Having been taken by sellers on these Newsgroups a couple of times but
have now learned how to do it. I would like to recommend that anyone
that buys anything from an unknown seller on a Newsgroup to only pay via
the United State Post Office "Cash (Collect)on Delivery". It only
costs the buyer a few dollars but will for sure stop the dishonest
sellers from taking advantage of an easy sell on a Newsgroup. Of course
the exception to this rule is you know the person that you are buying
from and know they are honest.

Thanks for reading,
Ron WA0KDS

What about the buyer that refuses the package or postman cannot deliver
it ,or buyer decides that he doesn`t want it ..Seller is stuck with 2
times the shipping to get it back..OR seller sends you a box of rocks
COD ..Buyer pays post office gets nothing but rocks..I agree about
checking out the seller ,making sure that he is reputable ,That always
seems to work out good for me.. W4PQW

In article .com,
wrote:

What about the buyer that refuses the package or postman cannot deliver
it ,or buyer decides that he doesn`t want it ..Seller is stuck with 2
times the shipping to get it back..OR seller sends you a box of rocks
COD ..Buyer pays post office gets nothing but rocks..I agree about
checking out the seller ,making sure that he is reputable ,That always
seems to work out good for me.. W4PQW

Yes, checking out the seller's reputation is always a good thing to
do. I tend to be somewhat more suspicious of potential buyers (or
sellers) who have "fluid" addresses - PO boxes, PMBs, "Suite" numbers
at locations which turn out to be Mailbox Etc. or similar storefronts.

There are a couple of other approaches which I've found worthwhile:

[1] Use an escrow-payment service - a trusted and reputable
third-party which receives and holds the money from the buyer, and
releases it to the seller only when the buyer has received and
inspected and OK'ed the goods (or has received the goods and
failed to either OK or reject them within a given amount of time).

[2] Payment-by-halves / risk sharing. Buyer sends half of the funds,
seller sends the goods, buyer inspects them and then sends the
remaining half of the funds.

It can also help to make it clear that you *will* file mail-fraud
charges against anyone who ships you a box of gravel.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!