotto.
6. Profit with TWO violins!
Sounds like a variation from Neil Gaiman's American God's :-) Read the next 4-5 pages starting here to get more :-)
http://readr.ru/neil-gaiman-american-gods.html?page=79#
Please forgive the russian, but the text is in English.
If you look up Bourguignon Maurice violin, you will see they are considered to be fine and collectable instruments with a value of perhaps $20,000.00 .
Idiotic doesn't even begin to describe this.
so then buy a new violin every few years if it starts not sounding right, and you still saved money over buying that Strad
I have had no problem with PayPal when I was on the buying side. When I was on the selling side, things haven't been so great and the web is full of horror stories.
In my mind I see many more buyers than sellers and PayPal seems to be going after having/keeping that critical mass of users and counting on sellers having to use their services if they want to reach out to buyers. Much like Facebook and Twitter are worthless if your friends/relatives aren't using it and it's almost required for you to be there if all of them are too (otherwise you start to miss stupid cat pictures).
So PayPal offers buyers much more risk protection than it does for sellers (which are fewer individuals than buyers).
The same goes for credit cards. Buyers love them but I've met very few business people who don't have complaints about MasterCard, Visa, etc. They don't have much option though: buyers rarely work in their stores with real cash, everyone wants to use the plastic cards and checks are just too insecure to accept.
All of this calls for more... regulation? I don't know but the horror stories seem to be getting worse as much as PayPal tries to impose crazy rules on everybody. I saw crazy here because they seem to be trying to enforce a least common denominator on all the World, that is, they choose the most strict rules in some country and enforce that on their whole service when it's clear that such things don't apply everywhere.
As it's evident, PayPal is also trying to protect itself from lawsuits but it might be getting exactly the opposite result in the near future.
none
Actually this is exactly what I do ...
But honestly anymore i rarely sell on E-bay because of this crap
I hope this subthread of the conversation gets modded up.
Mail fraud is a big deal, and insurance would cover you at least the cost of the loss. I like the plan for videotaping the packaging. I'm not sure how one would handle the time between packaging and handoff to the post office, but it certainly sounds like a way to ensure that your Valuable Thing at least doesn't get away from you without you getting compensated. (And, fraudsters are at much greater risk.)
It's (ostensibly) a prewar antique. This isn't a fungible item. Paypal orders someone to destroy a counterfeit handbag, you might get reimbursed the cost of the bag if your take them to court, but that violin isn't coming back.
No, but it appears to be a frangible item.
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
On eBay, the seller and the buyer could be the same person.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Even if they are selling non-antique violins they don't deserve them. When I married my wife we ended up with two artist quality violins. We kept the better of the two and sold the other on consignment through a violin shop (one that does extensive business with out of town clients). Even after consignment fees, we received more money than e-bay would have ever resulted, and no dealing with provenance of he violin as the store puts its reputation on that. Interestingly, even though they have violins that are more than $100,000 plus, they also have used beginner models starting at about $75.00 indicating they will take just about any violin on consignment.
This scam is also described in the song "Can't Con an Honest John" by The Streets, where it takes place in a bar using a dog instead of a violin. Don't know if he got it from Gaiman, or if it is older than that, but I'm guessing the latter.
for i in `facebook friends "=bday" 2>/dev/null | cut -d " " -f 3-`; do facebook wallpost $i "Happy birthday!"; done
Yet somehow they can identify antique furniture without playing it. It is more than just sound to prove provenance.
Ah, the fools! I always play the sofa and end cushions before making a purchase. Always, I tell you!
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
How can they order the destruction of anything? They are simply a broker or "go between" between two parties. PayPal does not own the item in question. Any disputes are between the buyer and the seller.
Zombieland, the girls did it with a ring in the gas station.
Two girls, one ring?
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Don't know where it's from, but the song "You can't con an honest John" by The Streets suggests a dog and a pub.
"As I have come to realize, running the beats is just getting people's confidence.
This scam only works 'cos that man thinks he's working this scam"
And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good... Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
I've used ebay to successfully bid on items over $1000. BUT, I'd never trust paypal for that kind of money. What I did was contract for payment by certified check upon local delivery (BEFORE bidding), and comp the seller $25 for the inconvenience to deliver the item. Worked out great for both of us.
The Streets does a version of this in song on the album 'Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living'-- Can't Con An Honest Jon
A version of this also happens in series one or two of 'Only Fools and Horses'
It's from an O. Henry story. Or, at least, O. Henry wrote a story about just such a scam, involving a painting. What WAS the title? Google, click, click. Nothing. Where's my dead-tree copy? Aha. "Babes in the Jungle."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Not always. I had a DVD set of an overseas series which turned out to be an obvious bootleg. Subtitle quality ranged from awesome to incomprehensible between episodes, and on some you could even see the moving scan-line where it was copied from a poorly tracked casette (or via a crappy coax cable). This from a seller that guaranteed legit items.
Paypal's response: Find somebody who can verify for us that it's fake and will send a signed letter. After checking all the local video stores, nobody was willing to do so, or at least not for significantly > cost of item.
In the end I couldn't get it done by the time the dispute was up. I got stuck with a counterfeit, and the seller got to keep my money.
Hi -
To me, that is not too different than the "glim scam" Nathaniel West described a version of it using a glass eyeball in his 1930's novel "A Cool Million"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_confidence_tricks
- TWR
Paypal seems to screw the sellers almost all the time, not the buyers (as seen in TFA). So you're probably fairly safe buying a $1k item with Paypal, but the seller is the one taking the biggest risk. Of course, this isn't all that different from any merchant that takes credit cards; it's easy to start a charge-back, but if you have a merchant account you'll probably get better treatment than Paypal will give you, as they'll just side with the buyer unless it's fairly obvious that they're in the wrong. Local delivery with cashier's check is definitely the best way of all as you can inspect the item firsthand, and there's no fees, but if you're located across the country from the buyer/seller, that's a bit of a problem. Also, cashier's checks are forgeable; there's a whole industry of people who "buy" stuff on Craigslist with fake cashier's checks, or send a fake cashier's check to buy a car from a private seller on CL but for an amount greater than the sale price, asking for the difference to be sent back to them. If you're the buyer, however, this isn't a risk for you, only the seller, as he can't verify the CC is real until he goes to his bank.
No, it's one of the oldest con games in history.
A $100 violin is likely to sound more or less like a crosscut saw. $2500 would be the price of a good but brand new violin. An antique violin like the one mentioned in this article would probably sell for well over $15k, and a Stradivarius for well over $500k (and would probably sound a lot worse than the $2500 brand new violin).
If the picture in the article is of the violin in question, then it's definitely a (very bad) fake, and, according to the law, fakes have to be destroyed, regardless of their quality. A $2500 brand new violin can sound a lot better than a Stradivarius, but if you try to sell it as one you're committing a fraud, and you don't simply get to have it returned to you so you can try again with another sucker.
More likely, the policy stems from the fact that you don't have to return anything anyone ships to you in the mail, while you can still demand that they send you what you paid for, after 30 days (or other reasonable amount of time).
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/products/pro15.shtm
Q. What should I do if the unordered merchandise I received was the result of an honest shipping error?
A. Write the seller and offer to return the merchandise, provided the seller pays for postage and handling. Give the seller a specific and reasonable amount of time (say 30 days) to pick up the merchandise or arrange to have it returned at no expense to you. Tell the seller that you reserve the right to keep the merchandise or dispose of it after the specified time has passed.
As wood ages it decomposes, warps, etc., and the "tonal qualities" of a violin would do the same.
A well kept violin will not decompose or warp. As wood ages, it also hardens, which allows it to resonate more when played. Further, the type of varnish applied to the wood plays an integral role in its sound, and that too can improve with age. In fact many new instruments are made from wood that's hundreds of years old.
Furthermore, I'd take a factory machined and produced violin over a hand-made one from a master any day.
So... how long have you been playing violin exactly? I've been playing violin 15 years and have studied with plenty of people who've been playing for life-times longer. I've never met anyone who would choose to play a cheap factory made violin. Constructing a violin is an art, not a science. You can program a computer to create a violin, but in my experience I have never played a violin that came from a factory that was even comparable to a hand made instrument. And I threw in China because all the terrible factory machined violins I've ever played happen to be from that country.
There's no reason a violin should be "worth" millions of dollars simply due to age/brand/rarity.
Age/brand/rarity are the reasons why almost everything has worth in the first place. Worth is all about perception. If I had millions of dollars, you bet I'd give it to play the violin I saw Jascha Heifetz play in black and white when I was a child. Of course that experience would be worth $0 to you, but that doesn't mean I'm somehow "wrong" for wanting to pay that much.
A used but playable and durable violin will set you back around $500. A brand new violin, closer to $2000. I wouldn't trust a $100 violin to last more than 2 months without warping, and it'll probably sound more like a saw.
Yes, some of the Chinese cheapy saxaphones are quite nice for the price: http://www.shwoodwind.co.uk/Reviews/Ultra_Cheap_horns.htm http://www.shwoodwind.co.uk/Reviews/Saxes/Alto/Chinese_alto.htm
I suspect this test detected an absence of virtuoso talent. Performers like DuPree, Heifetz, Menuhin and Stern could coax something from a Strad that isn't available from a lesser instrument. The other issue is the constraints that limited their playing time on each instrument. I suspect they would be able to tell the difference between the instruments after several days of practice on each instrument but such a test would be impractical.
He means the text is from American Gods.
this is why she should use an escrow service when selling expensive items. ship it to them. and have them independently verify its authenticity. if it is authentic and after they get the funds from buyer then they ship it to him. can probably set it up so if it checks out ok the buyer pays the fees for the service, otherwise if it is a fake the seller does.
You know, my girlfriend is a music teacher (specifically 4th and 5th grade band) and that's one of the issues she always mentioned. Parents want to start their kids on a "decent" instrument, balk at the prices for actual decent horns, then hop on ebay and end up getting a knockoff that ultimately isn't so good. I never realized how big of a deal it was... also didn't know that those horns are actually playable.
Basset horn? Is that a lazy horn with long ears that lays on the couch all day instead of playing?
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
I had this happen to me up until I threatened to haul him into small claims court and then after winning that case sue him for libel. I got a refund, but still had a negative feedback mark.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
For $8000 you could probably buy both an Eigenharp Alpha AND the Macbook Pro needed to run it.
Hard to imagine how PayPal could have a "stranglehold" on eBay, considering that eBay basically invented PayPal, and PayPal is a wholly-owned subsidiary of eBay.
the type of people who appreciate and create music and art are also the type of people who might value form over function.
Complete bollocks. People who create music definitely care about the function (the ability to create music) far more than about how it looks. If you're buying a violin because it "looks pretty" or because it has a famous logo on it, you're not violinist, you're a wanker. Similar motion, but different results.
Some old violins are valuable because they're antiques and (in some cases) because they're very well sculpted. For a collector, that's really what matters, but for a musician the violin is a tool. And modern, well-made violins are better and more consistent than anything Stradivari ever made.
No digital artist is going to run Photoshop 1.0 on a Macintosh Plus when doing real work.
The point is more to why a professional violinist usually tends towards older instruments rather than newer ones. If a violinist can find an older violin in the range between $40,000 - $100,000 range that they like, chances are they would purchase that one before they would buy a newer instrument that costs the same. Also a good number of the highly regarded luthiers have a waiting list of over a year or more for new instruments.
The fact is that most professional violinists cannot afford an instrument that costs as much as a Strad or a del Gesu. Those instruments tend to be purchased for private collections or by organizations that loan high quality instruments to promising musicians. The few violinists that do own an instrument like that are very highly paid concert soloists.
No, the 70s Chrysler is fine only at very low speeds, such as a fender bender. I own an old (60s) vehicle, and have been rear ended in stop and go traffic. My truck came out in better shape than theirs. However, if they were going more than 5-10 MPH, things would have been quite different. Let's take a look at some videos, shall we?
1960s Crash Tests, mostly GM vehicles I believe.
SSC
if it just _played_ like a "regular" violin destroying it was just ass-hattism.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
This is called the Fiddle Game.
It was used in Neil Gaiman's American Gods, but I highly doubt he was the first to think about it.
Then why would the seller be flogging it on eBay for 1/10th of that? Unless, of course, it was a fake...
Both
The $150-350 Selmans and Weimars on eBay are not very playable. They have chronic problems with valve action. The pistons are made of monel and usually start sticking after only a few months because you can't make monel on the cheap.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
This doesn't work on eBay, where accepting PayPal is mandatory.
So? That merely shows that Stradivarius violins really aren't specially wonderful sounding and throws into question their actual worth in terms of performing value. It says nothing about whether they can examine the thing and identify that it is indeed a Stradivarius as opposed to one made by some other guy.
No, it shows that there are some amazing newly-made instruments, (some of which are designed to be functional replicas of famous instruments).
The value of a genuine great Strad is ridiculously high because it is a very old, possibly historically interesting, amazing instrument.
The people in the Chrysler don't need to climb out of the car. The car is perfectly fine, and is ready to drive away with minor cosmetic damage.
It's true, the people that were in the Chrysler have flown out through the windshield, leaving you free to drive their car away.
The problem isn't the "minor collisions" (which, in new cars, are easily fixable by replacing the damaged parts), it's the major ones. Speaking as someone who sees (the results of) a lot of car crashes, I'd take a Smart over a 70s Chrysler any day.
New cars don't crumple because they're "poorly built". They crumple (while keeping their occupants in one piece) because they're very, very well built.
Next time you see the drivers (or what remains of them) after a major collision between a new car and a Chrysler from the 70's you will see that build quality has improved over the years.
There are some very nice violins falsely labeled as Strads, for example.
Then please, oh wise Anonymous Coward, tell us which ones those are so we may label them properly.
Or, depending on the force of the impact, the people in the Chrysler are dead because they absorbed all of the force of the collision instead of the car. Sure, maybe a relative could drive the car away, but the people that were in the car are most likely getting a ride in an ambulance.
'Even if it was a bad fake (some old fakes are actually very nice instruments made by competent makers), it is still a functional instrument that has real value.'
I see, so like a fake Louis Vuitton is perfectly capable of holding all a Lady's stuff if it is fake or not?
Nonetheless fakes must be destroyed, it's the law.
Well, if you buy a $2500 violin, you sure wouldn't want to read this article:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/01/02/violinists-can%E2%80%99t-tell-the-difference-between-stradivarius-violins-and-new-ones/
Whenever in an argument, remember this.
Heh. I saw it on Sanford and Son in the 70's. I believe the item was a commode.
Paypal is not regulated like banks are, in the US.
Funniest thing I've read in ages!
if it is a fake, then presumably there'd be no great loss in destroying it.
Really? Suppose I take a very large, very real sapphire, and try to pass it off as the Star of India. It's a fake Star of India, but it still might be worth $500,000 because it's a big sapphire.
This is wrong. A research article just came up on Metafilter. Apparently, in a double blind experiment where both the musicians and the listeners are listening to pieces, the newer instruments sound better. The Stradivarius sound seems to be a human perception similar to wine tasting myths. http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2012/01/02/144482863/double-blind-violin-test-can-you-pick-the-strad?sc=fb&cc=fp
What we need is a way to verify their home address and identity with a credible amount of certainty. People are a lot less brave about things like this, when they believe someone might be able track them down and firebomb their house many years down the road.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
I thought the point of money laundering was to conceal the source of or legitimize undisclosed money?
If I buy a fake violin for $1,000,000 the police are still going to say "Whoa whoa whoa there, where the hell did you get a million dollars?"
The buyer is anonymous and picked up the violin in person and paid cash, and could be a made up entity. The police are certainly never going to find them to ask where they got the million dollars from.
"More importantly, a violin made in a factory in china is going to sound like crap compared to a hand made violin by a skilled luthier, even if it is brand new. "
Luthiers in Cremona (hometown of Stradivari) are allowed only to make 15 violins a year.
Idiot regulations like that are causing mass closings of their shops.
Chinese luthiers have won all the medals of their trade and they can also turn out decent instruments for 25$, which is good enough for kids to learn.
From WP.
"However, the many blind tests from 1817 to the present (as of 2012 ) have never found any difference in sound between Stradivari's violins and high-quality violins in comparable style of other makers and periods, nor has acoustic analysis."
It would be nice if you could also see the feedback weighted by the sell price. A reseller could sell hundreds of $2 items legitimately but run a scam for high value items selling less frequently and still maintain a fairly good feedback balance.
From the Regretsy link:
> UPDATE: I neglected to mention in the original post that the violin was examined and authenticated by a top luthier prior to its sale.
Filing in a small claims court is usually very cheap and does not require a lawyer.
But the seller could only recover $750 that way. If you ask for more than $750, the defendant gains the right to a jury trial, and if they exercise that right, the case moves to the usual circuit court instead of small claims court. You can ask for $2500 and hope PayPal decides it's not worth it to fight (it probably isn't, since they'd probably spend more than that just preparing their case), but you risk being dragged into a full-on legal dispute that DOES require lawyers.
Actually, that has been changed recently. If you look at a seller's feedback page, you can see the chart showing the number of positive, neutral and negative comments in the last month/6 months/year. Click on the number of comments, and they're filtered, showing only the neutral or negative comments you want to read. Quite convienient.
What you are referring to came about in the 19th Century as a result of mail order where people who never ordered anything got something in the mail and then a later inflated invoice for it, but the key part is unordered merchandise. If you have a relationship with the seller, and especially if they send you what was pictured, this won't apply, and you are opening yourself to a lawsuit trying to prove tangential issues such as authenticity.
More importantly, a violin made in a factory in china is going to sound like crap compared to a hand made violin by a skilled luthier, even if it is brand new.
However, a violin made by a skilled luthier in China is going to sound quite good--in the same class as violins made in Europe, yet significantly cheaper. Search the web for Chinese violins, and you'll find a number of people quite pleased with their Made in China violins. For example, see this thread.
the ebay/paypal pendulum of balance has not been swinging wildly back and forth between buyer and seller. It has always been tilted toward ebay/paypal.
with a dud where I was faced with a $30 return fee on a $50 item, I called up paypal and was told to suck eggs because that's the risk you take with online purchases. I asked for that in writing to drop the case but the fat woman on the other side refused.
Worst use of a car analogy on slashdot ever! New cars have vastly more quality than some old rust bucket. I like old cars too, but not for "quality" reasons.
Depends on your jurisdiction. In the UK, the limit is £5,000 (about $7800). In the USA, I believe it varies depending on the state. If it does go to a jury trial, it would cost PayPal a lot more than $2500 to fight it.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Old guitars often sound better because they are of better quality, it has nothing to do with "ageing". There were a lot of crap guitars made in the 60s and 70s, most of which have since been made into chipboard, so the ones that survive are the good ones. Compare them to a cheap guitar made today and they'll obviously sound better. Compare them to a quality guitar made today and they sound basically the same.
Please stop this "older is better" nonsense. If that was true, then no one would have bothered to keep Stradivarius or Guarnieri violins at the time, because they were brand new and would sound a lot worse than violins from older manufacturers, that had had time to "age". They became famous (and lasted until the present) because they were better than the competition, despite being new, thus proving that quality is not a result of age. And new violins (from quality luthiers) are as good (in fact quite a bit better) than anything Stradivari ever made. Most Stradivarius violins in use today have had most of their parts replaced anyway.
I would vote for this!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
There's no good reason to sell on Ebay unless you're located in China or Hong Kong and selling a lot of really cheap shit, or you're a reseller for that same cheap shit. Honestly, it seems like there's more sellers located in HK or China now than in the USA, selling to American customers.
because even if you had uncut footage of this right to the post office, paypal doesn't care and doesn't want to see it.
In most any music store in Lima, Peru, you can pick up a cheap violin for about $25.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
The pendulum of balance has been swinging wildly back and forth between buyer and seller at ebay. It wasn't too long ago that sellers were routinely screwing over buyers and leaving scathing negative feedback if they tried to get any resolution.
The whole "I'll leave feedback after you do" thing was one of my pet peeves as an eBay buyer. If I'm the buyer and you're the seller, then the entire basis for your evaluation of my performance should be whether I paid promptly. That's it. Once I've paid you for the merchandise, my role is over. (Assuming I don't pull a scam of my own claiming the item wasn't shipped, wasn't as described, etc.).
The seller's role is far more complex, and it's understandable that a buyer may need more time to evaluate - say, until the buyer has had time to receive the item and make sure it is as described.
Back when sellers could leave feedback for buyers, I always though that they should have needed to do so at the time of receiving payment. You won the auction, and you paid me within a reasonable timeframe? A+, we're done here. Assuming, again, no scams by dishonest buyers, etc. - but such matters should always have been handled through eBay and PayPal's dispute resolution mechanisms, not via feedback.
Whenever a seller said "I'll leave feedback after you do", I interpreted that as extortion and moved on to the next listing.
They are hoping that nobody will be willing to split the baby.
To prevent the scam whereby the buyer gets a refund from paypal, and has hence stolen a good quality violin from its owner.
I personally think the buyer should send it back to the seller who is confident on its value.
the buyer, because they're deemed to have accepted the goods, and have failed to make payment. The buyer then makes a claim against paypal which may or may not be successful ("you didn't have to use our dispute resolution service or follow our instructions, not our fault that you smashed your violin").
FGD 135
Do I get extra geek points for reading that as: Two girls and The One Ring? (My preciousssss.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
No, as you already know, Neil Gaiman's work is extremely derivative, and the con is one of the old classics, but the text was quoted from American Gods.
No sig for the moment.
PayPal's been like that for ages, at least in the UK. I often look at what kinds of complaints people have left with their neutral or negative feedback for a particular seller when judging how reliable they are..
Anyone who buys or sells antique violins per EBay and PayPal didn't deserve to have it in the first place.
But you somehow "deserve" to decide who deserves to have what...?
Paganini violins, which are truly priceless except for when they are for sale
Priceless except when they are for sale... Doesn't that kind of apply to everything?
Also, you do realize that Paganini was a composer and violinist, not a violin maker, right? Talking about "Paganini violins" is like talking about "Elvis guitars".
Currently you have to wade through thousands of A+++++++++++++++++++++ useless feedback to see how a seller handles an auction where both parties weren't happy.
You don't, go to someones feedback profile and under "Recent Feedback ratings" click the number of negatives (or neutral). That way you only see the negative feedback. I use this quite often because reading all the positive A++++ comments is indeed pointless.
i look at more then feedback. if i see a 2 month old account with 10k on good feedback i know something is up.
It might cost them a lot the first time, but after bitch-slapping the plaintiff in court and recovering $100k in court costs, others will be discouraged from trying the same thing.
Do you know what "unordered" means? Can you see how that doesn't apply to the case in which you ordered something?
(Kudos if you know where this is from)
Not really, but The Real Hustle has done something very much like this.. Except that instead of a violin, they used a dog. :-) Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Wy1P-XN328
In the U.S. terms of a contract may not be enforceable. This destruction requirement may run afoul of the concept of unconscionability. IANAL.
"Unconscionability (also known as unconscientious dealings) is a term used in contract law to describe a defense against the enforcement of a contract based on the presence of terms that are excessively unfair to one party. Typically, such a contract is held to be unenforceable because the consideration offered is lacking or is so obviously inadequate that to enforce the contract would be unfair to the party seeking to escape the contract.
In and of itself, inadequate consideration is likely not enough to make a contract unenforceable. However, a court of law will consider evidence that one party to the contract took advantage of its superior bargaining power to insert provisions that make the agreement overwhelmingly favor the interests of that party."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscionability
As wood ages it decomposes, warps, etc., and the "tonal qualities" of a violin would do the same.
A well kept violin will not decompose or warp. As wood ages, it also hardens, which allows it to resonate more when played. Further, the type of varnish applied to the wood plays an integral role in its sound, and that too can improve with age. In fact many new instruments are made from wood that's hundreds of years old.
Furthermore, I'd take a factory machined and produced violin over a hand-made one from a master any day.
So... how long have you been playing violin exactly? I've been playing violin 15 years and have studied with plenty of people who've been playing for life-times longer. I've never met anyone who would choose to play a cheap factory made violin. Constructing a violin is an art, not a science. You can program a computer to create a violin, but in my experience I have never played a violin that came from a factory that was even comparable to a hand made instrument. And I threw in China because all the terrible factory machined violins I've ever played happen to be from that country.
There's no reason a violin should be "worth" millions of dollars simply due to age/brand/rarity.
Age/brand/rarity are the reasons why almost everything has worth in the first place. Worth is all about perception. If I had millions of dollars, you bet I'd give it to play the violin I saw Jascha Heifetz play in black and white when I was a child. Of course that experience would be worth $0 to you, but that doesn't mean I'm somehow "wrong" for wanting to pay that much.
Wood hardens because it dries out. It also shrinks (creating gaps) and warps (deforming the cavity) when it dries out.
It creates an objectively worse form for tonal quality.
The fake puppy I just had delivered is a sad panda.
Nope. Different kind of ring. You'll have to pucker up if you want to succeed in this game.
Say you are driving this 46 Ford and the other side is driving a modern car and there is a head on collision. The moder car is your crumple zone.
You can't handle the truth.
if it is a fake, then presumably there'd be no great loss in destroying it.
Oh please don't let this guy manage a museum. Lots of valuable works of art are fakes. Default is always preservation, never destruction. Trying to reason about artworks in the same manner as if they were chinese fake shoes is a BigFail (TM)
this is something that has always surprised me about the US legal system. Here in Argentina you can't take away any such rights by contract.
You keep using this word "objectively" and I'm not sure you know what it means. We're talking about sound here.. something which is completely determined by the listener's personal preference. The opposite of "objectively". The only reason I'm arguing that older wood sounds better is because to my ear it sounds better, and the majority of violinists agree with me. There's a reason that most good violins, both hundreds of years old or made yesterday, are made from wood that has already been dead for hundreds of years. The $25 violins that sound like tin cans are made from cheap wood and cheap varnishes. But either way you can't possibly tell me there's any objectivity in this.
It most definitely isn't a hoax.
The violin had a label naming Maurice Bourguignon in it. The interesting thing here is that this doesn't claim that it was actually built by him or even in his workshop. It was used to denote that it was at least built in the image of his style and technique. Think a modern Les Paul replica if you must.
Now I can't imagine you'll get a certified and genuine Maurice Bourguignon at a price tag of $2500. So what we have here is a clueless buyer, corporate insanity and a smashed antiquity with an interesting history. It even was assessed by an expert before the deal.
The buyer comes over like a bit of a brat. The reasoning here is "I don't believe I got an original at less than a 10th of its price. So I will smash the thing because PayPal tells me so." And thus something of value or at least interest was lost.
What really depresses me is that in this discussion people actually argued how you could make a scam based on this work. Rotten, materialistc, greedy, spineless bastards. I don't know how your brain works but I really hope this kind of senseless profiteering idiocy is nowhere near the norm or actually put in practice.
If I felt malicious I'd say never ever send anything old over the Atlantic. But unfortunately this kind of moronic assumptuous Wikipedia fueled ignorance as displayed by the smashing buyer is ubiquitious.
20 minutes into the future
Exactly my thought. Nobody should should have 99% satisfaction. I know for working for the Red clown that about 5-10% of people that order are just there to pick a argument with you.
Thing is, that's ok. In ebay and newegg comments you can clearly tell when somebody has a) ridiculous improbable bad luck. B) totally doesn't know what the product is for and/or does not have the technical skills. & c) unwrapped a DOA and returned it. I alway read negative feedback with a big grain of salt. It's obvious when the feedback is"to bad to be real".
Exactly my question- even in TFA, they claim "counterfiets must be destroyed", and I don't really understand WHY.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Yes, well, if the seller doesn't get at least reimbursed then I'd take this to court.
TOS do NOT supersede laws in any country of the world including the US. This is why companies are quite quite nervous to have it tested in court.
TOS is a part of a contract. And you can't have illegal contracts. This is why proper contracts have clauses that say that if parts of the contracts are invalidated by law then the others parts still apply.
We have not always been at war with Oceania and TOS can't go against the law. Even if they can go against common sense until someone has them tested in court.
20 minutes into the future
Edgar Allan Poe, his satirical piece on 'Diddling - As An Exact Science'
That's why the best violins available are plastic, milled by a CNC machine to extremely tight tolerances. It'll sound exactly the same in 1000 years as it does now.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Well, if a trustworthy third party had authenticated it, I'd be tempted...
1. But $100 violin, then claim it's a fake
2. Buy $5 violin, smash it up, send photo to PayPal
3. Profit!
Pfft, 95 bucks profit. That's chicken feed. Here's a better business plan
1. Buy $5 violin. Smash it up
2. Exhibit the debris at an art gallery, under a fancy name like "Postmodern deconstruction 7"
3. Buy drinks to an art critic until he writes an article about "the latest development in modern art" and quotes you as a founder of the new movement
4. Sell the debris for one million bucks
Yes, I just visited the local modern art museum, why do you ask?
From the article: "Their [the three stradivari] combined value is around 10 million US dollars, a hundred times more than the three new ones."
$10'000'000 / 100 = $100'000
$100'000 / 3 = $33'333
So the average value of the 3 new violins that were indistinguishable from Stradivari is about $33'000. Those are not cheap instruments we're talking about, and in a whole different league than the instrument featured in the paypal affair. As for the difference between a $2500 violin and a $100 violin, you have obviously never been through the traumatic experience of listening to a $100 violin from close by. I can assure you even a non-expert can hear the difference with both eyes^H^H^H^Hears closed. In fact, it would take industrial-strength ear protectors to not notice the difference.
The problem is that while the car is quite intact, the driver's unconcious due to his head hitting the steering wheel, or worse.
So they'll be able to drive away as soon as a new driver gets there.
I don't read AC A human right
I remember stuff like that. I even remember from some Antique Roadshow where it turned out something was a fake - but it was such a fake that it was actually MORE valuable than the real ones!
It's sort of the situation with bills/coins and misprints. Misprints get out in the wild so rarely that they're considered more valuable than the base unit.
I don't read AC A human right
Paypal claims to be an Escrow service. But when it comes to valuable items, it's often better to go with a real service - which will independently verify the authenticity - of both the item and the payment for the item, before completing the change.
A real escrow service would receive the item, safeguarding and authenticating it. It would also receive the payment. Once the escrow terms are met, the buy receives the item and the seller the payment, minus the escrow fee.
I don't read AC A human right
You mean a horndog?
Having worked for eBay...
This is a scam. The counterfeit policies are to prevent the item from being resold by the seller if returned. This is for counterfeit CD's/dvd's mainly where the value of the item is negligible.
For high value items, like Louis Vuitton stuff, where eBay and Paypal do not have the means of identifiying if an item is fake or not, the item has to be returned and the SELLER has to verify that the item was returned for the money to be returned. If the seller has a history of selling counterfeits, they will get banned from using eBay and/or Paypal for life.
Likewise the buyer, in trying to scam the seller (if the item is legit) has the same problem. If they return the item they get their money back. If they don't, they do not get their money back. The confiscation option (send to paypal) is usually used for items that are clearly fake, in which the money is frozen in the sellers account, and the buyer doesn't get their money back until the Paypal team decides if it's legit or not.
I've seen (while at eBay) items that people have sent in because they were fake, and they were usually obvious garbage like DVD-R discs, fake iphones, etc.
A Violin is one-of-a-kind. I think the origin of this story lies in a copy-paste email that was taken far more literately and the PayPal rep sends the same email for counterfeit DVD's as they do for counterfeit Louis Vuittons. IIRC they can only send out the copypaste emails on initial response, but I think the rep failed to identify that buyer is probably trying to scam the seller.
The fact PayPal decided to tell the buyer to destroy the item, does not force them to destroy it. It does not relieve the buyer of their obligation under the contract to buy.
They are still obligated to pay -- and since they destroyed the item, there is no way they can return it for a refund now.
So not only did they break their contract, they took actions that caused irreparable harm to the seller.
Destroying the item may also constitute destruction of evidence, which can result in further penalties in court.
I would strongly encourage the seller to avail themselves of this legal recourse, and also look at action against Paypal for tortuous interference, w.r.t. the buyer's obligation to pay for the product they have purchased or return the item....
Depending on the bank, they can suck your account negative, and then the bank sues you.
You can use a bank that will allow only a transfer in, but not a transfer out on the account ID/routing number that you provide to PayPal.
It doesn't solve the problem though -- if PayPal can't get the refund money, PayPal can say you owe that money to PayPal, report it as a delinquent account to credit reporting agencies, but worst -- freeze/hold your account, so that you can't make any more sales.
You can't use PayPal and win, unless you are prepared to switch to something else at a moment's notice. Why not just use the other thing in the first place then, if you don't need PayPal?
Until someone invents a time machine, yes the law of supply and demand is pretty strict about the idea that old things can't simply appear in sufficient quantity to offset a high price due to scarcity.
I think it's obvious... the PayPal folks who ordered destruction of the antiques may have their own collection of antique violins... and they could then know that the more real ones get destroyed, the greater the value theirs will be.
Getting antique violins destroyed at no personal cost to them or their company makes the antiques they own more valuable, because after the destructions, there are fewer of them to be bought/sold.
Then complain to the Department of Justice. Sounds like a clear cut case of anti-competitive tying, ala Microsoft circa 1990s.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
No, because in small claims court they can't bring lawyers ;)
(Statute varies based on locality)
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
If you think that Jack Daniels, or at least the mash/must and feedstock sugars that turns into Jack Daniels takes 11 years to make, then you're a tad deluded.
It's a bourbon for JHC's sake! It's mostly made of Draino!
two hobbits, one ring?
Your definition of "The opposite of "objectively" ", appears to be the Dictionary definition of "Objectively".
I think I know where the Missing Matter in your body is missing from.
Note: (Not just your genital area BTW)
if you ship at staples they are usually willing to verify something for you if you let them close up the package. I've had them make me open packages before to inspect electronics (for the insurance policy). Most small mail shops will do this too, some asking for a small fee. take down their name, the date and time and you instantly have a credible third party witness in the case of a dispute.
i can't understand why the seller did not use an escrow company. there are plenty out there! you ship to the escrow company, escrow company pictures/inspects the item, gets ok/payment from buyer and THEN finishes the transaction, at which point neither party has recourse.
I suspect this test detected an absence of virtuoso talent. Performers like DuPree, Heifetz, Menuhin and Stern could coax something from a Strad that isn't available from a lesser instrument. The other issue is the constraints that limited their playing time on each instrument. I suspect they would be able to tell the difference between the instruments after several days of practice on each instrument but such a test would be impractical.
Every double blind study I have seen of this nature supports the idea that beyond a certain not-that-hard-to-obtain level of quality in the instrument, both players and listeners cannot tell the difference between instruments. None of these things are magical you know - the ability to make quality musical instruments has not been "lost to the ancients".
With that said, I would not be at all surprised to find that listeners and players THINK that a particular instrument sounds better when they think that the instrument is a better instrument (that's why the $1000 optical digital cable makes your sound system sound so much better). That's why the double blind is needed in order to tell which instrument in fact sounds better.
If it takes a couple of days (or longer) to become familiar enough with an instrument to get the best out of it, that does present challenges in the blinding.
The 70s Chrysler has crumple zones, it's called the other car. Now, a collision between two 70s Chryslers is where it's going to get really ugly.
Except the buyer (the one giving $1Mil of 'unclean' money) wants to get something of value for that million dollars. Unless they can sucker somebody else to give them, say, $800,000 for that fake violin, it's pretty stupid.
They might as well spend $20 on some gas and set the money on fire.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Or if you just like breaking stuff, save yourself the $5. ;)
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
With that said, I would not be at all surprised to find that listeners and players THINK that a particular instrument sounds better when they think that the instrument is a better instrument (that's why the $1000 optical digital cable makes your sound system sound so much better). That's why the double blind is needed in order to tell which instrument in fact sounds better.
If it takes a couple of days (or longer) to become familiar enough with an instrument to get the best out of it, that does present challenges in the blinding.
My favorite among the high end snake oil was the $500 power cable, as if the electrons that had traveled over miles industrial grade conductors would notice a meter of fancy conductor between the wall and the amp. Dunlavy did a lot of double blind tests on speaker wire and consistently demonstrated that listeners couldn't tell the difference between twelve gauge commodity grade stranded wire and hundred dollar a foot speaker cable. That being said I remain of the opinion that the performers needed to play each of those instruments for hours or even days before choosing. Twenty minutes isn't long enough to finish a set of practice exercises. YoYo Ma has said of the Strad he plays (The Davidoff Strad once owned by DuPree IIRC) that he has to coax the sound from it. Learning how to coax sound from a temperamental instrument can take weeks of practice.
Close by? Don't you mean "within a hundred yards and not sheltered by sound proofing?"
In fairness to the slightly cheaper instruments (e.g. at the $1200 price point instead of the $3000 price point), sometimes, the luthiers get lucky and hit a good combination to make a cheaper instrument sound like a much higher quality one. I've seen this recently on a viola I purchased for my child. The $1200 instrument was clearly outperforming the higher priced instrument.
However, any instrument needs to be carefully adjusted to get the best tonal quality out of it. That $1200 viola? It had the strings replaced with a different set better for that instrument, the sound post was adjusted, and a few other things done to clean up a less than stellar tonal quality on the upper half of the A and D strings. The C and G strings were excellent. (The sudden change in tonal quality is what told me to suggest a sound post adjustment, it was starting surprisingly close to harmonic points and consistent through the rest of the fingerboard, not just a single wolf note). Using a bow that works well with the instrument also makes a big difference.
"I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend unto the death your right to say it." -- Voltaire
Here is what I would do to make feedback on eBay better for everyone involved:
1.Both sellers and buyers get to leave any kind of feedback they like (negative or positive or neutral)
2.At some point after the auction, a timer is started to allow the leaving of feedback for a limited time. When the timer runs out, neither party can leave feedback anymore.
3.Feedback left by one party remains hidden until either both parties have left feedback or the limited time has expired. (the timer exists simply to stop one party from leaving no feedback in order to prevent their own feedback (left by the other party) from becoming public/visible.
The purpose of this idea is to ensure that neither party has to worry about the repercussions (including retaliatory negative feedback) of leaving negative feedback for the other party.
It looks as if antiquities are definitely NOT what the PayPal terms of service considered when writing their ToS. Which suggests that PayPal should not be the route for buying/ selling such items. Tough on PayPal ; sad for the owner of the original (assertedly "original", whatever that means) violin. But it has the smell of the Law of Unintended Consequences to me.
I occasionally taunt sellers of fake memory cards on ebaY, making use of the PayPal ToS to avoid returning their fake goods. For that purpose, the PayPal ToS are useful. Different courses require different horses.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
First problem, where are you going to get a $5 violin that isn't broken beyond repair?
If you DO find one, it's likely going to be a discarded piece of "junk" in an estate sale, and unless it's severely damaged (light damage, scratches, cracks, etc can actually add legitimacy) it's going to be worth a lot more than you paid for it, which means fraud would be difficult to ascertain.
If you can find a violin for $5 that's worth 1000x more, why not just sell it legitimately and avoid the legal complications?
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I bloody well hope not! I've got $136million in cash reserves and I'm building up my crew of psionic warriors to launch an Avenger back at Cydonia. What I really don't need is a dispute resolution procedure on a crummy Plasma Rifle to screw up my accounts.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO:_Enemy_Unknown , for those who weren't around in the 1980s. Still fun.)
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
I know you're lying, because the viola isn't a real instrument.
Obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/325/
(tooltip text specifically)
Great idea.... if you're a complete faggot.
BTW, you forgot ( ? ) 3. ?
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
In some countries (including the USA) it's an offence to mail a counterfeit item back to the seller. See :
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/04/paypal_destroys_violin/
~Pev
Well, it is quite replaceable, just buy a violin and wait. Voila, an old violin. Personally I don't really see why anything old has an excessive value beyond its use.
You can't turn a violin into a viola just by waiting.
How is it that all these stupid, Neanderthal, mafia guys can be so good at crime and smart guys like us can suck so badly at it?
UK con artists invented an even faster way that I was once hit with (didn't bite because I had read about it online a few months before). Some guys pull up in a transit van with some impressive looking speakers in it. They grab a random person off the street and explain that they were supposed to deliver them but that the guy changed his mind and now they have these top-notch studio grade speakers and the seller is refusing to pay because they were not actually delivered. They need to recover their petrol money having just driven 200 miles so are selling them off for whatever you can get from a cash machine.
In my case the speakers were really obvious cheap crap, full size floor standers but with words like "MP3" and "Ultra BASS" written on the box. I say "hay, I read about this online, I'm surprised you are still trying it because surely everyone knows about it now!" and they left rather quickly.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Regardless of whether or not an item is, or can be authenticated as some form of antique, terms of service that require the destruction of that item in the event of any kind of dispute are clearly unconscionable. The only honourable course of action in this kind of case is for the item to be returned to the seller and the buyer's money refunded.
> What really depresses me is that in this discussion people actually argued how you could make a scam based on this work
Basic security research, silly. How would you go about fixing something if you don't know how and why it's broken? If I want to secure my house I'm going to think of every possible way to break in. Does that mean I'm an inherently bad person?
A quick Google Search shows that it varies greatly from state to state. Mine it's all the way up to 10k, of course, my state's so corrupt it doesn't matter anyway, the judge'll get bought for $500...
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
Hmmm.
Sure, you undoubtedly will save money. But your parent poster neglects to mention that Stradivari in particular most probably used wood from the same two trees (maple for the back and ribs, spruce for the belly of his instruments) for the greater part of his career, so one would expect a degree of uniformity in his materials. His workmanship, and certainly his aesthetic most definitely did vary as he got older.
It's pretty clear that destroying the item is only an option, if the seller *forgoes* the option of having the item returned before refunding the money.. If i bought something and claimed a refund , and destroyed the item first, do you really think the seller would cheerfully refund it? Also, If I claimed it was a counterfeit, destroying the evidence would kind of nix my claim.. I'd think.. Lastly, 2500 is *not* excessive for even a newer violin.. it could have been a 20 year old budget model passed off as 70 years old though.. And remember.. even fake stradivarii, if they're old enough are valuable.. My folks sold one that belonged to my great great great great grandfather in the early 1800s for 300 $ after the guy said it was junk, - they believed everybody who wore a suit ;-(, and he promptly turned it over for at least a 2000% profit.
And if it does not, just print another frame and transfer the hardware.
We're talking about alternating current, so the electrons don't really move very far. They mostly just vibrate in one place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drift_velocity#Numerical_example
YoYo Ma has said of the Strad he plays (The Davidoff Strad once owned by DuPree IIRC) that he has to coax the sound from it. Learning how to coax sound from a temperamental instrument can take weeks of practice.
If it is a "temperamental instrument", perhaps it is not as "good" as one that isn't as "tempermental"?
There is a little bit of a difference in a 200 year old "fake" violin and a three month old fake Louis Vuitton bag. If you don't see that then you're a moron.
Scenario : a seller is selling (say) Kingston USB flash drives of 256GB size for GBP 15 (a true laughing price).
They are scammers : Kingston make no such device (and their 64GB flash drives are about GBP 80 for a real one).
(Obviously I do this as a sort of vindictive assault on counterfeit sellers ; it's not a casual thing, it's a deliberate attempt to make life difficult for them, up to and including jail time.)
The PayPal ToS are quite capable of dealing with some situations quite well. But situations where there could be reasonable uncertainty about the state of an object ... antiques, for example ; fossils might be something that I'd encounter naturally, or minerals (I'm a professional geologist, and I make mistakes too) ... well then PayPal's ToS could cause problems. So care must be taken.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Two girls, one cup?
There fixed that for ya. ;)
IT Admins Group: Where you decide the content
If you take it on to Pawn Stars, Rick has a buddy that will verify it's real for free... On anything in the world..... He has a buddy to authenticate it.....
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
As you put your comment in $ (though there are other countries that use $) I will just leave this here:
http://law.freeadvice.com/resources/smallclaimscourts.htm
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Knowingly shipping a counterfeit through USPS is a federal crime. Paypal instructing the buyer to return the item in exchange for their money back could be construed as conspiracy/accessory.
Also, for true, worthless counterfeits, giving it back to the seller to just try again only hurts the market. If I have a fake Gucci purse that I bought for $10 and sell it for $1k, spending $10 on shipping I made a $980 profit, add the cost of shipping it out three more times before I find a buyer who believes it's real I've made a $950 profit. Destroy the purse on the first one and I'm /down/ $20. That really cuts into my bottom line.