I've bought a couple of things from other modellers through net contacts and they have been very honest. We're talking small amounts of money here so why bother cheating?
I'm more wary of part time companies because this is a difficult business to maintain cashflow so its tempting to hold onto that few hundred dollars -- if the business isn't doing that great then its almost like a gambler that's losing, there's always one more bet that's going to be the big one that turns things around. Once the company hits a certain size then they're probably as good as any big company. For example, something like a NSP might occasionally drop the ball but they're not going to rip you off. One thing to watch for is bad electronic payment sites. A lot of individuals and small businesses use a third party service to process payments. Its OK most of the time but I had a credit card compromised a year ago when I bought some shareware from an individual in Canada. His Web site used an ECommerce outfit based in Germany who processed the card through a bank in Spain, it got hacked somewhere and bogus charges turned up for an offshore gambling operation through an account in England. It all got sorted out -- the casino noticed something was up within 2 days and shut the account down, my bank took a month to notice and the Ecommerce site was on it pretty quickly (but where would the crime have been committed?) but it shows that you must keep track of what's going on with your accounts. (Paypal looks like a good setup because they verify both the payer and the payee.) Martin Usher RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off.
