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Marketers just love knowing what we all spend our money on, so that they can formulate better ways of getting us to part with our cash. Some people find this disturbing. Personally I don't really mind. My buying patterns have always been a bit odd anyway, though I'm unlikely to to end up on any watchlists:



XKCD - sheer genius! Pity that there aren't that many (if any) ebay sellers willing to ship to Ireland for free...

If you're going to spend money on PPC advertising you really need to make sure that your website is working for you:




The site I decided to check obviously won't deliver anything for me:




What a waste of advertising spend!

And of course this isn't an isolated incident - if you spend enough time looking for products and services online you will find hundreds of these scenarios!

As it's nearly that time of the year again I'm currently looking at options for hampers to send friends and relatives overseas.

While I do like the options from 4GiftsDirect, Gifts.ie etc., what about something a bit different?
It's a chocolate pizza!!

It's not just ordinary chocolate - it's high quality gourmet Belgian chocolate!

If I wasn't on a diet I'd order one!

More info here (if anyone gets one do let me know what it's like!)

It looks like Amazon is jumping on the Green bandwagon as well...

I don't blame them. If I could push the "green" aspects of our new hosting solution more and it led to sales I would without hesitation.

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As I've mentioned before, I really like eBay. The range of items you can find on eBay at any given time is simply amazing. Of course that's also a source of frustration.

I currently own a Swatch watch. I've had it for about 6 years, as I was given it for my birthday by a very lovely Italian girl.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, the watch is showing signs of usage, as I have worn it every single day for the last 6 years. The face of the watch is showing signs of wear and tear, while humidity leads to a "lovely" fogginess on the fascia ie. the seals are pretty much gone.
That the watch has lasted this long is pretty amazing - all of its predecessors met with unhappy ends much faster than it has done, so it shows that buying a reasonably good watch does pay off.

Of course now the time has come to get a replacement. I'd prefer to get a replacement now, while my faithful Swatch is behaving, rather than wait until it dies completely and I'm forced to get a cheap replacement to tide me over.

So what kind of watch should I get?

While I was in Paris a few weeks ago a friend was showing off his Rolex. He'd had it for over 10 years and it was practically new, even though he wears it every single day. The problem with a Rolex is, of course, the price tag. You could easily spend several thousand euro on one and that is not something that I am willing to do.

Other brands that have caught my eye are Tag Heuer and Omega.

While the Tag Heuer pieces seem to cost a lot less than Rolex the prices vary a lot.

My main problem and source of frustration is that I have no idea of how much I should be spending on a timepiece. It's not a question of budget. If I decided to spend 300 or 500 euro on a watch that would last me 10 or 20 years I'd see that as money well spent. If you put it in perspective, of course.

Perusing the listings on eBay I can find fantastic looking Tag Heuer watches going for prices varying from a 2 or 3 hundred euro upwards, but I honestly don't know if that is the correct price to be paying for them.

I'm really outside my "comfort zone"!

Since I can never find the information when I need it.. here are the current Paypal merchant fees (as of May 20th 2008)

Monthly Sales	Price Per Transaction
€0.00 EUR - €2,500.00 EUR	3.4% + €0.35 EUR
€2,500.01 EUR - €10,000.00 EUR	2.9% + €0.35 EUR
€10,000.01 EUR - €50,000.00 EUR	2.7% + €0.35 EUR
€50,000.01 EUR - €100,000.00 EUR	2.4% + €0.35 EUR
> €100,000.00 EUR	1.9% + €0.35 EUR

Either there's an upsurge in Amazon phishing emails or the phishers only got my email address recently.

I've had about half a dozen phishing emails today purporting to be from Amazon regarding my "seller" account.

To start with I don't have a seller account.

The other giveaway sign is that although the links are similar to Amazon domains, they aren't Amazon domains.

They all seem to be subdomains of by.ru, which appears to be some sort of free hosting solution based in Russia (I don't speak Russian, so I'm only making an educated guess)

Unfortunately, while Amazon do have a facility for reporting phishing emails it is clearly not aimed at the "casual" end user or anyone who is short of time. It consists of a rather convoluted series of web forms instead of a simple email address.

While the likes of Paypal, Ebay and most of the major financial institutions make it relatively easy for even a novice to report phishing emails Amazon dare to be different.

While they may be getting the reports in from honeypots etc., surely it would make more sense to facilitate end user reports?
Am I missing something?

UPDATE: Over 24 hours later I got a reply from Amazon with the email address to use for reporting phishing emails.
In case anyone else needs it the email address is: stop-spoofing@amazon.com
If you forward phishing emails to that address as an attachment they get sent to their security team.

One of the things that drives me mad is when a "cheap" item has a high shipping price.
You know the scenario I'm sure. Item "costs" about 2 euro, but by the time you pay for shipping it's suddenly 30 euro.

If you're using eBay.com from Ireland there's an option to show the estimated shipping cost as part of the display columns. If I can't see a price or it's simply too high I won't bother bidding.

Now there is a difference between "too high" and simply "insane"

Check this out (click to enlarge):







It's obviously a glitch in their system, as the items' listings show a much saner shipping price.

Don't you just love computers?

eBay Ireland have unveiled their helpline for their "most valued customers" ie. those of us who spend lots of money.

The guys in eBay had told me about this a few weeks ago, but I had been asked not to mention it in public until it was ready for primetime.

It will be interesting to see what kind of support levels they are going to offer via this new support service.

I'll have to try it out to see!  (I currently have a couple of minor issues that I'd like to get resolved)