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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Ian, post: 22365, member: 283&quot;]I have to have a bit of a chuckle reading this Doug.</p><p><br /></p><p>When I first started buying via the internet, all the stuff I was interested in seemed to be in the US. I had all the same problems but in reverse.</p><p><br /></p><p>All the stuff I was after fell into the under $50 category at the time, but sometimes it went higher....sometimes much much higher.</p><p><br /></p><p>The options I had when dealing with the average John Doe were cash in $&#039;s or take a hike. I also had the option of American Express cheques at the addition expense of time, effort, admin fees and a less than `Ian friendly&#039; exchange rate. Either way, if I was interested in the item, I had to consider the REAL costs involved. Change £&#039;s to $&#039;s there are fees and less than favourable exchange rates too. so a $5 item might cost $6 by the tiome the money has been changed....then there is the cost of getting it to the other side of the pond.....(postage)</p><p><br /></p><p>In over 1,000 deals I only had one real bad experience, and it wasn&#039;t postal. It was a bad egg in the US . I won&#039;t go there though. A bad experience is a bad experience and detail is unimportant. Suffice it to say that as a european buyer I had no recourse. </p><p><br /></p><p>My normal approach is:&nbsp; a) trust until proven otherwise. I would say that&nbsp; 97.5% of the human race is fundamentally honest and above board. I make no assumption that I am destined to only meet the bad eggs. I do my due dilligence in finding out who or what I am dealing with first (as anyone with any spark of intelligence would) but after that I assume that they want my repeat business and that they wish to maintain a decent reputation. b) postal services are in business to deliver letters. They deliver letters. Letters that don&#039;t get delivered are in the minority. Sure, there are bad eggs everywhere but statistically speaking if you lose any more than one letter in a thousand then either the gods really do have it in for you and youn should insure every letter you send, or the sellers are not being honest when they say `it&#039;s in the post&#039;.</p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ve been asked for as much as $16 to send a $5 item. (Sooper dooper insured registered, signed for, fighter jet escorted.....). If i&#039;d taken all the options I was expected to take I would have spent three times as much on delivery of the item than it&#039;s cost.</p><p><br /></p><p>My delivery preference is simple airmail. It gets posted incognito and invariably arrives without problem. Take a registered package splatter it with `look i&#039;m valuable&#039;, and insured as it may be.....if it goes missing the insurance does not get the item back, just the cost (AND if you are lucky).</p><p><br /></p><p>As I said in over 1,000 (pre paypal) deals with the US....only one bad egg encountered. All transactions done by cash / ordinary airmail in both directions. I reckon the amount I saved in not going OTT on `trust&#039; issues (insurance / registration) is in excess of $5,000 over the duration. That is a sizeable part of anyone&#039;s coin purchasing budget!</p><p><br /></p><p>Sure, on big money purchases, a little extra to provide some comfort is not a bad idea. However on day by day items such as circa $50 and under one has to be a tad more pragmatic.</p><p><br /></p><p>I would however say that my experience with buying from France of late has not been a happy one. Their postal services seem to be in a state of some confusion at the moment. I have lost a few letters (with payments enclosed) in the past few months. The French postal service even lost a registered letter (I got the financial compensation of what I paid for the coin involved, but that does not compensate for the fact that the coin was extremely rare and my chances of finding another one are little to none).</p><p><br /></p><p>I don&#039;t accept credit card payments whether by fax or by paypal. </p><p><br /></p><p>Most people in europe don&#039;t use credit cards. They do in the UK (and how!). Paypal is slow to catch on, but for transfers from credit balances....it can&#039;t be beat.</p><p><br /></p><p>Ian[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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