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View Full Version : Trading Protocol Debate, Weigh In!


topherkris
06-14-2009, 04:56 PM
A fellow member and I are having a debate, and I'll do my best to fully express the situation:

Here are the conditions:

A) Two Members, neither member has that many posts, or made a trade on Baseball Fever. Essentially, while there's no particular reason to not trust each other -- there's also no reason to explicitly trust each other. For the sake of simplicity, assume neither trader has a proven record.

B) The Cards Are Worth 50-100 Dollars

C) The Trade's done over Baseball Fever, not eBay or Sportscard forum or whatever...

Here's What We're Debating About

I suggested two options:

A) I pay 1/3 - 1/2 of the settled price, plus the cost of shipping to start. He ships the card, and I pay the remaining half upon receipt. Eg. For a 50 dollar card, I pay 25 Dollars Plus Shipping to get the card shipped, and then the remaining 25 Dollars when I get the card.

B) I pay him the shipping directly, and put the 50 dollars in escrow to a non-partisan Baseball Fever member. Upon the receipt of the card, the randomly decided Baseball Fever Member sends the money to the seller.

The Seller Suggested 1 Option:

A) I pay the full purchase price, and he'll send it out.

He recently mentioned that Paypal had buyers protection for personal transactions, and I was protected by PayPal -- which I've yet to confirm, but if that's the case, obviously I agree with the final option.

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My reasoning, is obviously the mitigation of risk by both parties. Neither person incurs all of the risk, yet both incur some. They essentially cancel each other out, well somewhat. The Risk matrix would probably favour him 65/35 -- The Seller's worst case Scenario is "MAKE ONLY 50%" whereas the Buyers worst case scenario is "PAY 100%, No Card Received"

So weigh in, because I'm honestly curious as to how this turns out. Would you send 50-100 Dollars to someone that you didn't know -- we're not talking 500 posts and on the board for a year, by the way. We're talking complete and utter strangers.

Obviously none of this matters if Paypal has protection, and I could easily file a claim and get my money back.

Also, please do not suggest: "Put the card on ebay and work through their infrastructure..."

Finally, this isn't a case of your morality or ethics -- So please don't start with "I'm a trusting person, so I'd take him at his word..." or " I don't trust anyone so..."

Thanks! I'm eagerly awaiting opinions.

ipitch
06-14-2009, 05:20 PM
He recently mentioned that Paypal had buyers protection for personal transactions, and I was protected by PayPal -- which I've yet to confirm, but if that's the case, obviously I agree with the final option.

I'd say that's mostly false. See section 13...
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/ua/policy_pbp-outside#pbp-policy


PayPal has two programs to help protect you:

PayPal Buyer Protection (for eligible items purchased on eBay)
PayPal Buyer Complaint Policy (for all other items purchased on or off eBay)

Mike D.
06-14-2009, 06:03 PM
The way I've always seen it done is that in a trade, both users send at the same time. For a sale, though, money must always be sent first.

Shipping items and/or money to a 3rd party adds complexity and adds costs for shipping and whatnot.

If you're not sure you trust someone, or as a smart general rule of thumb, start with a small deal. Buy $5 card or make a $5 trade before making a $50 transaction.

Another avenue to explore (and I just thought of this) is to have the seller send something C.O.D. I'm not sure what the costs are associated with that, but if you really wanted to be safe (and have time to wait to pay the postman) than that might be something to explore.

AutographCollector
06-14-2009, 06:54 PM
The way I've always seen it done is that in a trade, both users send at the same time.

Yes, that is the BEST way to do things.

And who is thinking about selling something here... on this site?

Dalkowski110
06-14-2009, 06:58 PM
"And who is thinking about selling something here... on this site?"

An excellent point...seeing as it's against the rules.

topherkris
06-14-2009, 07:27 PM
Yes, I'm aware of this, and no rules have been broken. There's nothing saying that you can't work details out via email after a trade falls through. Anyways, anything having to do with this site can be excluded from the question, realistically as it applies to the internet as a whole.

Anyways, Mike, thanks for the opinion. It appears to be the general consensus, and what my trading partner stated. Speaking from my prospective, any added costs I'd cover --

I think the general consensus is simply don't trade or buy if you don't trust the person. It seems simple enough until you start getting down to the 1/1's and what not.