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Full Version: *LONG* Mike, "feedback", and "attacks" (WAS: anonymous postings, etc.)
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Dave:

I think you have a legitimate concern about anonymous (no E-mail
address) postings. I, too, have wondered about this practice (in
particular a certain braggart who goes by the moniker "Ex-PPC Member").
You'll notice that not only do I always use my full name, but I have
posted personal information in the Biographies section. When I complain
about Mike's attitude, I'm doing it to his face. He knows my name. He
knows both my home and work E-mail addresses. He even
knows the town I live in! That probably isn't the smartest thing to do,
but that's how I am. I don't feel the need to remain anonymous. On the
other hand, I can certainly sympathize with "John Smith"---we don't know
anything about "Mike Davis", or have any assurance that he
won't try to retaliate outside of the MoHPC Forum!

As for Mike's feedback goes, Dave, you of all people should know that
feedback for a seller means nothing more than the seller held up his
part of the deal: goods were not misrepresented and delivered
acceptably. Feedback in no way comments on the
seller's attitude toward buyers, his prices (for goods or shipping), or
anything else! I, for one, refused to pay exorbitant money-transfer
fees and shipping fees (that is what drew Mike's wrath). I am not given
the opportunity to express his attitude in his eBay feedback. Yes, he
has had 700 satisfied customers. Maybe he has insulted 700 potential
customers who then didn't deal with him?

One of the last (and probably one of the final) deals I did on eBay (not
with Mike), involved product misrepresentation---it was bad (and I
should have known better). Once the seller received my money, I asked
him to leave me feedback (as my part of the deal was complete). He
refused; he said that he never leaves feedback until
after the buyer leaves him feedback!
Well, you can guess why! He was intimidating buyers into leaving him
positive feedback with the not-very-subtle threat of retaliatory
feedback. Well, that's what happened. I told it like it was, and he
left me negative feedback---even though he received my cash a few days
after the auction ended!

Now, I'm sure Mike doesn't have the same feedback practices, but did you
check before touting his feedback? Feedback says
nothing about character. From the E-mail I have
received, the number of people who have had negative experiences with
Mike (to the point that they swear-off dealing with him) seem to
outnumber his character-defenders in the Forum.

Anonymous character assassination is not acceptable, but I don't think
that's what is going on here. If you look back at the many examples of
legitimate arguments/debating-points that Mike has responded to as if
they were character assassinations, you can begin to
piece together an impression of Mike's personality.

But, most importantly, I'm tired of hearing a defense for Mike that is
not based on anything---in fact, a defense based on the assertion that
no wrongs have been proven. Well, I didn't like Mike's
attitude toward me---a potential buyer---and I'm willing to share my
record of it.

I'm going to include the whole E-mail exchange that I had with Mike, and
you decide for yourself. Dave, I don't think you should even
appear to be defending Mike unless you are really sure
that is what you want to portray.

----------BIG email exchange below!----------

Below is the very first time I ever communicated with
Mike. Note the date is October 31st, 2001.

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From: "Mike Davis" <ipscone@halcyon.com>
To: "W. Bruce Maguire II" <maguire@ti.com>
Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 10:07:24 -0800
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
Subject: Re: 97 Card Reader Repair
Message-ID: <3BDFCD5C.28780.2CFBE31@localhost>
Priority: normal
In-reply-to: <4.3.2.7.2.20011031102242.00b3af00@dlemail.itg.ti.com>
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c)

> Mike:
>
> I just wanted to thank you for the outstanding article you have in the
> Museum of HP Calculators on repairing the card reader on the 97! I,
> for one, am very glad that you took the time and effort to include so
> many clear pictures and descriptive test.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Bruce.

Thanks alot. I'm surprised by the number of people that are sending
me thankyou notes. I never would have expected that it would have
helped so many.

Mike

> --
> +---------------------+
> | W. Bruce Maguire II |
> | maguire@ti.com |
> +---------------------+
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Now, I think most people would say that I was very nice to Mike, right?
I'm sure lots of people have benefitted from his article and I wanted to
thank him.

Now, a short one week later I was interested in
purchasing something from Mike, and I asked him about accepting PayPal,
since his auction only stated "Money Order or BidPay" (and presumably
cashiers checks). Below is the beginning of the E-mail exchange:

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From: "Mike Davis" <ipscone@home.com>
To: "W. B. Maguire II" <Maguire@AnalyticInvestments.com>
Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2001 16:24:56 -0800
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Question for seller -- Item #1293216191
Priority: normal
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c)
X-Loop-Detect: 1

> Mike:
>
> Hello:
>
> OK, I only participate in auctions that accept PayPal. I don't know
> how many other bidders out there are like me (and don't waste their
> time), but I decided to start notifying sellers.
>
> Thanks anyway,
> Bruce.

Thanks for the notice but I don't accept paypal. Thanks for checking
though. That is a very good policy you have. I think, also, to
assume if a seller does not announce that they accept paypal, that
they probably don't, in most cases.

Mike

>
> At 06:20 PM 11/6/01 -0700, you wrote:
>
> >>From: "Mike Davis" <ipscone@home.com>
> >>To: w.b.maguire@ieee.org
> >>Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 17:15:05 -0800
> >>Subject: Re: Question for seller -- Item #1293216191
> >>Priority: normal
> >>X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c)
> >>X-Loop-Detect: 1
> >>
> >>No, sorry. I do not accept PayPal.
> >>
> >>Mike
> >>
> >> > Hello:
> >> >
> >> > Do you accept PayPal for payment?
> >> >
> >> > Thanks,
> >> > Bruce.
> >> >
> >> > --------------------
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > Question from: buytxn
> >> > Title of item: HP-41C 67 97 Mag Cards for HP 41CX
> >> > Calculator Seller: mikesdavis Starts:
> >> > Nov-03-01 19:55:10 PST Ends: Nov-10-01
> >> > 19:55:10 PST Price:
> >> > Starts at $0.01 To view the item, go to:
> >> > http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1293216191
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Nice and pleasant exchange, right? I then went on to press him as to
why this was his policy. Sellers really are at very little risk, since
they have cash-in-hand before they even think about mailing something.
This is a lopsided arrangement from the beginning! Since his acceptable
payment methods were going to prevent me from participating (in fact,
winning) his auction, I wanted him to know that. If sellers
know that they are losing business and still maintain
a "Money-Order/Cashiers-Check" only policy, then fine. I just want them
to know that they are sacrificing business. Below is
Mike's response:

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From: "Mike Davis" <ipscone@home.com>
To: "W. B. Maguire II" <Maguire@AnalyticInvestments.com>
Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2001 13:34:09 -0800
Subject: Re: Question for seller -- Item #1293216191
Priority: normal
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c)
X-Loop-Detect: 1

> Mike:
>
> Yes, but the problem is, that BidPay costs _me_ more money (as the
> buyer) than PayPal costs _you_ (as the seller). I don't understand
> why sellers who have this objection---paying fees---don't just offer
> buyers the opportunity to use PayPal on the condition that the buyer
> will pay some or all of the PayPal fees.

It is very easy to explain. Sellers say this in their auction and
bidders say the did not see it and whine about having to pay the fee.
That is why I stopped using PayPal.

> I really wanted to bid on the 91 that you have up for auction, but I
> just calculated the BidPay fees if I were to win with a $200 bid. My
> BidPay fee would be $9.50! PayPal would charge less. Even if you use
> the most expensive PayPal rate---the standard rate (not the merchant
> rate)---the fee would be $6.10. Money orders and cashiers checks are
> completely out of the question, because they can easily eat up 30-60
> minutes of my time.

I guess that leave you out of a lot of auctions then. You are
talking about a difference of $3. If that is too much for you,
imagine how the $6.10 is to me.

Your fee is a percentage of the item you bid. The fee to me is a
percentage of the profit I make.

So for you it is $9/200 or 4%. On the same item that I make $50
profit on it is 18%. Not counting the other 18% I have to pay eBay.
Their fee is 18% of the profit I make.

But it really gets back to the fact that bidders whine when they have
to pay these fees. That is why they are using PayPal in the first
place; to avoid fees. But the reality is that bidders pay all the
fees on 99% of the auctions and sellers don't absorbe the fees. I
just choose not to get in an argument with bidders over these fees.
I just don't accept any payment means where I have to pay a fee.

> Moreover, there is no rule that says the seller _shouldn't_ have to
> pay credit-card-associated fees. Regular retailers pay those CC fees.

I am not a "regular retailer" and you can bet your money that they
are passing them onto the buyers, through higher prices. But this is
an auction and that cannot be factored into the cost, initially.

> That is part of the cost of doing business for retail merchants. On
> eBay, on the other hand, the seller has the advantage that the fees
> can instead be paid by the buyer (and in that case PayPal is a much
> better deal) or the buyer and seller could split the costs.
>
> Also, why is the shipping charge $15.00? I wouldn't think that
> Priority Mail for this calc. would run more than about $7.00.

The point is moot since you are not going to bid on it. But shipping
is what I charge that covers Priority mail, insurance, tracking,
boxes, packing material. I DO have a right to charge for the
materials that I have to buy to pack a package. And no, you can't
ship a 91 package for anywhere near $7.00, with insurance. It's over
$10 just to go to LA and that's on the same side of the coast as my
location. When it travels across the US it's more.

> Bruce.
>
> p.s. As to your statement that PayPal is the only service that
> charges the seller, doesn't Billpoint do the same thing?

I don't accept BillPoint either.

>
> >At 11:05 AM 11/8/01 -0700, you wrote:
> >
> >That is easy to understand. They don't "want" to use PayPal to
> >receive payments because there is a charge associated with it (or at
> >the very least a minimum from credit cards). They probably use
> >PayPal to pay for auctions.
> >
> >That is how I will use it when and if I join again.
> >
> >Again, it is an unrealistic belief that sellers should pay fees for
> >receiving payments. No other online ePay charges for receiving
> >payments. Only PayPal does that.
> >
> >Mike
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Notice his remarks:
"But it really gets back to the fact that bidders whine when they have
to pay these fees. That is why they are using PayPal in the first
place; to avoid fees. But the reality is that bidders pay all the
fees on 99% of the auctions and sellers don't absorbe the fees."

Was I "whining"? In Mike's eyes, everyone who hesitates to pay
exorbitant payment or shipping fees is a "whiner!"

And the following is priceless:
"The point is moot since you are not going to bid on it."

Here, Mike explains that since I'm not willing to pay his fees, he has
no need to rationalize them! And that is the key,
Dave. The only people who deal with Mike are the people
willing to deal with Mike, and they are the
only ones who are allowed to leave feedback.


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From: "Mike Davis" <ipscone@home.com>
To: "W. B. Maguire II" <Maguire@AnalyticInvestments.com>
Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2001 15:51:53 -0800
Subject: Re: Question for seller -- Item #1293216191
Priority: normal
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c)
X-Loop-Detect: 1

I just found something very disturbing about sellers accepting PayPal.

If a dishonest bidder uses PayPal, he can wind up with the auction
item and his money back and there is nothing that the seller can do
about it.

If the buyer uses a Credit Card, he can simply claim to the Credit
Card company that he never received the item and that the Credit Card
charge must be reversed and PayPal will oblige them and take the
money back out of my PayPal account.

Companies that accept Credit Cards (as PayPal does) are required to
honor any chargeback requested by the Credit Card company.

I know that PayPal has buyer assurance policies and protections but I
asked this very question and was given the negative answer I expected.


I will never accept PayPal from people that I do not know, as a result of this policy.

If you use PayPal, as a seller, you should be aware of these also.
PayPal protects the bidder but does not protect the seller.

Mike
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I lost my patience for Mike's warped logic, and this was the last thing
I wrote to him. He responded that his feedback was his assurance
against fraud, and that he had the burden of dealing with zero-feedback
buyers. That was the end of it. Here was my final rant:

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Mike:

> I just found something very disturbing about sellers accepting PayPal.
> If a dishonest bidder uses PayPal, he can wind up with the auction
> item and his money back and there is nothing that the seller can do
> about it.

Well, I'm sorry, but that's the straw that broke the camel's back! FYI,
I'm a nice, reasonable guy---who wrote you a nice E-mail letter of
gratitude, by-the-way, about your posts to the Museum of HP Calculators
(10/31/2001, subject: "97 Card Reader Repair"). But your attitude is
getting harder and harder to swallow---it is TOTALLY one-sided!

Mike, have you EVER been a BUYER? The buyer accepts this risk on EVERY
transaction! I ALWAYS have to send my money to the seller, and the
seller has to receive it, BEFORE the seller will supposedly send my
goods. So, on EVERY transaction, I accept the risk that a dishonest
SELLER will never send any goods at all---or only defective goods---and
keep my payment. And there is nothing _I_ can do about it!! Among
other things, the seller can claim that the item worked when it was
shipped---too bad for me that it was broken when I received it! Or the
item pictured was not the one for sale; sorry no returns...

What law says that YOUR GOODS are worth more than MY MONEY? Actually,
since the free market determined the price, BY DEFINITION my money is
worth exactly what your goods are worth. So, why is it that _I_ accept
the ENTIRE risk burden on EVERY transaction! You have the luxury of
NEVER risking ANYTHING by accepting only money orders and cashiers
checks (you have CASH in hand before you do ANYTHING)!

If you are shocked that you---as the seller---may ever have to take a
risk on an eBay auction, then I suggest that you NEVER, EVER BE A BUYER.
Because you will suffer the same risks on EVERY transaction!

You know, back in the "old" days---before eBay---I used to buy video
games from people on the USENET news groups. The standard practice was
for the seller to mail the goods IMMEDIATELY, as the buyer sent
cash/check/whatever immediately. That way, BOTH parties SHARED the
risk. eBay stinks, because it is so blatantly biased toward the sellers
(they know where their income comes from!). It has become standard
operating procedure (on eBay) that the seller have cash-in-hand before
even THINKING about sending the goods---thereby off-loading ALL THE RISK
onto the buyer.

Nevertheless, after reading the eBay user agreement, I found two things
of interest. First, there appears to be a "Seller Protection" program
that appears to protect the seller from just the occurrence that you are
worried about (you have to be a verified business- or premier-member or
something...). Second, I found the following:

NO SURCHARGES. Under Visa and MasterCard
regulations and the laws of several
states, including California, merchants
may not charge a fee to the buyer for
accepting credit card payments (often
called a "surcharge"). You agree that you
will not impose a surcharge or any other
fee for accepting PayPal as payment. This
restriction does not prevent you from
imposing a handling fee in connection with
the sale of goods or services, as long as
the handling fee does not operate as a
surcharge (in other words, the handling
fee for transactions paid through PayPal
may not be higher than the handling fee
for transactions paid through other payment
methods).

So, I guess I will stop suggesting to sellers that they offer buyers the
opportunity to use PayPal, by having the buyer pay some (or all) the
PayPal fees. And, likewise, it appears that you should cancel your
plans to accept PayPal.

Bruce.

p.s. As to your assertion:

"I guess that leave you out of a lot of auctions then."

No, actually, I'm pleasantly surprised at how many sellers of HP
calculators are accepting PayPal. I would say that AT LEAST 75% of the
auctions I look at accept PayPal. I just don't bother with the other
25%, unless the item is unique, then I send an E-mail.
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Mike doesn't really care about anyone but Mike, he makes it pretty clear
that if there are any fees to be paid, he's not going to pay
them!
. He also makes it clear that he doesn't care what
I think, he'll go about his business. I figured that
that was fair enough---he'd just go about it without my patronage!


Dave, if you are still with me after all that, obviously you can make up
your own mind about whether you would want to deal with Mike, and
whether accusations against him of poor "attitude" are justified.

Bruce.

One: You sayNice and pleasant exchange, right? I then went on to press him as to why this was his policy.

I say
Why would you go on to press, when I have told you nicely two times that I don’t accept PayPal? YOU begin to be part of the problem.

Two: You say that it is easy to compile 700+ without a single complaint and have it NOT represent the facts.

Let me ask you and everyone else reading this. How is it that YOU have had 12 transactions, and fully 30% are negative (or less than positive)?

How is it that YOU can't maintain a spotless, 100% positive record, if it is not your attitude, that is the problem? Could it be that it is not that easy, as you claim? Could it be that you are the problem and not I?

How is it that YOU even bid on one of your own auctions, so that you could further b1tch.

It is very easy for anyone who wishes to do a search on your email address on eBay and see YOUR record.

Anyone who knows anything about ebay and the feedback system can verify that people who are negative (as you) get negatives.

I have never had a problem with you. It is YOU that have had a problem with me. I get along with people. Many don't use PayPal and have stated so here. You just choose to fly off the handle because I wouldn't accept it.

Three I can't ask people to back me up. I'm quite sure that I have 500 to 1 support rather than complaints. But that is up to them, to decide, if they wish to post support for me.

But I have not resorted to using fake names, to support my own case, as you have done.

Mike:

You said:
Two: You say that it is easy to compile 700+ without a single complaint and have it NOT represent the facts.

Let me ask you and everyone else reading this. How is it that YOU have had 12 transactions, and fully 30% are negative (or less than positive)?

Mike:

Not only are you a jerk, you are a liar. My eBay ID is "buytxn", and this is my feedback:


---------------------------------

118 positives. 97 are from unique users and
count toward the final rating.

0 neutrals.

1 negatives. 1 are from unique users and count
toward the final rating.

---------------------------------

Go look it up, Mike. That *ONE* negative is the one I explained in my letter.

How's that shoe taste, Mike?

That's the last time I will respond to any of the bile that comes from you.

Bruce.

I have purchased from Mike before, and found him to be courteous and helpful. Both the items I bought from him were exactly as described. Yes, Bidpay is expensive, but money orders at my bank are only $3.00. I don't know and don't care how much money people make off a purchase, I focus on the price of the item and whether I want it at that price. If someone doesn't take PayPal, I factor in the additional costs and potential for being taken advantage of.

For everyone on this Forum:

My eBay ID is "buytxn" (I work at Texas Instruments, get it ;-)

You can check my feedback. I have 118 positives, and the *ONE* negative from the retaliatory-feedback guy that I mentioned in my letter to Dave.

If you look closely in my post, you can see this in the second E-mail:

> >> > Question from: buytxn

> >> > Title of item: HP-41C 67 97 Mag Cards for HP 41CX

> >> > Calculator Seller: mikesdavis Starts:

> >> > Nov-03-01 19:55:10 PST Ends: Nov-10-01

> >> > 19:55:10 PST Price:

> >> > Starts at $0.01 To view the item, go to:

> >> > http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1293216191

Bruce.

A few comments.

First, thank you for an honest and well-documented post.

Second, I can't really control someone else's perception of who I am "appearing to defend" so I'm not going to get overly concerned about it. Those people who have been around here for awhile should think back to the other times I've caught people posting under multiple IDs to enhance their story and consider whether I'm supporting one side over another or simply pointing out the use of fake personas.

On Feedback I stand by my original comment: "I realize that Ebay's feedback system is far from perfect but not ONE complaint in more than 700 transactions???" I will just add that people comment on communications all the time on feedback - feedback does not only cover receiving the product. Again, far from perfect, but then so is a thread with comments from one person pretending to be three. I was attempting to balance out the imperfections at least a little with what little information I could find.

As for the moot point - well honestly Bruce that's what I was thinking too. You, me, and Mike can all see from a prior exchange that you wouldn't be bidding on his auction so I don't see the worry about the shipping charge. His charge probably includes packaging and maybe an allowance for time, gas etc. If you don't feel you should pay for those, there are plenty of other auctions on ebay to choose from. I think that some people get hung up about what they "should" pay but in a free market, sellers try to get as much as they can and buyers try to pay as little. It's not so much a matter of "should" as "can" on both sides.

Honestly, from reading the transcript provided, I don't understand why the conversation continued beyond the first exchange.

Buyers and sellers all have their conditions and ideas of a fair price. In a free market some will connect and others won't. You want Mike to do something that he doesn't want to. I don't understand why that wasn't the end of the discussion. This is, by the way, exactly what I was thinking when I read "John Smith's" claim that Mike "more or less" told "John" to "go to hell with his money". On the less side, perhaps all Mike really said was that he refused to accept Paypal.

By the way, as for Mike's "warped" logic I saw someone complaining about being charged back by Paypal on another forum just two days ago. Apparently he never read the terms of use before clicking the agree button. Among the responses were several along the lines of: "That's why I won't take Paypal".

I do agree with you that ebay is generally slanted in favor of the seller. As I said in another post that's why I prefer to sell there. I think you'll find that sellers not shipping until they have cash in hand is rather common however. I also feel that as a seller, taking higher risks can lead to greater rewards. However, just as some people prefer CDs to Stocks, some sellers don't want to take risks.

I am not saying that Mike is right or that you are right. You've simply made incompatible choices. You should chose a seller who is more compatible with you.

" I figured that that was fair enough---he'd just go about it without my patronage!"

Exactly. It took a long time and some admitted ranting to get there but this is totally fair and reasonable bottom line.

Sometime I'll have to tell you about the time my first question to an ebay seller got a response that started with "You know where you can shove it!" and went down hill from there. (Don't worry folks - it wasn't a calculator.)

Maybe over a beer sometime...

I have purchased from Mike three times, and found him to be VERY helpful.

The most important thing is that the items I bought from him were exactly as described.

Also, I purchased an item from some nerd (sorry over emotional comment), who would not ship outside the US (all this involves is writing a one line longer address on the package). Mike agreed that he would trans-ship the item for me along with the HP67 I had purchased from him at the same time.

This is really going out of the way for your customer, thank you again Mike; I look forward to being one of your customers again in the future.

Yes, I find his payment methods expensive, but so are the calculators, I went into the deal knowing what rules were.

All the best
Greg Harris
gharris@acslink.aone.net.au

Hello to all,
I would like all on this forum to know that I have had several transactions with Mike and he has proved to be very honest and a man of his word. If you are looking for very good quality HP equipment that is accurately described then Mike is your man. Just to give you some idea of the help he provided, Mike repaired an HP67 card reader AND returned it to me Express Mail all for no charge. In exchange for information about battery packs for an HP disk drive, he gave me a great trade offer for a 128 Kb RAM card. It is my opinion that Mike is a great asset to the HP "community" and I am grateful for his contribution.
Dale Richmond

I have never done business with you. I had no idea what your eBay account was. I searched based on your email.

How many accounts do you have? Do you drop bad feedback accounts?

You are using maguire@ti.com here as your email adddress. It is quite easy to go to eBay, click Search, click "by bidder", enter the email address here, and press search.

What I stated is what comes up!

If you search on my email address, mikesdavis, comes up. I have only ONE account. How many do you have?

There is NOTHING that I have lied about. So, is this your account on eBay (a-made-guy)? If not, why is he using your email address?

Anyone is free to search and verify for themselves.

Just a general note after reading the diatribe of "Bruce": I have just finished dealing with Mr. Davis and have found him to be both fair and also even somewhat accommodating. I am amazed that someone should think that he has the right to almost "force" someone to change his business practices in order to do business with him. Mr. Davis not only dealt quite fairly with me, but also answered a large number of questions which he surely did not have to do at all, for which I thank him publicly.
arie nobel

I did some checking after he called me a liar, to see if I could have been mistaken. You will notice in this exchange that Bruce uses 3 (count them) 3 different email addresses. Yes, he uses w.b.maguire@ieee.org now and it returns (buytxn)

BUT he also uses maguire@ti.com in THIS email exchange and in the post on this forum.

Guess what that email returns? It returns a 2nd and possibly discarded account (a-made-guy) that had 12 transactions, one of which he bid on his own auction. AND 30% less than positive.

And he has the unmitigated gall to call me a liar. He knew about the other account, when he made this accusation.

The telling thing is that the complaint, in the 2nd account, was that it used PayPal and the guy he bought from claimed, "Money Order only auction-Demanded to send check-NEVER DID!! a-made-what? "

Notice the demanded. Doesn't that sound familiar? Notice how he tried to dictate the terms in that auction, just as he did in mine.

Please check it out for yourselves. Go to eBay, click search, click advanced options, select search by "bidder", enter maguire@ti.com email address and see what it returned.

I am also one of the eBay members that has purchased several times from Mike. Every time the items bought from him were exactly as described in his clear auction descriptions and the pictures he takes are always of the item for sale (which is much more than can be said about a lot of other sellers on eBay).

In addition I have found Mike to be very helpful. For example, he fixed the gummy wheel problem on an HP-67 that I did not buy from him, free of charge. I had the calculator sent to him, he fixed it and I (obviously) paid for the shipping back to me.

I also wanted to point out that Mike does (as of the last couple of months) accept PayPal, at least from me. I don’t know if this is the case with everybody or just people he has had previous dealings with.

As for the “additional fees”, as an eBay seller myself I also charge $0.30 + 3% of the winning bid if the buyer wants to pay me with PayPal.

Lastly, I could not agree more with Dale Richmond (previous post on this thread) that Mike is a great asset to the HP "community", and with Arie Nobel (also previous post on this thread) that Mike does not have to change his business practices in order to do business with a bidder that does not accept his payment methods and rules.

Regards,

Giorgio Ungarelli, Geneva, Switzerland.

How to be sure that these four last posts haven't been posted by this dear Mister Mike ???? Isn'it Mister Bruce !!

Fred

..

out of hundreds...

May I suggest that you in the 1%?

And, Fred, how do we know you're not Mister Bruce?

Somehow I don't think so. But even if I was, hey, I'm a happy customer of Mike's and I have the right (just like you do) to make my opinion known to the rest of the readers of this forum.

An example? take a look at the bid history of Ebay Item # 1319962659

And I'm glad you are happy. But it appears you are in the tiny minority.

Your point being???

..

Why greed? Anybody else could have bid as well! That's the whole point of Dutch auctions on eBay.

in a few days. He will try to sell them back to the people he sniped. At 10X the price. PT Barnum was right. There'a a sucker born every minute. Every 30 seconds overseas.

Bruce's ID that you reference has 8 positive feedback comments.

1 neutral from someone no longer registered...note that ANY comment left from someone who becomes no longer a registered user is converted to neutral. This one does not count.

There is 1 negative comment from a user. Apparently, this was one deal that went "bad".

There is then a neutral comment that Bruce posted FOR HIMSELF to explain about the negative comment.

The negative comment guy then left another neutral comment.

So, you are quite wrong, IMO, to represent the feedback for Bruce's ebay account in such strongly negative terms. He had one bad experience while using his work email address/ID. Negative experiences happen! My OWN ebay ID has two negatives. One was from an idiot who sent an email that bounced because a server was down and left a negative feedback "to get your attention". What a nut. The other negative feedback involves a buyer from Italy and was a bizarre situation where neither of our emails ever reached the other. Since I never heard from him, I left a negative feedback. His MO arrived the next day. I felt terrible. Mailed his package off. Unfortunately, all he saw was my negative feedback comment, so he left me one. Point is that negative feedbacks sometimes happen.

Note too, that he quit using this ID for feedback and/or completed buying back in April of 1999. Certainly not recent.

Just my thoughts,
Gene

He called me a liar for referencing this dropped account, when all along he knew it existed. He has lied by omission.

You are misinformed about a neutral from a non-registered user as not counting. These are NEGATIVES that were converted to neutral. You will notice that the non-registered users are left in the listings. His last item is from a non-registered user. THAT was a negative.

I can prove that statement. Go to my account. Scroll to the 3rd page. You will find a non-registered user that left a positive. Positives are not neutralized when someone becomes unregistered. ONLY negatives are converted to neutral. Also, anyone that knows anything about eBay knows that neutrals are negative as well. Just not as bad negatives.

I have not misrepresented anything. I stated the 100% truth and told people to look for themselves and judge for themselves, as you have done. I respect that. But this person has lied to everyone by not admitting to his multiple eBay accounts that show other negatives. Plus, the complaints match his attitude here and the one that he displayed in his email exchange.

So, that in fact means he had 2 that were negative in 7 transactions (when you discount that one was his own bid). 2 negatives in 7 bids is 28.57% (hardly an exaggeration). Further, what I said was that it was less than positive. Absolutely true!

Further, the negative comments show that the problem was the same as what he listed in his email exchange. He is hard to deal with and tries to dictate the terms of the auction. He is consistent in that approach.

He is insinuating that my record does not reflect my customer relations. He attacks me and says that my record is misleading. That coming from a man that 1) uses alias's to back up his story, on this forum; switches accounts on eBay to cover up less than positive feedback; cannot maintain a 100% record; attacks people that support me to dissuade others from backing me up. Hardly a man that is credible.

From ebay's site
http://pages.ebay.com/help/myinfo/user-not-registered.html

"When a user's status is changed to Not a Registered User, all feedback left by this user remains unaltered. Prior to 1999 however, as noted in some profiles, feedback was converted to neutral when a user became no longer registered."

Which is exactly as I said. I did not and am not commenting on any other part of your conversations with others here.

My analysis of his "feedback" is accurate as I presented previously.

Gene

What's wrong with making a profit? Isn't that what a market economy is all about? If you generalize, then we are all suckers, because for everything we buy, somebody is making a profit.

The following IDs belong to one person: "Ebay Reg", "67 owner", "a colllector, not a dealer", " hp15c owner", "god", "union goon", "amazed", "92 owner", "HP92 Owner" (I am omitting IDs from this list that could identify him even partially.)

The following IDs also belong to another person: "HP 67 User 2", " Ebay Watcher", "Collector", "Goody2shoes", UK calc enthusiast, "Observer", "UK calcman", "jr (Texas)". As with the first fake ID user, I have omitted the names which would identify him.

"John Smith" is also "John Mills" though he usually posts under a label rather than a name. Since that label represents his usual identity here I'm not going to specify it.

It should be noted that two of these users have occasionally added an email address (in a non-existent domain) to their posts. I assume this is an attempt to appear legitimate.

By contrast, the people who have posted in this thread supporting Mike, all appear to be separate individuals. In addition, their IP addresses make sense. For example, the IP addresses map to the domains given in their email addresses and the guy who claims to be from Australia posted from an Australian IP.

In looking through all these posts I find 4 people who are mad at Mike. Bruce and one person who posts under an aliases including "John Smith" don't like the fact that Mike doesn't (or didn't) take paypal. Personally I find this one to be much ado about nothing but they are well within their rights to choose to only buy from people who take Paypal.

The other two people (let's call them Ebay Reg and Ebay Watcher). Do not wish to have their identities known for reasons that are not entirely clear to me. Both of them are substantial users of ebay and appear to have issues with the way Mike uses Ebay.

Part of the their anger appears to extend from the fact that Mike is allegedly able to buy an HP-71 for $47 one day on ebay and resell it on ebay for $470 the next. Is so, I have to say I'm impressed and amazed and more power to him. As I pointed out in another thread I've been warning people about ebay prices for a very long time. However, this was always meant to point out alternatives to buyers. It was never meant to condemn ebay or ebay sellers. In my opinion, Ebay was always meant to be a money machine not a social gathering of collectors. (And also in my opinion, that's OK.)

My local bookstore will buy a used book back, mark it up 100% and put it on the self the next day. Why only 100% and not 1000%? Is it because they're "nice"? No, I think it's because if they marked them up 1000% they'd have a huge supply/demand imbalance and other stores would appear and destroy them. Similarly the local used Honda dealer has prices on his late model Hondas that exceed the MSRP of equally equipped new cars. Why? Because he can. Thus, I'm amazed at the idea that Mike can mark up %1000 and not be undercut by the competition, but if he can, all I can say is wow! Maybe someone else should get into the business and mark em up only 900%?

I don't know Mike or the people posting under aliases. I've never had any business with any of these people that I can remember. I will say, however, that I feel that the people posting under these aliases are weakening whatever case they think they have.

Apologies for typos - this was posted in haste.

Dave

That statement is beyond idiotic.

If you paid $20 for a MIB HP-70, and the seller made a profit, would you consider yourself a sucker? I don't think so.

I don't think it's idiotic at all. What is, IMHO, is the tactfulness (or lack thereof) that you put in your terse posting. But, hey, I am not the repository of all knowledge.

First of all I challenge you to find a MIB HP-70 for $20 to "prove your point".

Secondly, and in all cases, if the seller made a profit, that means you could have bought it for less than what you paid for it.