Blockbuster

[AndyC]

I remember that scam. For all the work that went into making it look authentic, nobody bothered to proofread it, or at least run it through a spell checker.

No, I think eBay was out to protect their sellers, or at least their reputation, that time. They don't want word getting out that dealing through eBay carries any unusual risk. There are already enough of those kinds of rumours going around.

Just the same, they are doing everything they can to keep people from making any sort of business connections outside of eBay. And I agree, it is really hard to get ahold of anybody at eBay. About the only option is filling out a form (that is not always easy to find) for a specific type of question or complaint that does not always fit the situation. Then you hope somebody gets back to you with a satisfactory answer. I had mentioned their complaint-driven rules. Well, a few months ago, an unknown competitor was hitting our listings daily, reporting anything that remotely resembled an infraction. When we finally got our complaint through, and finally got a response, the answer was that people are basically honest, and nobody would do such a thing. If there were another option, I would stop dealing with eBay in a second.

[Menard]

I remember back in the 70's when the supermarket chain A&P got into trouble cutting milk prices below cost. I believe regulations on grocery items and what would be termed necessary commodities are still enforced. The biggest example of predatory pricing is the day after Thanksgiving. This is also the day you see consumers at their worst and frankly the season that will put a few more small businesses out of business. I also wonder what happened to that ego people used to have about not shopping at places like Kmart and Hill's because they felt it was beneath them. Wal-marts predatory practices, and other companies that have adopted them, have worked where Kmart and Hill's lower prices did not, except in certain larger cities. Howerver, when you have the only game in town for 80% of the population, does it make that much difference? I have faith that Wal-mart will be their own worst enemy. Unfortunately that still won't do much for the small business because the damage has already been done.

[Menard]

Even if word gets out that eBay carries any unusual risk, and it does, where are you going to go? In eBay's position of being the only real game in town, they don't care. Let's face it: the majority of people on eBay are not that computer savy. They know how to get online, check e-mail, find eBay (which for a lot of proprietary browsers is just a click away), find Amazon.com, and a few links that have been provided for them. They do not know how to use Google very effectively. When this is a good part of their customer base, do they really need to worry about them being able to find another auction site? Paypal is an unusual risk. They require your bank account number to use their service. A lot of people assume their bank will protect them. If Paypal, which is not a finacial institution, makes a mistake with your checking account, that is their mistake and your mistake; the bank has no obligation or requirement to correct that. Of course, new auction sites that pop up are a risk simply because they do not have the experience to deal with scam artists the way eBay does (although they still litter eBay). Amazon.com auctions, although not very big, does afford some protection in that all sellers in the US are required to use Amazon Payments, which means that you can use any credit card or payment type that Amazon accepts to pay a seller. This also, for credit card users, provides a degree of protection if their credit card offers such. If you use you checking account through Paypal, you are provided with neither protection. I try to only deal with sellers and online businesses that have flexibility in the types of payment they accept. The reason being that my local stores will provide customer service; I don't see any reason why online business should not held to the same standard. Aw dang, my soapbox just broke, guess I'll have to cut this short ( :

[JohnL]

>I think a very big concern was also to keep email addresses from being
>harvested by automated crawlers compiling addresses for spammers.

That was one of the stated reason, but if that was true, they could have simply added an additional step to foil automated programs, like making you enter a letter/number sequence from an image, like many sites now do. Instead they eliminated the ability to get another member's email address and you have to send the message through eBay.

[blkrider]

I don't think Blockbuster will ever be able to surpass Netflix....their selection will never measure up.  Too many things they probably won't carry, whereas Netflix carries stuff like THRILLER: A CRUEL PICTURE and EMMANUELLE IN AMERICA which actually have hardcore sex scenes.  

The marketplace still determines a lot...you still get great local video stores in major metropolitan areas or places where there's a good niche market.  The places I've seen where the Hollywoods and Blockbusters have totallly taken over are areas where the customer base isn't overly interested in anything other than recent mainstream releases.   At least in the case of Hollywood Video I think what they carry depends on the customer base--the Hollywood we went to when I used to live in Silicon Valley had much more diverse selection than the one I patronized back when I lived in the Midwest.

[Deedabeeda]

Blockbuster owns Movie Trading Company, so don't worry about them going out of business. I worked for one of the stores in Atlanta

[AndyC]

Deedabeeda wrote:
> Blockbuster owns Movie Trading Company, so don't worry about
> them going out of business.

Same thing.

[Menard]

Frankly, was anybody really worried?

[Susan]

Deedabeeda wrote:

> Blockbuster owns Movie Trading Company, so don't worry about
> them going out of business. I worked for one of the stores in
> Atlanta

I guess in the past couple of years, they didn't used to. They are buying everyone out.