The mystery dishes

I hate washing dishes! Well it is not that I actually hate doing the dishes; it is more that they never seem to end. You can wash as you go, and still have dishes to do after dinner. You wash them and they are back the next day. God help you if you end up not being able to do the dishes one day, because they multiply. It becomes a mound of dishes in a blink of an eye. It is like every dish in the house is now on the counter waiting to be washed, even ones you don’t remember using. Have you ever found a dish in your cupboard that you don’t remember having and have no idea where it came from? I know what happened, you left some dishes over night and they multiplied, you get an unknown dish out of it. If only that were true, I would have the largest matching dish set in the world. Actually I would end up with the largest unmatched dish set in the world. I wish I had a dishwasher, but then I am sure some thing weird would happen to. Dishes will start vanishing the same way sox do in the dryer. The mystery dishes that show up when you leave them over night have to come from somewhere.

Paypal is back, why did it go down?

Paypal is back up. No explanations yet for what happened that had Paypal down for most of the day. I wonder how many sales were lost, how many websites are now looking for other payment gateways. It is not like there are not 100’s of them out there. What ever caused this has hit Paypal a large blow. People are not going to be so trusting with their money now. It only takes one time not being able to access my funds to make me to start looking around for another payment gateways. Even if it is just a back up so I can continue to do business if Paypal goes down again. At this point most sales at www.medievalmagic.ca are done threw Paypal but now we are going to spend the extra money to get the software so we can use other gateways. I am sure that there are a lot of other companies doing the same thing, not to mention the number of individuals who are going to start questioning using Paypal. I guess it all depends on what explanation they give every one. I doubt that they would tell us if some one hacked in and did this. It would destroy our perception of security. Not that people are not having their accounts broken in all the time, it is just usually because some one gave their information to the wrong people. Darn those scam emails. At this point in time most people feel secure using Paypal. However, I want to know why Paypal was down for so long.

Paypal is down, no one can access their accounts

Does any one know what is going on with Paypal. It’s down. Go ahead; try getting into your account. You can try but you will not be able to access your account. We called customer service; they don’t know what is going on either. Here is their number 1-402-935-2050 (a U.S. telephone number), or their contact page https://www.paypal.com/row/contact-phone. Their techs are trying to fix it, but they don’t know what happened, so they don’t know if they can fix it, or when they can fix it. They keep telling every one it is safe to do transactions and that when some one gets into your account that you must have given the info to some one. There is no way some one can hack in, and now this happens. I don’t know. I hope they can fix this, but we will be looking for new payment options for http://www.medievalmagic.ca/ from now on. Keep trying your account; let us know if you can get in.

Reporter may be doing a story on our ring/eBay nightmare

Good news. One news reporter, Mark Cripps, Managing Editor, HAMILTON COMMUNITY NEWS is looking into doing a story on what happened to us with my Grandmothers ring. This is great because it might help some one else from getting taken on eBay like we were. It will also tell people not to send things to Indonesia unless they know the person they are shipping to. I will let every one know when he has printed his story. If I can I will put a copy of the story on my blog. I must say that I am very great full that he was willing to hear our story, and even more willing to share it.

One thing that has come out of this is the number of people who have been burned on eBay, both as sellers and buys. If you have been burned on eBay and would like some one to hear your story, please email me your story. I am going to start adding them to my blog. We all know it is happening, but no one seems to be doing any thing about it. Maybe if we share our stories people will hear us. If we can save one person from being taken on eBay by these thieves it is worth the time to write out our stories. Please share my blog with others so we can tell people what is going on, and what our stories are, and how we can try to protect ourselves. My email is info@medievalmagic.ca

Indonesian Customs in now holding my Grandmothers ring hostage for $900.00+

Robbed on eBay and now by Indonesian customs for $900.00+

Indonesian customs uses ring as a hostage to get $900.00+ from us. We are getting robbed twice.

We made the mistake of putting my Grandmothers ring on eBay for $1000.00. Like so many 1000’s of others we were scammed. Some one used another person’s eBay account and Paypal account to buy the ring. Please note that there is no protection for sellers on eBay. At first we thought that we were going to be out just the $116.00 shipping cost as we had contacted FedEx and did a stop shipment. Well things did not work out, and the ring made it to Indonesian customs. The only reason the person did not have my Grandmothers ring is because they would not pay the customs of $330.00, oh and by the way the Indonesian customs will not release the ring until some one pays the $330.00. Indonesian customs does not care that it was not suppose to even make it to them, or that this is a case of theft. Not their problem.

FedEx tells us to pay the $330.00 as Indonesian customs is known to take up to 6 months to resolve a dispute, and they charge you a storage fee. The storage fee is usually more then the customs fee and the chance of them saying, “oh, so sorry to hear about this person stealing from you, we wont charge you the customs fee” is 0. So we would have ended up paying both storage fee and customs fee. So we make arrangements with FedEx to pay the $330.00 and have the ring shipped back. So it was to arrive here yesterday or today. Guess what? No ring! We call FedEx to find out that Indonesian customs has now issued an invoice to FedEx for over $900.00 “custom fee’s” and will not release the ring until we pay it. Indonesian customs has now decided that $330.00 is not enough; they want us to pay over $900.00. They are holding our ring hostage.

All I could think of was “This is not happening”, but it is. They want us to pay $900.00 to get my own ring back. So if I want my ring back I have to pay almost the value of the ring. What is going on here? FedEx has no idea what Indonesian customs is doing or why they are charging so much. They are going to try and fight it, but as I indicated earlier, they will take up to 6 months to resolve the issue and are going to charge a storage fee, and the chance of them letting us win is 0. Their country, they make the rules, why would they let us win?

Please share my story with as many people as you can. I know it is too late for me, or my Grandmothers ring but please let people know about this. Maybe we can stop it from happening to some one else. I did contact the news shows and reporters in my area, but it is happening so often too people that there just is no story in some one being robbed on eBay or by Indonesian customs. So what happens, every one knows its happening but know one reports on it, so it keeps happening. The only way people are going to know about this is if I stand up on a box and yell as lowed and as long as I can. I am doing that but I need your help to let others know. If no one else is willing to tell this story then it is up to me to try and let people know.

Thank You,
James Porth
Lori-Lee Craig
Medieval Magic
info@medievalmagic.ca
www.medievalmagic.ca

$456.00 lost but getting my Grandmothers ring back

Just an update, the ring is on its way back to us, should be here some time this week. FedEx told us to pay the customs because Indonesian customs is known to take 6 months with any disputes, and they charge you a very large storage fee, so even if you win, you end up paying as much if not more then the original fee. Also, they tend not to let any one win a customs fee dispute, so we would have ended up owing the customs for both the customs fee and storage fee. I am past the crying and anger stages and have reached the acceptance stage. The good thing is that FedEx is going to charge our account for the Indonesian customs fee and then bill us at the end of the month. This will let us budget and figure out a way to pay it off.

I just want others to hear my story so they are more careful then we were and don't ship any thing right away and get burned the same way we did. The sad part is I have been getting email after email from both sellers and buyers, who have been taken for on eBay. We are not going to be selling any thing on eBay again. I could write a "How to use eBay to steal 101" book with all the information I have found out. I may do a blog, not to help thieves but to help people from being taken in by the con-artists. What got me the most is not the number of people who have been taken, but by the fact that there is nothing we can do once it happens. The police cannot help, eBay and Paypal will not help because they can not afford to become responsible for this. There must be some way to protect people, but I don’t know what it is yet. If you have some idea of how to make it harder on thieves please let me know.

Take a look at my latest necklace

I love making new things. I hope people enjoy my work as well. I will be showing off some of my work here. I am trying out a new program we just added to our web site www.medievalmagic.ca, it lets me show off my work as a little add. I think it is interesting, and I will be playing with it for a bit seeing what I can make and how it looks.