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Comment by jberm123 | Hacker News Reader

>what's to stop the same employees and founders from following that method ad infinitum?

Informed consumers

Part of the task of marketing is to disinform customers. Companies existing to scam people are necessarily marketing-heavy.

>Companies existing to scam people are necessarily marketing-heavy.

Consumers can absolutely that.

I certainly have.

If you're screaming in my face and hurrying me along to pull out my wallet and buy something ASAP, 99 times out of 100 it's a scam.

I didn't realize scamming was a legal business venture.

Depends who you’re scamming. Quite a few powerful and rich people who I would classify as being “scammers”, but their victim is usually a group of people such as taxpayers.

Did I say I support scamming?

Plenty of companies never deliver a product, hence chargebacks being built into our credit & debit systems (and being available for checks in a restricted form)

Informing all consumers in the market is not a legitimately accomplishable solution to the problem. As long as there are 350 consumers unaware that these people have done this before, and they never have a day in court over it, this story can repeat itself forever.

Maybe informed lenders is a solution, though.

Assuming this is as easy as you make it out to be, don't you think it would be relatively easy to host this scam business' site offshore/anonymously and scam people outside the jurisdiction of the US courts?

"There is a sucker born every minute"

I don’t think I’m a sucker for ordering a product promised to be in stock.

I don't think you are either. But it's a risk you're taking buying a product from a fledgling internet-based startup. Shall we make it easier to start an internet-based business over a brick and mortar shop with laws that benefit the former with the latter's inherent advantage?

> But it's a risk you're taking buying a product from a fledgling internet-based startup.

This is my problem. It is not reasonable to expect a purchase of a product online to be a gamble, a risk that you will get nothing in exchange for your money. No matter whether they're internet based, no matter how old they are, if a company offers a product for sale, it should not be "risky" to purchase it.

The comment I replied to said we shouldn't burden the courts with taking the people behind such companies to task. But if we don't, there's nothing stopping them from doing it again and again.

When I buy a product from a brick and mortar store, there is NO risk to not receiving the product.

When I buy a product online, this is ALWAYS a risk, no matter what.

Your solution uses my tax dollars to make online businesses more competitive with brick and mortar stores, thereby making it more difficult to run a profitable brick and mortar store/mom and pop shop.

>No matter whether they're internet based, no matter how old they are, if a company offers a product for sale, it should not be "risky" to purchase it.

Your solution offloads some risk from the consumer onto everyone else. I agree with the comment, you put the burden on the courts and by extension, me, to pay taxes to support other people's poor ability to reason about what businesses may or may not be scams and encourage risk-taking buying products from risky businesses.

>But if we don't, there's nothing stopping them from doing it again and again.

Again, informed consumers... Accept you're taking a risk buying a product from a fledgling internet-based startup, a risk that wouldn't just go away even if we all incur the large expense getting the courts involved.

We're both basically just saying everything we've already said. No sense in going in circles

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