Comments (5)

By Les Scammell, May 26, 2008 10:51 pm

I must confess it has been slow going but my campaign to collect the URL’s of 1000 blogs as a protest against whaling has hit 100 – that leaves only 900 to go. It is a daunting task for a small blogger like me but I am going to keep at it until I get there.

The 1000 Blogs Against Whaling page is now PR3, whilst the site itself is only a PR2. If you care about the environment and would like a link from a PR3 page then leave your URL details on this post or the 1000 blogs against whaling page. I will add your URL to the list as quickly as I can.

To the 100 who have signed on so far – my thanks to you. The latest additions to the list are:

• Big Ben Patton
• Full Internet Marketing Services
• PH blogger
• 1Cheats

photo credit: Wendkuni

BALUGA Whale – they all need our help – add your URL to the list and help us get to 1000

Comments (8)

By Les Scammell, May 18, 2008 1:21 am

I am sorry to say that it looks like eBay Australia may win it claim to use PayPal as the only means of payment for all sales on its site. For sellers, this could be the worst situation possible.

As a former seller through eBay and having used PayPal as a payment option, I have found that sellers have little in the way of rights and no protection at all from unscrupulous buyers.

As a seller you can offer products for sale. Part of the sale process includes delivery of the item. In Australia, there are several delivery options available that range from standard surface mail through to signature delivery. Each options has a range of costs. Signature delivery requiring the payment of an additional three dollars – not a lot.

In the past, I have sold through eBay and always insisted that if PayPal was used, then the extra $3 had to be paid for signature delivery. Following a complaint from a buyer, eBay insisted that I remove that requirement from my listings. This meant that a buyer could pay $200 for an item, $20 for postage with no proof of delivery and pay via PayPal.

That is all fine. However, as a seller you are at a huge disadvantage now. The buyer pays, you post the item off and the deal is complete. Not quite. The buyer then complains that the item has not arrived. As a seller, what can you do? You have posted the item in good faith. The buyer has refused to pay for the extra proof of delivery or signature delivery so you have no proof of postage.

At this stage it is your word against theirs. You say you posted the item, they claim not to have received it. They now lodge a claim with PayPal and guess what – if you cannot prove the item was sent, they refund the money to the buyer and take it out of your account. Now you are left with no product, no money and both PayPal and eBay have had their pound of flesh.

To add insult to injury, the buyer has the product and their money back. Yes – it is a big con (I prefer the term fraud) that is known and exploited quite cleverly by a small group.

This has happened to me twice now. The first time I actually tricked the buyer into believing that a relative worked at his local post office and remembered handing him the parcel. He admitted he had received and would send it back to me – of course he didn’t.

The second time the person in question waited about six weeks after the refund had been issued to then send me an email stating there was a problem with the product and wanted a replacement – the cheek – I reminded them of the ‘non receipt’ complaint and of course heard no more from them.

Both times I forwarded these emails to both eBay and PayPal to investigate possible fraud. On both occasions nothing was done. This is a serious flaw in the eBay – PayPal arrangement and if Australia goes down the path of allowing eBay to use PayPal as its only means of payment, many more sellers will be stung.

If your a seller – insist on receipted delivery. Don’t make it an option, just include it in the cost of delivery. If you don’t – watch out you don’t get ripped off. If you have a non receipt claim made – fight it.  In the mean time – I am using a rival online auction house that has far lower fees, looks after both the seller and the buyer and has proven profitable – checkout oztion.com if you ever get a chance.

Comments (7)

By Les Scammell, May 14, 2008 9:31 pm

UPDATE: This is a scam so do not sign up to this service – it appears no one has ever been paid out

They have gone under many names – the latest is Supporting Friends – stay clear of them.

I don’t know how good this site is, but I have used it for a couple of days and already earned the equivalent of $5 Australian bucks. Doesn’t sound like much but then I don’t do many searches each day so it looks pretty good so far.

This site add their own search option to your search bar. If you conduct a search through them you get paid if you use one of the paid search links. The good thing about this particular search is that it uses all the search engines including Google to get the results. So if you click on one of Googles paid search results – you get paid.

From what I have read they soon weed out those that try to milk the system. However, if you do a few searches each day, why not get paid for it. You are not going out of your way or doing anything extra, just using their search window to do your searching.

If there is a negative, most searches are done through Google.co.uk and not through the Google.com (or for me – Google.com.au which is a pain as I rarely search Aussie sites). However the results are often very similar.

You have nothing to lose by giving it a shot – you may make a few dollars on the side. The way I look at it, if you make $20 a months, it pays for the blogs hosting. If your interested – here is the ad link – It is affiliated – they pay 10% of any affiliate earnings.

Let me know if you know of similar or have heard negative/positive stories of these types of sites.

Comments (6)

By Les Scammell, May 13, 2008 12:20 am

WordPress is, despite some of my earlier posts, still my favorite blogging platform. I still haven’t come across anything that I consider better or easier to use. I particularly like the range of plugins that available – there is a plugin for just about anything you can think of.

Here are another two plugins I have found and that I find very useful. This first plugin I had heard about and even had recommended to me but it has only been recently that I actually downloaded it and used it.

WordPress Automatic Update Plugin.

As the name suggests, this is a plugin that makes the transition from one version of WordPress to the next so much easier. The upgrade from 2.3 to 2.5 is very easy – no long winded uploading or deleting or fiddling around. If you haven’t upgraded to 2.5 yet, download this plugin first – it will make your life so much easier.

This second plugin is more in the way of making your blog even more search engine friendly.

WordPress Tweaks

This WordPress plugin has a range of tweaks that you can use to improve some of the functions of WordPress. It can certainly make your WordPress blog a little friendlier to the search engines. Some of its functions include:

• Remove “nofollow” from comment author links
• Remove “nofollow” from comment body links
• Open external comment links in new windows
• Open external post links in new windows
• Show post excerpts (instead of full content) on archive pages
• Add “nofollow” to the “Register” and “Login” links

The show post excerpts is particularly useful for preventing ‘duplicate content’ issues with the search engines. Adding some of these nofollows is again a little housekeeping that makes your site a little friendlier to the search engines.

I hope you find these plugins useful. If you have any decent plugins you can recommend, let me know in the comments  = my comments are set to do follow – my fingers are set to delete when its spam.