[Gllug] OT: Paying for stuff - Was: So no one has opinions about ISPs?

[Alex Crow]

Well, you could I suppose fly to the US/Japan/Taiwan and buy a fair pile
of stuff and hope the customs don't notice (they mostly dont't seem to
know what the stuff is on the X-ray machine - just say it's computer kit
going for repair and they let it through). It worked for me when the
"Coppermine" processors came out - stayed a week in LA with my uncle,
came back with a CPU, mobo and RAM that would have cost me nearly £500
in the UK. US price was about $350. Rate at the time was about 1.5.

Sadly the chip never overclocked as well as most of the reports I read!

I guess I was lucky that time. You could also claim it's a gift if
stopped though.

I suppose we have to protect 'our interests' - I'm still very proud that
the technology being the great old Archimedes is now in millions of
devices aroud the world (ie the ARM processor); just a shame it's now
exclusively embedded so no-one notices it!

Back to topic, you can buy prepaid credit cards in the UK now. They sell
them at my corner shop near work. 

I'm maybe not as paranoid as others here, but I trade regularly with
scan.co.uk with my debit and credit cards. They use multiple-factor
authentication (I think comprising at least 3 things "you know") and
customer service was excellent on the only 2 times I had to speak to
them.

SWIFT/CHAPS/IBAN charges are completely stupid. However (working at a
financial) they are generally used to transfer amounts in the thousands
up to millions, (or even billions in one job I had) so it hardly matters
then. There is a serious argument for making a cheap, sub-24 hour
*worldwide* bank-bank transfer system, however SWIFT have a monopoly on
this and they are almost a cartel - when we set up a SWIFT/CREST gateway
at work SWIFT asked more questions about us than we could even think of
about them! We had no choice but to pony up everything they wanted to
know (plus several tens of thousands UKP in annual fees) since no-one
else could offer the same service. The security is commendable (!) -
about 5 layers of encryption plus a VPN to a private network, but so
complex to really understand it you need about 2 weeks worth of solid
tuition. Which is why we're outsourcing it all to a Bureau now....


They still confiscate my sysadmin-grade valium from time to time though.


Alex

On Sat, 2007-08-04 at 15:48 +0100, Caroline Ford wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-08-04 at 15:35 +0100, Dan Kolb wrote:
> > On Sat, Aug 04, 2007 at 01:06:11AM +0100, Caroline Ford wrote:
> > > 
> > > Paypal is good for international payments as there is no fee for a non
> > > GBP payment. Banks have a habit of charging you ?1.50 or something for
> > > non sterling payments which on little payments is unacceptable.
> > 
> > I'd love to find some bank that'll do international payments for 1.50. Last
> > time I tried, an IBAN/SWIFT transfer cost around 20. This was a bit irritating
> > when I was trying to pay for about 15 of goods, so I ended up using Paypal.
> > 
> > Dan
> 
> This was on a debit card and i may have misremembered the figure. I can
> cope with % fees but not minimum charges as I deal with such tiny
> amounts. 
> 
> Related to this I noticed that Royal Mail are now charging an £8 flat
> handling fee for items that have customs charges, on top of whatever you
> have to pay customs. Customs charges start on goods that cost about £18
> IIRC. Don't go taking advantage of the pound/dollar exchange rate will
> you..
> 
> Caroline
> 
> 
-- 

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