Blog
Book - Internet - PayPal
Date: 5/11/2004
I want to buy a book. I want to do it from my computer using the "intaweb thingy" (i.e. now dammit) and I want to pay using PayPal.

Should be easy I thought... just jump on Google...

Easy... yeah come on... somewhere here... surely.

What... huh? Oh man... someone has to have done this before.

Alright fine... I'll drive-park-walk into a flamin bookstore with my credit card. Fine FINE FINE!!!!

Not Happy Jan!

And whats with every stupid online bookstore requiring you to create an account just to see what delivery options they have, and thus how much it'll cost to get the book to my doorstep? They could put that on the page that describes the book surely? But nooooooo, you have to login. How about: I never login, I just click the "Buy Now" PayPal button and give you a shipping address. It's not hard people!

Hmmmm. I see a mighty large business opportunity here... _easy_ online bookstore! (with PayPal - batteries not included).
Comments:
fret
10/11/2004 12:10am
I ended up buying it here, using direct debit... or at least when they get stock.

I don't know if other countries have direct debit sorts of things? Here we can just type in to our internet banking the Bank and Account numbers of someone we want to send money to and off it goes. It's mostly free to send money inside the country.

I've been looking for the last 2 months for a nice and cheap way to send and receive money internationally. Seems it's a bit of a mine field of fees, and the conclusion I come to is that PayPal is maybe not the cheapest but it's not bad fee's wise and it's really easy to use. Although there is a bit of a cloud of uncertainty over their reputation as some people have had very bad experiences with them, and they don't come across as apologetic.

One of the companies I looked at was ikobo who look like they have cheap fees, but when I tried to ask them a question or 2, they stonewalled and wouldn't even send me a curtesy email saying they had received my question. It's like they don't even want to have customers! "We'll ignore everyone until they go away". Suuuuuure. So I went away.

I keep thinking, wouldn't it be nice to have direct debit for international transfers? Just type in the details of the destination account, an amount and hit send. The exchange rates are applied and off the money goes:

1) Setup Bank.
2) Make Internation Transfers 'Cheap and Easy' with a small flat fee and no exchange rate pumping.
3) Put a standards compilent web UI on it...
4) Profit!
 
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