As I continue to use e-gold for more and more "real"
business transactions, one thing continues to stick out
like a sore thumb: Lack of an email confirmation sent
from e-gold to both parties with all transaction details,
under all circumstances.
There are many reasons why I need this, primarily
because I need to work in an event-driven model
to work with my clients. It's also more professional
to not have to ask them to email me independently,
or to waste time constantly checking the site for a
transaction that I may (or may not!) expect. Also,
even though the site has full transactional records,
I already use my email system to manage many
other Internet-based financial transactions, and so
it'd be very useful to have email-based records from
e-gold for future reference.
I don't use the privacy features of e-gold (yet), but
one additional advantage of this would be that parties
could communicate transactional details through the
comments without ever needing to know the other
party's email address. (A simple case would be a
charitable donation where the payor might want
to express their appreciation for the recipient's
cause, without either party knowing the other's
email address.) In the future, this could actually
be expanded to the postage-based email system
that many have envisioned, where a person could
configure that they would not read unsolicited
commercial emails unless they were getting paid
at least X mg.
Since this has been brought up enough times by
myself and others, let me quickly recap the issues
(and answers) that I recall from prior rounds of
discussion, in hopes of minimizing the path from
this email to actual, live implementation:
- Not everyone would want such emails: Well, I for one
can't exactly imagine how many people wouldn't, (since
I have all sorts of other financial activity which auto-generates
email, which is then quietly auto-filtered by Pegasus),
*but* for those who *would* object, simply make this
functionality configurable, with a default of "on". There
could even be an intermediate choice, where e-gold
could simply send a terse, "Activity has occurred" email,
without further details, if this is what is desired.
- Authenticity ("How do I know that this was truly sent
by e-gold?"): In addition to the mail headers, it should also
be simple enough to add a PGP signature. Maybe even
have a utility form on the e-gold site which could
auto-authenticate an email copied-and-pasted into the
form. Ultimately, a person can still double-check the
site itself if they are suspicious.
- Privacy: Somewhat of a combination of the above two
concerns, this could also be addressed in a similar fashion.
Allow the recipient to configure their public PGP key into
the e-gold system, so that transactional details do not
get transmitted in cleartext if not desired.
- Other e-gold applications/intermediaries already do send
emails: My point is that this should be 100% across the board,
i.e., from e-gold.com, so that it absolutely does not matter
*how* a person pays another, but that both parties always
*know* that an email will be sent.
- Fallibility: OK, yes, emails can fail. Oh, well. People
can still always fall back to the site for transaction details.
C'mon, E-gold: This shouldn't be a discussion item,
it should be an ACTION item! What is *really* stopping
you from implementing something trivial which would
help almost every single one of your (paying!) customers?
-- David Beroff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Founder/CEO, LeadFactory.com
P.O. Box 234, Jenkintown, PA 19046-0234 (USA) http://LeadFactory.com
Voice: +1 (215) 576-6800 Fax: +1 (215) 576-6853 ICQ: 3652887
Toll-free: 1.800.668.3163 Home page: http://David.Beroff.com
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