So, only US. Given that I’m living in Serbia, chances of Hulu appearing here are worse than 0. Thus Hulu will never work for me. The blurb on this dialog is rather telling – they will have to cross quite a bit of legal hurdles to get this working here. Given the size of Serbia internet audience and the part of it willing to pay for stuff online, I can safely say that legal costs to make this happen would probably outweigh a year worth of revenue.

Same thing certainly applies to sites like iTunes and Amazon MP3 Downloads. The only way I’m able to buy anything on the iTunes is using gift cards brought by friends from their US vacation (or bought off eBay). Amazon uses Geo IP filtering and card billing address checks to prevent people buying MP3s of their store, if they are not in the US.

I seriously wonder when will content producers figure out how much money they are losing this way. I have valid debit cards I can buy stuff from various web sites in the world. If my money is acceptable when I’m buying electronic goods on the UK Amazon, it’s should be perfectly acceptable to buy music.

The way things are now, Hulu, iTunes and Amazon are actively working to prevent me to give them money. I don’t think that can be more stupid then it is.

I’m fully aware that stores would be happy to have me and collect their cut of my buys, that they are forced to do this thing. So I’m puzzled by the continuing insistence of the content rights holders to prevent me to buy Galactica or Heroes on iTunes/Hulu. Instead, I wait for EasyTV crew to publish the gorgeus looking HD capture of the latest episode and torrent it down. I adored Battlestar Galactica and would buy entire seasons, if only I was let to.

In the age of global economy, I see no reason to prevent people from any country in the world to buy things in any other country. When I look at my purchases over the last few years, I spent quite a bit of money on places like PragProg where I bought several products and asked my company to buy some stuff of them too. None of those sales would be possible if they acted in the same way like music/TV/cinema industry worked. Actually, if they did work like that I would probably torrent down their stuff too, because I needed those screencasts.

Food for thought.

Turned out they did, but not much.

The shipping costs, as listed in MobilX site were 13€ to ship into Serbia, with 1–2 business days time frame. Since I ordered few days before Orthodox Easter, I wasn’t really expecting it in that time frame. I didn’t mind that, I was not even at home during the holiday. So, on next Tuesday, I checked the site, saw that it has arrived into Serbia, that it was delayed at customs and called DHL.

I knew that I should go through the customs import procedure where things could take a day or two, so I wanted to speed things up. I went through 3 different persons with no luck, finally the 3rd telling me that someone will call me with more info “in few minutes”. Almost 5h later someone did call me, to tell me that my package needs to go to the customs and that I need to pay 3540din for DHL service for custom declarations + any customs expenses based on the package price.

Initially I was shocked. 3450din is 3000din for their service + 18% VAT. So, VAT excluded, they were charging me additional 31€ for doing the customs procedure in my name. I did not want to pay this so I asked for information about the package and wanted to do that myself.
Like, yeah.

First, there’s immensely stupid Serbian Law that says that only regular postal packages can be declared to customs by ordinary people. Express packages must go through certified customs agent. This is utter bullshit as there is nothing different in the paperwork. This is clearly a setup for the various express courier companies (DHL, UPS, many other local ones that have sprang off the ground in Serbia, in last few years) to charge abnormal service charges on top of their regular shipping charge.
So, my only option was to try and find some other customs agent with better rates.

However, in order to actually do that, I need to buy the shipping list from DHL for mere 944din + unknown amount per day, for keeping the 300g package in their storage until the process is done. That’s 10€ + unknown amount. Adding the other agent rate, this could very well again be 30€ or even more.

Out of options here, I sent the payment to DHL with appropriate papers and was anxiously waiting to see what exactly I’m being charged for. Things did not finish there though, as this customs procedure took 2 days — I payed 31€ for that? — and then took two more days until actual delivery. You see, even though I sent two emails when can I be reached at home and left contact phone and alternative address (my office) I still missed the delivery guy for 15mins who came to my home address at about 6:25pm, did not find anyone there and left. I arrived home 10mins later. I immediatelly called their office, they told me that deliveries can be made after 10am and in about 6-8pm, even though their working hours are 8am-8pm. We huggled for some minutes on is it possible that delivery is made after 7pm when I knew I will be home and apparently it was impossible since it could be anywhere between 6-8pm and they can’t tell me precisely. Jolly.

The whole experience was abysmal and the DHL was nothing but problematic. The hidden charges are simply despicable and the shipping charge is blatant lie. (This has nothing to do with MobilX, they are probably using whatever DHL gave them as rates). I know that this is all down to local DHL office, but to me, as customer, that is irrelevant. It’s their job to get all their branches in order, because they are all called DHL. It’s one brand and the bad experience damage entire brand.

Just to clear any doubt – mentioned 31€ is pure DHL charge. Actual charges that Serbian Customs office is taking for filing the papers are 300din+600din (a bit less than 10€) and these were payed by me, clearly shown on the invoice given. Thus it’s not transparent customs charge that DHL is graciously doing for me as certificed customs agent – it’s DHL ripping people off.
And what do they do for those 31€? I fill two Word document templates they sent me, they fill half of another paper (half is done by the customs clerk on arrival) and fax all three to the customs office. I also pay the charges directly to them and customs office, they don’t process any money in my name. Like I said, this law is clearly a setup for the shipping sharks.

They basically do nothing. The airway transport from Hungary to Italy to Serbia costs 13€ and this paper shuffling costs 31€. Absolutely despicable abuse of the local laws. This is the last time I have ever used DHL and would actively dissuade anyone I know from using their services.

I wrote a bit about it in my first post about switching to Mac and mentioned that some Mac developers have a tendency toward severe limitations in the trial mode. I honestly believe that this is hurting their sales and does not prevent pirating they work.
Examples are various.

Newsfire limits the number of subscriptions to 15. This is a severe limit. My subscriptions count is over 100 and I certainly did not want to read my feeds in two different apps. It just felt as waste of time. It also could not import my existing data. NetNewsWire on the other hand imported everything and did not even bother me at all, not even a nag screen. A sure winner and naturally I bought after 10 days of using it.

Coda offers just 14 days of testing period. For such a powerful application that promises to do many things, that is way too short. I think that proper testing of a development environment app will require me doing a whole project with it. Not a quicky of few days – a larger project spanning several weeks. As it is, I don’t know will I be able to give it such testing.

CSSEdit will not let you save files over 2500 characters. This is very severe restriction. I bought it, but only because I had previous many-years-long experience with TopStylePro on Windows and CSSEdit reminded me so much of it, so I decided to go with it. If it wasn’t for TSP experience, I would never have bought it and would ditch it after less than a day. A great app, but dumb limitation that could prevent you to realize that.

Then there are apps that are so annoying with nag screens, that they prevent you to even use it properly. xTorrent is prime example I have seen so far. This black dialog is impossible to close and it is impossible to even move outside the viewport – it slides back in when one tries that. Extremely annoying, I trashed it just after two runs.
Nag screens on startup, even those that countdown 10s or something, are ok. I can wait it out. But let me use it after that’s over, don’t bug when I’m trying it out.

I can understand the frustration that piracy brings to developers, especially small ones. But I came to conclusion that the most effective thing you can do is to just be polite. I would even go against time limiting, as it’s not worthwhile. Remind the user that he needs to register and that’s it.
If he does not want to pay, he will easily find a crack, patch or whatever. Or uninstall and use something else. If you just let him use the program, he might just get so hooked to it that he will eventually pay it.

This is what happened with me and Total Commander on Windows. TC will show you a nag screen on each startup until you register. Even when 21 days pass (the trial mode limit), it will not stop working. It will not disable anything. I used for few years before actually paying for it. I did not have any means to pay for it when I started using it. But when I had, I not only bought the license but recommended it to anyone who would listen. I would install it religiously to any remote server I worked on in client premises. This insistence lead to one large client buying multiple copies. The company I work in bought 100 licenses (not just thanks to me).
TC is that good. It’s the perfect example of how shareware apps should work.

After three failed auctions for my old PC laptop, all ending with frauds, I posted another one, the last one I could while in UK. This time, I set the starting price to £699, and 3 days auction time (it can’t be less than that*). In the end, there was an offer from a legitimate looking account that was a high bidder for some time, only to be overtaken by a brand new account in the final minutes.

After finishing with £920 wining bid, I wrote a message to him, to see about payment and shipment. However, in less than an hour since the bid end, this account became the unregistered user on eBay. :( eBay help advises to file a dispute, which I will automatically win since the other party is no longer a user. This immediately gave me back my posting fees and everything was nullified. I then offered a second chance to the 2nd high bidder, but after a day he didn’t even respond to numerous messages and everything went bust again.

Outside eBay channels, things were more interesting.

While I was doing that, the winning bidder was also hard at work. He first sent me a message from a yahoo.com account saying that he is glad he won the auction and that I should send it to provided address in Nigeria. He will pay me £100 for the postage. Oh, how nice…

Less than an hour later, I received this email:

On first glance looks rather legitimate, if only it wasn’t for the real email address ending in europe.com. It’s obvious that he tried to replicate the look and feel of the actual eBay messages, including the FromName field in the header. If only that From field was not so revealing. But he didn’t stop there.

After some minutes, another messages arrives, this time “from” PayPal:

You must hand it to the guy – he really tried. Careful inspection reveals details that show this is not from PayPal (apart from email address of course) but the overall feel is there.
Since I ignored him, after two days he sent me another message, warning me that I have been reported to PayPal and that my account will be suspended until I send the item to him. A tireless bastard.

I have no idea can anyone be fooled by this. I guess yes, although it is really hard for me to believe that someone would send the item out without actually checking PayPal account balance, which will show no such transaction ever took place.

Check, check and recheck, with all eyes open.

* – eBay should really allow for shorter periods. My experience, both as a seller and buyer, tells me that everyone wait until few hours before the auction end and real fun begins 10mins before the end. In all my selling auctions, there was barely a bid or two in first 2 days.

This time however, I was selling a valuable laptop. It was the first thing I ever tried to sell, thus I was extra careful and checked everything and everyone.

The first wave consisted almost entirely of…

African investors

Hello Mate,

How was your Weekend..?I will like to make an instant purchase of your item for

my niece who manage one of my firm Oversea,she’s been faithful and committed to service and i’ve decided to compensate her for a job well done,through her effort commitment,i have been able to expand my firm in Africa.I will be paying GBP 1,400.00 for the total cost of this item including shipping Service Parcel Force Mail Service,Got a busy Schedule so i can’t wait to look over the bid,Please indicate your interest by ending the auction,i will be paying via my paypal account,You can get back tom me through…eBay or my personal email eline_c770@yahoo.com for further correspondence and conclusion on this transaction.I’m expecting your immediate response send Your Name along your valid PAYPAL email address so as for me to remit the amount am offering you into your PAYPAL account.Kindly please,take this offer very serious and be honest with me.tspn95

Thanks and Best RegardS

From: tspn95 (263)

At first glance, it looked as an OK buyer. Large number of feedbacks, good rating, registered 4 years ago. Looking closer however, you can see that last feedback was several months ago. First sign of trouble, pointing to possible stolen account.
Second sign was that he was offering way too big amount, almost identical to a brand new laptop in the same category. Any reasonable person would buy new from Sony or Amazon, not 1.5 years old laptop.

I passed this offer.
One day later, here it is again.

Hi, Am Karie,Please Can i offer you 800 pounds for this laptop, please? I believe it will make a fantastic birthday gift for my sister.She’s presently out of the UK on an official assignment,which involves saving lifes. Due to the nature of my work, i may not be here when the auction ends so i want to know if i can buy it now. I’ll pay via paypal which is secure for both of us before you ship. Do mail me ASAP. I’m prepared to pay you immediately if you agree. Thank you in anticipation of a favourable response from you. Many regards, My personal email address is karielink@hotmail.com. You can reach me directly there. Thank you. Many regards, Karie.

From: kjlinksw1 (11)

Wow. A relative to die for. Not very good with written English, but a good heart all around. The same pattern. A 7 years old stolen account, no recent feedback, probably wants me to ship to Africa as well.

Few hours after that one…

hello seller

i love to buy your lovely item to one of my son in west africa pls insted of bidding i will like to offer you $500 including the shipping amount pls get back to me asap with your paypal email account thanks

From: maxons (0)

The last attempt, with brand new account, with the shortest message yet and lowest amount. I think this represents a good example of the attack pattern these people use.

These are easy to recognize. The following were much trickier.

Account thieves

Until few hours before the auction end, things were quiet. I knew that prices starts to rise very quickly in last hour, especially in the last several minutes. I never expected that my laptop would reach £8.000.

I checked how things stand 3h before the end and saw that eBay user nicole00370 raise the bid to £820, which was over my reserve price of £750. Since the bidder had no feedback and was a brand new account, I sent this email:

Hi, regarding the bid you placed for my Sony VAIO SZ1XP/C. I see that you are from United States – please note that I can ship only to a UK address.

Please confirm that this is ok with you, otherwise I will remove your bid.

There was no response at all, until 1h before the auction end. I removed the bid. 20mins later, I checked again and the high bid was £7.320 or something like that, by the same account. Then minute later another 5h-old account offered £8.000. Annoyed, I killed both of these, waited 15mins and a £750 offer from user gregclemons3nmq was the winner. Usual checks yielded nothing suspicious, thus I sent him a message:

You won the auction, for my Sony SZ1XP/C laptop.

Let me know when you complete the payment and whether you want to collect the item in person (and save 20 for the postage).

He responded with prompt payment to my PayPal account in less than 10 minutes and sent this message:

Hello,I sent you money for Laptop!
My adress Is:Stainland Road 61a,HALIFAX,Greetland,HX4 8BD!
please then you will post item, forward me tracking number
Thanks…
Cameron Bowe

Again, a bad English, but what the hell – there are so many immigrants into UK, that it was not that unusual. What raised an alarm was this bit from the PayPal notice I received about the payment:

Important Note: Stephen Miner has provided an Unconfirmed Address. If you are planning on shipping items to Stephen Miner, please check the Transaction Details page of this payment to find out whether you will be covered by the PayPal Seller Protection Policy.

That was a third name that appeared in this whole affair. I already sent a message thanking him for prompt payment and informing him that I will send the laptop first thing in the morning. He then responded that he would be really grateful if I could send it immediately.
With an already made-up mind that I would refund the payment, I sent this just for fun:

Unfortunately, I can’t do it so quickly. I’m at the office all day, thus can prepare the package in the evening, not earlier.

In the meantime, can you please clear something for me – the account you used to pay seem to belong to someone called Stephen Miner, shipping address is to Cameron Bowe, while ebay username looks to be made from Greg Clemons.
I’m new to eBay, thus all this make me concerned a bit. Can you please explain it.

His response floored me:

Certainly I can! Stephen Miner is I! Cameron Bowe – my adopted son who will take mail as I weight put I am on work!

I honestly wonder did he ever managed to trick anyone. Simply ridiculous. To no surprise at all, I quickly received the following notice from PayPal:

We have conducted an investigation regarding a payment you received in your PayPal account. This investigation determined that those funds were fraudulent. Therefore we have completed a reversal of the payment and removed the funds from the following transaction from your account.

Transaction Date: Oct. 29, 2007 08:21:06 CDT
Transaction Amount: £770.00 GBP
Buyer’s Email: …

I must hand it to the PayPal. Payment was made at 1:21 UK time, they investigated and killed it in 1h (this notice reached me at 2:39). I think that’s an awesome response time and a testament of why PayPal is the preferred choice for online payments. If this was a credit card or wire transfer, it could be days before anyone figured out what has happened. By then, I would have sent this, transaction would later be reversed and I would be without money and without the goods.

This guy managed to steal accounts from both PayPal and eBay. And not just any account, but a PayPal account with at least £800 on it, as that was his maximum bid. The original owner of the account must have been very surprised when he received email notice for successful payment from PayPal. The shipping address he gave belongs to some factory – I do hope they will catch the bastard anyway.

Rules of the game

1. Never, ever reveal your email to any eBay user that asks questions. This can be exploited for social attacks on your account. eBay offers an option to hide your email address when responding to a question – always use it.
2. Always wait until the payment is cleared and then some, before shipping. Just for good measure.
3. Always ask/offer cash on collection, just to see the reaction.
4. Check, check and re-check.

I’m now into my third auction, as second was also won by a thief. Somehow I’m losing interest..too much hassle.

This was far from easy decision to make and I thought about it for a very long time. Eventually, I decided that much higher cost of buying powerful laptop vs powerful desktop will be justified with increased versatility and freedom of movement. The laptop was bought in UK and it proved to be a real eye-opener regarding business practice of some of the IT shops in London. A fishy practice.

Why

I live in Belgrade, Serbia’s capitol city. I was not born here though and my mom lives 300km south, in the small town of Pirot. Chances to go there are rare, due to high volume of work. It would be much easier if I could bring my work with me.
Until recently, I used shitty modem connection (ADSL finally arrived) and in Pirot I also only have modem connection. Some of the stuff I do would be done much quicker if I could get my computer somewhere where I have faster Internet connection (not viable with full tower case).

What

Using laptop as my main and only computer means that it should be blazing fast, durable and stable. I do web design / development work, but that does not mean just web server, editor and Photoshop. It’s IIS/ASP, Apache/PHP, Photoshop, MS SQL Server, MySQL, TopStylePro, virtual machines (through VMWare Player) and all kinds of auxiliary utilities. It also means DVD/CD read and write, movie play with 5.1 surround audio and music listening on external 5.1 speakers. It means bluetooth connections for my phone. And all the other things one could think of doing on the computer.

Important details was that I did not want to drag some large brick around. I toyed with idea of 17″ laptop (since I would mostly be using it at home) but few company trips during which I either used 14″ iBook G4 or 15″ Dell Latitude D600 was enough to convince me against it. First it’s heavy. Second, bulky enough to not be able to open them in bus or plane seat.

Hence, 12–13″ range. Which means small screen, possible lack of all required ports and high price. As designer, I need lots of desktop space. As movie fan, I need large screen to properly enjoy epic spectacles I’m into. Which naturally leads to external display, where I settled in on 23inchers which I still have not bought, which is another story.

Oh, the choice…

Here in Serbia, market offer for both high-class laptops and large monitors is close to non-existing. One can get HP, Dell, Asus and Fujitsu Siemens with hit and miss chance to buy some other brands. 90% of the models are the cheapest ones. There was no Sony, no Samsung, stronger Asus models in traces, few LGs which became obsolete by the time they finally appeared here. There are Apples too, for something like 30% higher price than in UK.
It’s really depressing, hence I waited for a chance to go abroad and buy there. It eventually happened in the first half of May when I went to UK on business, for 10 days. More than enough to lurk around, try out models and decide.

For months before, I scoured notebookreview.com and all other hardware sites looking for possible candidates. I can’t even remember for how much models I said “this is the one!” :), only to change my mind two days after. Eventually, I settled with Samsung X11, Asus W3J, LG T1, Sony SZ and…Apple MacBookPro. Oh, Apple…somewhere in the back of my mind, a dark force was calling me to switch. Reasonable part of me told me that Windows on Apple hardware is not ready for prime time yet, but the possibility to use both OSX and Win at the same time was really, really tempting. Even if it was above my screen size target.

So, naturally, I went to Apple Store on Regent Street and anchored at the MBPs. I first wanted to check the much publicized heat issue. Oh boy, was it easy to check – place your palm on top left corner of the keyboard and if you can keep them there for more than 15s, I salute you. Reviews was chock full about the high working temperatures of MBP, but this was just too much. I don’t really care if Apple thinks it to be normal or does they call MBP notebook computer and never a laptop – that thing is scorching.

So scratch Apple. After much checks and tries, I settled on Sony SZ1XP/C, a wonderful beast with some nasty tentacles, of which I already wrote.

Where

Tottenham Court Road in London contains 40 or so IT shops and it’s a natural place to go when you want to buy or simply check the notebooks in person. I think I made at least 3–5 visits to each store, checking and re-checking my target notebooks. Although I initially wanted Samsung X11, somehow it did not lure into buying after hands-on tests. I don’t know exactly what, but I think that the fact it had worse spec than Sony SZ1 and plus being larger drove me off.

Thus I bought SZ1, with free 3-year business next-day warranty being thrown in by the salesman at MBA store. MBA…or Microworld 2000…or I have no idea. While the salesman was very helpful and the entire shopping was a pleasant experience, the stuff that happened later on added a really bad smell to it all.

Since I’m from outside EC, I’m eligible for VAT refund. In UK, that’s 17.5%, which is added to original price. In case of this purchase, that amount was something like £230. Salesman told me that there is an administrative charge of £10 – I got used to the fact that most shops in UK do this and which I classify as screwing the customer. I have already shopped in several UK stores, and I know for a fact that this admin charge is nothing but a way for them to retain some of that money – since few shops do return you entire amount.

VAT refund in UK is similar to any other country – you get a form where seller fills up details about the shopping + shop details. Then, when you go to the airport or leave UK any other way, you pay a short visit to HM Customs which stamps the form and you send it back to the shop by post, along with your details filled in. Sometimes the Customs officer keep the form and send it himself/herself. When it gets to the shop, they pay you back to your card.

I believe you noticed the subtle fact that you will receive the money based on business honesty of the shop. And that is where MBA shopping went fishy. Because money did not show up on my card account for the next 3 months.

As it happens, I made copies of the form before sending it and in August, when I went for another business trip, I brought the papers with me and visited the shop. I asked for the manager, showed the form and ask them what happened – did the form not arrived or there were other problems. The guy went to some other shop, returned after 10 minutes and told me to comeback in the morning, they will sort it out. Sounded fine.

In the morning, he walked me to nearby shop which I thought is the administrative office. Actually, it turned out to be a place where 5 different companies are located, one desk and few drawers. Here is where I started to think something unusual is happening. I thought that the form was lost in post (I sent it form Serbia) – but they actually pulled a very large register and located my original form. It did arrive but they simply filed it and forgot about it.
Second thing is that instead of mentioned £10 charge, they charged me 3.5% of the entire price (with VAT included) which turned to be £50! I complained about it, but the guy told me the salesman got it wrong in the first place. I thought about pushing that issue but realized I have no time to spend for it. He gave me the cheque and told me I can cash it in nearby Lloyds bank office. I went there and the clerk told me that it is personal cheque and that I can only put the money in my accont in the same bank, but I can’t receive cash. The MBA person knew very well that I could not use the cheque (as I can’t possibly open an account in the UK) but still gave me that.

After this, really pissed off, I went back to the shop and demanded to be payed in cash and not be walked around anymore. You should see the charade happening then. A new guy showed up, then he called another one, all three of them talked quietly and in a dialect (or language) I did not understood a single word of (it reminded me about Snatch scene when Brad Pitt’s gypsy character is speaking very fast and Turkish asks the other guy did you understand anything he said). After 6–7 minutes of this show, the first guy finally picked up an envelope and payed me in cash.
They actually counted on the fact that with enough fooling around I would give up.

After all this, I strongly recommend to stay out of MBA shops (although the receipt and the bag said Microworld 2000 – could be the same company). The way these people operate is very, very fishy. I wonder is there’s an office one could report such practices, because they are basically stealing the money. They should have payed the VAT to the state, but with my form properly filled and stamped they could keep the money and still say to the tax office (I don’t know its name in UK) look, we did pay it back through this.
The way VAT refund scheme works in UK really opens up such possibilities. It would be better if VAT refunds would always be given back at the airports, and the shops always pay the tax. Sadly, it is not the case.

Please allow 5–7 business days for money refund.

This is what most big online shops tell you when you cancel the order. That’s really goes on my nerves. I don’t have such luxury when buying from them – I pay up-front for the goods. If I have canceled in time and received the email saying that cancellation is fine and I will not be charged anything – then why don’t you give me my money back that very same moment.

Makes me think twice of ever buying anything again.

Now, what the fuck is wrong in my answers? I tried several times, always getting the same message. What a great way of doing online business – by not letting people register at all.

I wanted to complain about this and inform them that it is not working properly. Yeah, right.

Idiots.