There are now a couple of active threads about how evil eBay and PayPal are. What a bunch of nonsense! I don't think the complainers remember life before eBay and PayPal. Or perhaps they never experienced it.

I hold no brief for eBay, PayPal, or their idiotic senior management. These buffoons are converting what have been very useful tools into something much less useful. But the two services still beat the alternatives.

I've bought goods from sellers outside the US since the early '70s. I've bought and sold used camera equipment since the mid '80s. eBay and PayPal provide a wonderful service. I have to wonder whether the whiners and complainers have any experience with alternatives to eBay and PayPal.

You've all forgotten the joy of buying used equipment from dealers, mainly in NYC, from ads in the back pages of Modern Photography and Popular Photography. And you've forgotten the even greater joy of selling used gear to them.

You've all forgotten the joy of buying equipment, new and used, from sellers in Shutterbug Magazine as it used to be. And you've forgotten the joy of selling used gear via small ads in Shutterbug.

You've forgotten the joy of paying for small purchases outside of the US by bank transfer or Western Union. And you've forgotten the greater joy of receiving payment from abroad in foreign currency and changing the foreign currency to $US.

eBay has greater reach than the alternatives. PayPal is much better for small international transactions than the alternatives. I'm delighted, and richer too in money earned and equipment accumulated, because of both services than I would have been if they weren't there.

Where are your heads, people? The problem with transacting via eBay isn't with eBay, it is with crooks and incompetents on the other side of the transaction.

Bahs of humbug to the lot of you,

Dan

Oh, yes, this is not to say I lack sympathy for Mr. Galli. I've never been stung as badly as he was. But I've been stung by sellers on eBay, also by sellers in the Shutterbug that used to be and by used equipment dealers in NYC. eBay's not the problem, the general untrustworthiness of people is the problem.