MasterCard security issues (Now with extra StampWants!)?
So, the issue comes up: where to buy stamps online now? eBay has priced themselves out of the game (so there is no way for people to profit sell cheaper stamps there any longer) and, after dealings with Mark Rosenberg of StampWants (who, incidentally, wrote a threatening letter to me to remove my original statements from this site) I learned several things:
1. Live in or collect a country other than the United States? There is a good chance that you do not warrant a category on StampWants in Mr. Rosenberg’s assessment. Check the site’s categories for yourself. Mr. Rosenberg considers this a business decision. I see it as an important sample point in ensuring that the rest of the world remains a “special interest group” on StampWants.
2. Mr. Rosenberg is happy to claim experimental results that show that adding that country you care about as a category would ruin StampWants, but is unwilling to share the data (as would be standard practice in the scientific community.
3. I find Mr. Rosenberg tremendously cocksure when it comes to his own opinions, answering questions in a way that I consider rude and to perpetually dodge the point, with logic I find fallacious. To add insult to injury, he then accuses me of continuing to change the topic.
There are more reasons, but that should suffice for most readers, I suspect. Contact me if you want more. As I alluded to earlier, I received an absolutely adorable attempt at a cease-and-desist letter written by Mr. Rosenberg, in which he continues to behave in a manner I consider rude in the same breath that he denies ever having been rude in the first place. So instead of waiting for a frame-worthy cease-and-desist letter written by someone with, oh, say, training, I’ve rephrased the preceding (as a courtesy) to explicitly state my interpretations of Rosenberg’s behavior.
In any case, my First-Amendment-protected recommendation (which follows my First-Amendment-protected opinions) is: avoid StampWants. And the funny thing? My rephrasing, driven by Mark’s tired letter, extends the length of my negative assessment of his site and him by a couple orders of magnitude.
His non-StampWants email is markcrosenberg@gmail.com, by the way.
So, instead of StampWants, I turned to the awesome Delcampe auction site and went to Moneybookers to pay, as the dealer had requested.
Moneybookers is the European equivalent of PayPal, and it’s kind of neat to deal to deal with overseas companies as an American, and think about what it’s like for overseas citizens to do the reverse. It’s like walking around with your arm in a sling. For instance: ways to fund your account. You can pay from your bank account, if you find the carefully-hidden place to add an American account (because American banks don’t support IBAN, and Moneybookers pretty much assumes your bank does.) You can also fund your “wallet” with a credit card, for a 1.9% fee. Worldwide, they take Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Diner’s Club. Except in the States. There you can use Visa, American Express, or Diner’s Club — but not MasterCard, due to unspecified “security issues”. Does anyone have the slightest idea what is going on there? I am so used to Visa and MasterCard being uttered in the same breath. They even show up together on the same store window decal. And I really wanted to use a Mastercard (specifically, my PayPal MasterCard).
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July 28th, 2008 at 7:17 am
Well, I know MA does not allow merchants to charge a fee to use thier card at merchants. Is this what you might be referencing your 1.9% fee? — maybe MA has chosen not to allow the merchants procesosr to do business with them because of this.
August 1st, 2008 at 2:31 pm
[...] mcgees.org I’m still getting over who I was « MasterCard security issues (Now with extra StampWants!)? [...]
August 2nd, 2008 at 3:21 am
A quick look at the StampWants homepage provides a clue. The three top categories are:
United States, Non United States, Other Categories
Certainly seems to be sending a message.
August 2nd, 2008 at 8:37 am
It’s like those headlines you still see: KOREAN AIRLINER CRASHES; THREE AMERICANS DEAD
I once heard someone in the Bush administration say, about a proposed climate change protocol, that “it’s only the environmentalists and other countries that support this.” One wants to say, “OK, back up, and take it slowly: the environmentalists and other countries? The rest of the world is a ’special interest group’?”
Of course, the rest of the world is not a special interest group — except to President Bush and Mark Rosenberg.
In Mark’s cute poor man’s cease-and-desist letter, he objected to my calling this behavior “racist”. One wants to say, “OK, back up, and take it slowly….”
September 20th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
What’s up with StampWants? First you rave about them for selling and now you hate them? I couldn’t find the post that generated the ceast and desist letter. I checked them out recently but haven’t bought or sold anything there yet, but am thinking about it. Maybe you could please email me your specific selling problems as the only specific complaint I could find is that they don’t have all the categories you’d like. I also exchanged some email with Mark. Good luck.