OSU was launched in March of 2009, when it became increasingly clear that eBay's policies have made eBay an extremely difficult venue to conduct business at for some time now, leaving both buyers and sellers clamoring for something better.
As eBay has declined in importance, many other e-commerce venues have surfaced, with several performing well, and a few flourishing. OSU's goal is assist sellers, buyers, and anyone else interested in learning about, and finding the very best e-commerce sites available today, together with providing tools and discussion areas of interest to buyers and sellers alike.
OSU's goal is to help, to educate, and to provide a platform for the exchange of information between both e-commerce veterans, and new-to-the scene folks. We anticipate a fun, informative, fast-paced, and problem-free environment where all facets of e-commerce are discussed, reviewed and debated. OSU offers site navigation tools, and open and tightly moderated discussion forums that are free of flaming, warring, and other non-productive antics.
Our topics and areas include public and personal e-commerce, current events, security, and ratings and reviews. If you have a question, think we've missed an area of importance that should be covered, or any other comment, just let us know and we'll try to accommodate you.
Take your time, look around, and then consider joining us at OSU, the newest online e-commerce discussion community! If you have any news, information, or updates you want to share please contact us.
Be sure to submit a link to your online store, or e-commerce site on our Site Links, so others can browse your store or site!
Everybody is welcome here at OSU. You don't need to be a seller to join or benefit from this site
Obeying a court order and revealing the identity of a formerly anonymous blogger might not work out so well for Google. Rosemary Port, who was exposed as the author of the now infamous "Skanks in NYC" blog, has said that she intends to sue the search giant for $15 million.
A little history: Port's blog uses Google's Blogger software. Port used her blog to call model Liskula Cohen a skank. Cohen then sued in order to find out who was behind the insult, and following a legal skirmish, a federal judge forced Google to hand over the relevant information.
That brings us to the $15 million lawsuit-in-the-making. Port told George Rush, "Without any warning, I was put on a silver platter for the press to attack me. I would think that a multi-billion dollar conglomerate would protect the rights of all its users."
And according to Port's lawyer, Salvatore Strazzullo, Google "breached its fiduciary duty to protect her expectation of anonymity." He also said, "I'm ready to take this all the way to the Supreme Court."
Either a win or a loss could have a significant impact on how anonymous bloggers operate. We'll keep an eye on the matter.
PayPal has offered buyer protection for many years, but it’s been restricted mainly to eBay transactions. That’s all changed as of the 1st November, PayPal now cover claims for non-receipt of goods for transactions from any website.
In the past if you claimed for non-receipt of goods from a website transaction you would only have got a refund if the seller had sufficient funds to cover it in their PayPal account. If PayPal couldn’t recover the funds then you lost out. PayPal have removed that requirement for transactions taking place after the 1st November 2009 and buyers who win their claim for items not received will get their money back for the full value of the item, in the same way they already do when they use PayPal to pay for eBay purchases.
A huge number of websites now accept PayPal, including many of Britain’s biggest brands. This improvement to our buyer protection will give extra reassurance to over 20 million PayPal customers in Britain when they shop online at these sites. We regularly review and improve the protection we offer customers, as we recognise that it’s an important extra benefit of using PayPal.
An Illinois sheriff wants Craigslist to stop making it so easy to catch prostitutes. Apparently it just gives him a lot more work than he can handle.
Sheriff Tom Dart, of Cook County, Ill., filed suit against Craigslist and asked a federal judge to ban the online classified advertising site from offering its erotic services section. “Craigslist is the single largest source of prostitution in the nation,” he said, and Dart is seeking $100,000 in reimbursement for the costs of prostitution investigations stemming from Craigslist.
This was a gem of a quote:
“I could make arrests off Craigslist 24 hours a day, but to what end? I’m trying to go up the ladder.”
So what he’s saying is Craigslist is making it way too easy for him to do his job, and he’d rather catch the really stupid pimps, hookers, and johns (the ones now advertising and utilizing illegal activities on the Internet) himself, on street corners, back alleys, and truck stops, just like the olden days, good, honest days of actual work. Craigslist just takes the fun out of the chase.
When he goes up that ladder he’s talking about though, he’ll likely discover the federal protection Craigslist enjoys under the Communications Decency Act, which shields Internet services from liability for third party content. Being a lawman, Dart probably should have checked on that before calling a press conference.
"Sheriff's lawsuit over craigslist erotic ads thrown out"
A lawsuit accusing craigslist of facilitating prostitution has been thrown out, once again thanks to the Communications Decency Act. The judge ruled that craigslist is protected from the illegal activities of its users—if law enforcement wants to pursue individuals, then they can do so without shooting (or suing) the messenger.
The Communications Decency Act continues to protect craigslist against liability when users post questionable things to its servers, even when those things involve paying someone for sex. A federal judge has reaffirmed craigslist's place as a protected intermediary when it comes to providing online personals, throwing out a lawsuit from the Cook County Sheriff's Department that argued craigslist played an active role in promoting and profiting from illegal sex acts.
The Sheriff filed a lawsuit against craigslist in March of this year, alleging that the popular personals site facilitated prostitution with its (then called) "erotic services" section. In the lawsuit, Sheriff Thomas Dart said that his department had devoted 3,120 workers hours between January and November of 2008 exclusively to dealing with prostitution stemming from craigslist, and that craigslist itself "solicits for a prostitute" by indirectly arranging meetings. If not for craigslist, Dart alleged, online prostitution would not nearly be such a problem.
Two months after the suit was filed, craigslist agreed to implement voluntary changes to the system that would do away with erotic services and replace it with "adult services." This new section was to fall under much stricter oversight, but the Sheriff's Department was not interested in dropping its lawsuit, claiming that replacing "erotic" with "adult" made no difference and was still an obvious grab for prostitution listings.
PayPal recently notified customers of policy changes in its Terms of Service (TOS). Beginning October 14, 2009 the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy is being amended in Section 3 (c) to add the purchase of real property as a prohibited activity. According to the announcement:
We are expanding this section to allow us to place a temporary hold on amounts subject to a claim filed by an eBay user, through the eBay resolution process, if your PayPal account is your eBay reimbursement method. The new language will read: 1. "10.2 Temporary Holds for Disputed Transactions. If a buyer files a Claim, Chargeback or Reversal on a payment you received, PayPal will place a temporary hold on the funds in your Account to cover the amount of the liability. If you win the dispute or the transaction is eligible for PayPal seller protection, PayPal will lift the temporary hold. If you lose the dispute, PayPal will remove the funds from your Account. This process also applies to claims that a buyer files directly with eBay through the eBay resolution process if your PayPal Account is your reimbursement method for buyer claims."
The company also amended the PayPal Student Account Agreement, also effective October 14, 2009, to allow the child to add a bank account to his or her PayPal Student Account. "The parent may set Permissions to allow or prevent the Child from linking a bank account to the Student Account and from adding funds from the linked bank account to the Student Account Balance."
The wine sales pilot, which the e-commerce giant launched last year, was intended to sell wine from California’s Napa Valley and other U.S. regions.
An Amazon spokesman declined to give details about why the company ended the program.
The end of the program may have been related to financial troubles at partner New Vine Logistics, which had been tapped to handle shipments for Amazon. Over the summer, that company suspended operations amid financial problems, but then later got new investment from Inertia Beverage Group.
Amazon faced an onerous task to comply with a patchwork of state laws governing the direct shipping of wine to consumers. More than 35 states permit some form of direct shipping, but laws often vary. Some states, for instance, restrict how many wine bottles a person can order, or require that consumers pick up wine shipments at a retail outlet.
“This was a very tough choice for us,” an Amazon account manager said in an email to wineries Friday, according to a copy reviewed by this blog. “I am sorry that we won’t get to realize the vision on which we have collaborated.”
Today we have our first look at the text of eBay’s new automatic unpaid item reminders. These are now sent out automatically by eBay four days after a BIN or the end of an auction, for any listing that has not been marked paid for (either via PayPal or manually by the seller). Here’s what they say:
We opened an unpaid item case for [your item], because the seller either hasn’t recorded your payment or didn’t receive it yet.
Your payment must be received no later than [8 days to the second after the listing ended], to avoid an unpaid item being recorded on your account (and possible restrictions).
If you’ve simply forgotten to pay, please pay now so that we can close this case and the seller can dispatch the item to you.
If you can’t reach the seller or there’s been a mistake, don’t worry – you can appeal tosue remove the unpaid item after the case closes.
Leaving aside the typo in the last sentence (I can assure you, appealing to Sue will not get your strike removed…), this email just illustrates what a farce the “unpaid item” process is.
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