Adventure Ausrama Blog

You can be conned on eBay.  Con artists have found a way to trick the eBay sales monitoring system.  A seller sets up an account and puts an item on sale.  He/she displays a "ticker" that says 10 are sold out of 50.  Of course, this is a lie. There are none for sale. The seller closely watches payments being made online. When he sees a transfer, the item is immediately withdrawn from sale. This item will not show up in the list of purchases on eBay. It will  be in the PayPal list. However, PayPal will not give a refund if there is no record of sale on eBay. There is another reason why eBay and PayPal do not refund your money. The seller is long gone not only withdrawing the product from sale but closing down the account and abandoning the business email address. He cannot be traced.  The ruse is repeated a few months later with the same item so it is easy to do. More and more eBay users are complaining about losing their cash.  Yes, it is u...

Culture: we buy on impulse with east credit and fast pay. We are all guilty of it. What is it? Impulse buying of course! It may not be for major purchase - we usually have a think about them before making a decision. Well most of us do. Minor things like snack bars and quick coffees are usually done on a whim. A site like eBay where thing are cheap but generally of low quality is also a vehicle for fast shopping. Some people purchase "quickie" items more than others. It all depends on ones personality. Even being out with others affects buying behavior. Having money to buy is less of a factor because easy credit is available. A person's prevailing mood also has an effect: happiness drives impulse buying. Advertising is perceived differently by individuals. "Buy one and get one free" is a trap for some. Indeed, Westerners seem to be particularly prone to buying things with little thought, people in Eastern cultures not so much. Culture does ...

Sociology: women make more profit on eBay by selling at lower prices. Men and women are the same - well not really. There may be a drive to make the workplace equal for both sexes. However, there are clear biological differences and thought processes are not the same. Certain parts of the brain are preferred by either sex.  What is involved in selling? Description and layout are paramount. Relevant and stimulating pictures are required. The correct price to sell adequate volume of a product and make a profit are also essential. Men and women see these factors differently. An examination of eBay shows that women sell the same products at lower prices than men. Considering people can easily find the cheapest product in a category because of the way eBay is designed, women managers will make more sells. Researchers said that buyers have lower expectations of women sellers. This is a red herring: buyers do not normally look to see whether a seller is a man or woman. ...

The marketing game has changed. Long gone are the days when ad program were created for free-to-air TV advertisers. People spend most of their day on the phone, so advertising must be online. Not only that, but the "early bird gets the worm". If you have a new marketing idea and put it on the Internet first then you win with rising sales. The new marketing concept that leads to sales is spread quickly through social media. Marketers must not only be in the game: they need to be ahead of the game. New ideas win out. Replicating the old ways of doing things no longer works. Any perceived barriers are avoided by buyers and you lose out on sales. Economics used to presume that consumers were all knowing about prices. Today, they really do know the price of things. They may look in the big stores. However, they usually buy online. Buyers really analyze the advertisers message now. They look for "catches" in ads and ignore them moving on to buy elsewh...

This country has longer "proving" times for consumers. It means that a product must do what it expected to do for longer than in other countries. The public is well protected here. Fisher & Paykel a New Zealand company recently lost a court battle because it did not exchange faulty goods. Clearly, businesses do not like the protection laws. It is not only foreign firms like Apple that are ignoring or trying to circumvent Australian consumer laws. Harvey Norman, a large chain of franchises, has had five of its stores fined for not abiding by the law. Companies continue to fight to the High Court where all cases so far have been lost. The law is very clear - a product must serve its primary function for a decent period of time. If it doesn't, a refund or exchange for a new item must be given. Because firms are wasting court time the fines are increasing. They have reached $32,000. Besides the fines, stores are ordered to display signs setting out co...

Despite changes in the supply of motor fuel, i.e., the move toward unleaded petrol, high levels of lead in the blood of children is still an issue. In the northern hemisphere there are seasonal fluctuations in levels of lead. Though the general amount of lead present in the environment has fallen, it remains significantly high in the blood of children. Much of the lead released decades ago is still there. The polluted fine particles are swept up into the air in the warmer months of July, August and September. This is the time when children are outside playing their sports. Money would be better spent on "fixing" the suspended lead rather than reducing content in products we use. Finding a way to "lock-in" the lead particles would end the damage to future generations of people. Once lead reaches a high level in the blood it is extremely difficult to reduce. Damage to the brain and nervous system is permanent. http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ htt...

Authorities and individuals need to be careful about adopting a lauded new invention because a new concept can be a real furphy. Dean Cameron developed a sewerage system that was claimed to be the greenest yet. Biolytix won the 2007 Asia Innovation Award, EPA Sustainable Industries Award, Clunies Award, Premier's Smart Business Award and the Global Environmental Award, such was the euphoria generated by the new system. Though a lifetime guarantee was given it was known from the beginning that if anything went wrong a complete rebuild became necessary. The product was sold in all Australian states with 80 per cent of them not working correctly. Joe Langford of Everhard Aqua Nova warned of the potential problems from Biolytix from the start. Mr Langford even lobbied government, to no avail. He said the concept was sound. The problem was in its construction - it was poorly made. The National Parks and Wildlife Service spent a lot of money installing them. It has absorbed the lo...