08:29 – Well, here’s something that’s never happened to me before. Yesterday about 5:00 p.m. I got two separate orders from the same person, one biology kit and one chemistry kit. The PayPal emails said the address was confirmed and it was okay to ship the items. Then a couple hours later I got two more emails from PayPal about those two transactions: “You have received a payment that we believe may not have been authorized by the PayPal account holder” and saying the payments were on hold until PayPal completed its investigation.
It’s pretty common to get an order that PayPal shows as having an unconfirmed ship-to address. Usually, that just means that the customer used a personal credit card to have a kit shipped to their business address or vice versa. In those cases, PayPal recommends that I contact the customer to verify that they in fact did place the order. But this is the first time that PayPal has given me clearance to ship with full seller protection in effect, and then turned around and revoked that permission.
I’m still filling chemical bottles, but I need to take a break from that to build another dozen chemistry kits. We’re down to two in stock.
PayPal has a reputation for being arbitrary. What would they have done if you had shipped the kits before getting the second set of emails? PayPal, although they deny it, is a bank. However, they make up the rules as they go along. I use PayPal for purchases because I can, if necessary, dispute a charge with my credit card. If I used it for sales, I would only use it for relatively inexpensive items.
Rick in Portland
I asked the support guy that a few minutes ago. He said that if I’d shipped on their say-so before I’d gotten the second email, they’d have covered the amount due as long as I shipped with a service that provided tracking/delivery information. I asked specifically if sending something USPS Priority Mail without requiring a signature counted, and he said it did.
Oh, yeah. The reason I called PayPal tech support was that I was processing another order and went to the PayPal site to transfer that payment to my bank account. When I got to the main PayPal page, it told me that the hold on the funds from those two orders had been released and the money was back in my account. I called tech support to make sure that they weren’t going to take it away from me again.
Does anyone here need an internet enabled light bulb?
http://blog.chron.com/techblog/2014/01/smart-bulbs-light-the-way-for-internet-of-things/
I must admit that the AT&T whole house automation commercial is pretty cool though:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU8PDySrKok
Cringley has his first ten predictions for 2014 out:
http://www.cringely.com/2014/01/08/ten-technology-business-predictions-2014/
I agree with #1, “Microsoft gets worse before it gets better”. Microsoft is in free fall, they just do not know it. They think that they know it but they do not. As an ISV tightly connected to Windows, I am concerned.
Wow! This is the first time I agree with everything Cringely said. Usually, I don’t agree with him on anything.
I’ll add one more to his prediction: this is the year sports ownership will start getting seriously financially challenged. For about a decade they have been relying on ever-increasing rights fees from broadcasting to fund outrageous player salaries. Fact is that broadcasting has been losing money on sports since the Great Recession really took hold in 2009. Broadcasters are being challenged so severely that they are going to turn away from big league sports to quit bleeding money.
It is happening in Chicago. This is the last year WGN in Chicago will carry the Cubs games (WGN’s parent, Tribune, once even owned the Cubs). The problem with this? Nobody else wants those games, either. Since major league sports is mostly funded by radio and TV rights, and the Cubs have the money rug pulled from under them—things are going to change. Cubs may be the only ones this year, but big changes everywhere are coming.
Shin-Soo Choo’s defection from Cincinatti to the Texas Rangers for $130 million, is likely one of the last big ticket acquisitions major league sports will see, as team managers and owners begin shaking in their boots at the coming fracture of income from broadcasting.
IMO, the problem lies solely with high-rollers as team owners. The super-rich buy a team, then say yes to outrageous sums for players, which sums are not even justifiable unless future broadcast revenues increase faster than they have. Well, they are going to go down, or—as in the case of the Cubs—completely disappear. Watch as the rich playboy owners start dumping teams left and right.
I hate to harp on this (well, no I don’t actually), but there is no thinking about relevant structure going on in this country, and that is going to be the reason the US will soon be 5th or 6th in the world as China, Brazil, India, Pakistan, and possibly some other amalgamations besides the EU pass us up. In Germany, regulations require that league teams be owned 51% by the team itself. Guess what? No super-star salaries, but yet who won the 2013 World Cup? None other than that stingy-salaried Bayern Munich.
Fact is that broadcasting has been losing money on sports since the Great Recession really took hold in 2009. Broadcasters are being challenged so severely that they are going to turn away from big league sports to quit bleeding money.
Do you have any stats to back this up? To agree with you, the previous owner of the Houston Astros split the broadcast rights from the team (permanently) and formed a company with the Houston Rockets and Comcast. Reselling those rights to third parties has been a total and abject failure as the new company is trying to get $5/customer/month? for them. The new owner of the Astros is suing the previous owner for fraud now.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304477704579254580216241304
http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/11/22/63171.htm
It’s everywhere. Check Robert Feder’s column out of Chicago, Radio World, New York Times had a piece on it, as did BBC not long ago. I do not have any specific links, as I do not keep them, but it has been the subject of industry trade reports. I do not read Ad Age or Broadcasting and Cable anymore, but I suspect they have had articles on it, too. There should be some coverage out of Cincinnati, too, as they replaced Dusty Baker as Reds manager, but still have to pay him lots of money for a couple more years while also hiring somebody new. It was a big deal in news around here, because the fact that they had to continue paying Baker was going to limit their options in paying someone new.
Fact is that broadcasting has been losing money on sports since the Great Recession really took hold in 2009. Broadcasters are being challenged so severely that they are going to turn away from big league sports to quit bleeding money.
I heard yesterday that 34 of the 35 highest rated TV shows last calendar year involved the NFL.
Could be, but high ratings do not guarantee profitability—although it is in baseball where this crack is forming. For instance, local newscasts across the country no longer pay for themselves from revenue earned by advertising on those programs, even though they may be some of the highest-rated programs carried by the station. Stations take money from other programs to keep news broadcasts going.
No Chicago radio station has stepped up to take over the Cubs games, even though WGN announced months ago that 2014 would be their last year on radio. The figure of how much money they have lost on both radio and TV was mentioned in one of the trade industry blogs I follow. But that has been a couple months ago and I do not remember who it was.
This item is not from the last week or two, but from months ago, and I mentioned it now, because I thought Cringely was dead on in his 2014 predictions, and mine is that broadcasting losing money so sports team owners can pay upwards of $100 million to players is going to come to a screeching halt. For WGN, it comes down to whose jobs are more important—people in the station? or players on a baseball team?