They should be lined up…
…and shot! Who? The untrained monkeys at PayPal and Ebay!
Riddle me this: How, if I have lived in rural Southern England for the past year or so, has Paypal managed to lay its hands on my old Scottish address which it now uses as its default shipping address? If I had not spotted this, my stuff would have ended up 600 miles away from where I now live. Makes you wonder about internet security. I mean where did they get it from?? My bank? My statements have been sent to Tadley for quite some time now.
How does Ebay stay in business when their servers are constantly down? Ebay is one of these moronic dotcom companies that blunder around with zero regard to established twenty-first century business practice. When you sign up, you have to surrender your credit card details as ‘proof of identity’ irrespective of the fact that you are a Paypal (An Ebay Company™) member. These will then be stored in a hacker-friendly file. If you then wish to customise your account you will come across certain sites that are down indefinitely, especially the URL you have to click on to unsubscribe to their ‘Information’ (spam) options which you were forced to agree to during the signing up process (why?) When spam starts battering your inbox, you are invited (in small print) to click on the same URL—server still down. You may also ‘UNSUBSCRIBE’ in your reply subject line but are advised that it may take two weeks before Ebay takes any notice (again why??). Alternatively, you may flag their emails as ‘spam’ 😉
Why all this pain? Well, I’m trying to get my mitts on the Palm m125 PDA which Mark Moxon uses for all his travel writing on the road. It sounds perfect for the job. It does what it needs to do but has no unnecessary (power-draining) gimmicks, nor is it attractive to thieves. It has an SD slot and a USB port for all-round compatibility (unlike my Psion REVO which has no relevant orifices and is therefore about to be consigned to the dustbin) and it takes AAA batteries so it works even in areas with no electricity. Keyboards for palms are easy to get and run on their own AAA battery supply. In short, it is the only thing I’d consider trading in my old-fashioned pens and notebooks for. And if I want to work on that novel, I really need an electronic device. So I signed on to PayPal specifically so that I could trade on Ebay to get hold of that Palm, because it ain’t in the shops no more. I find the only seller in Europe and win the auction. The Palm is mine! I can almost touch it. Then the seller tells me his Paypal account is playing up (‘can you wire the money?’ Eh, no?) but he fixed it. Then Paypal tells me that my funds won’t clear until the middle of September (or whenever) because my address isn’t verified. Then I spent five days trying to get that account verified (which included a trip to Basingstoke to obtain a bank statement!).
By now I would have given up. I have fought too hard, I’m exhausted. I’ll go and buy a new palm even if it doesn’t run on AA batteries. I don’t care any more. But it is too late, it is out of my hands now. I have created a monster. If I am really, really lucky, I might get my PDA before my planned departure date in November. If not, I will bloody well buy one when I get to Thailand!
Tags: computers and gadgets, Tag Index
Denni