Yes, it would only be for $5. In my hobby, we have a practice we call Pay It Forward, where more experienced people basically give away small items of fairly low value as a benefit for beginners (ok, it’s fountain pens). The price of shipping is not entirely negligible, however, so it’s become a common practice to ask for the price of shipping ($5 in the US) to get the otherwise-free pen. I have just today finished one of these, where I gave away 21 pens for the $5 shipping cost (all of them worth well over that amount). Usually via Paypal or Zelle.
One person has asked for one of the pens, but payment has proven to be a problem. She seems to be an older lady who doesn’t trust anything and doesn’t understand very much about computers, and she can’t make Paypal work (and doesn’t have Zelle available). So she mailed me a check, February 22nd, and it hasn’t arrived yet. Various messages from her about how she can’t believe it would take so long to get here, isn’t the mail terrible these days, blah blah. Tones of despair and it shouldn’t be this difficult. OK, it’s been 16 days, not unheard of. But today she sort of gave up and said she would try Paypal again, but again, “I couldn’t make it work.” So I offered to send her a request for payment, which I did, to the email address she gave me. She claims it never arrived. I asked her to check her spam folder. Crickets now for 5 hours.
Why am I suspicious? Here is one of her messages to me: “here is proof that I sent your payment . I take photos of all my mail . the way the usps is now I cant let that policy i have go . I thought maybe you might be wondering if I even sent it . But there you go .” Accompanied by a photo of an envelope addressed to me with her return address covered up (something I theoretically already have so I can mail her the pen). The sort-of needles just barely implying that maybe I have the check and don’t intend to send her the pen. The constant “I have no idea how to do that” about anything related to following instructions on a computer.
I am of two minds. One mind thinks this is who she is, she barely functions in the modern world, she lives in the south (stereotype alert) and spends all her time at church and quilting bees. The other mind thinks that she never sent the check and is hoping I will give up and just send the pen. All that play-acting (if it is) for $5.
I’m not asking for advice. I guess I’m just sharing a story that, whichever is the truth, boggles my mind a little.
My only advice is do NOT underestimate the ability of otherwise-intelligent seniors to have their brains turn off when they need to do anything on a computer.
I’ve had a number of seniors take my Basic Mac class, and I swear I’ve tried to teach them. But they’ve conditioned themselves to give up. They hear “Ok, click that button…” and their first reaction is “Button? I don’t see a button. My computer doesn’t have that button, how the H-E-Double Hockey Sticks am I supposed to work this thing?” One guy even threw his mouse on the floor at this point. (and I swear to God, one woman was picking her mouse UP off the desk, aiming it UP toward the ceiling, in hopes that her cursor would move UP on her screen.)
I’d say wait and see if a check appears, but if not, let it go… Unless you’re sure granny’s a serial scammer and needs some abuse. We can help with ideas along those lines…
That’s pretty much my plan. If the check never arrives, I will set the pen aside and someday try to sell it to someone else. It would probably bring $30 or so.
My own reaction is probably colored by the fact that I haven’t had to worry about money at that level for a long time. When I was in my 20’s I once pawned my watch for $10 so I could eat for 2-3 days. Things got better. I had a lot of good fortune, and also worked hard and saved up. So now I barely notice $5 one way or the other. I sometimes forget that for a lot of people it still makes a difference.
It’s also possible that she did mail the check, but it got lost in the mail. That’s not common, but it’s not so rare as to be implausible, either. I’ve had things get lost and show up, eventually, weeks or months later; and I’ve also gotten somebody else’s mail. I put it back out so it could get delivered properly (I hoped) the next time, but some people who get the wrong mail just throw it out.
I don’t know. PayPal was a struggle for me. I’m kinda old but not too old to understand computers.
My daughter had to show me how to do it.
My Daddy died at 88 he schooled me on mouse usage and probably alot more. Things with screens just scare me at first.
I still cannot post pictures on the Dope without trying 4 times.
I think she doesn’t want to pay the $5. Don’t feel bad for her. Someone in her life could show her how to do PayPal.
It does kind of sound like, from your description of the situation, that you’re being very low-stakes Delvey’ed. Maybe the lady has been watching ‘Inventing Anna’ and thought ‘why not give it a go?’.
Yeah, I remember starting a thread here in the olden days bewailing the fact that I was expected to send goody bags to my kid’s class, an expense of maybe ten dollars.
These days my kids are on their own, but struggling, and I sometimes think, “Well, they just need to cut back on expenses a little!”
Thanks for asking. That was actually about storage, not display. I did a couple of things. I found a dirty old machinist’s tool chest, a smaller one with drawers but no lid, cleaned it up and re-oiled the finish. Some of the drawers were just the right depth for one layer of pens; some of them were deep enough for two or three layers. For those, I made internal trays to sit inside. That cheap little chest can hold about 200 pens.
Then I found a wooden pen drawer chest that was made for the purpose, that usually costs several hundred dollars. The outside of this one was broken, however, so I bought it at about half price on the chance that I could fix it. Turns out only the glue joints had given way, so I re-glued it, and it’s like new. That one holds 100 pens. So now I have more than enough storage for current and future pens.
Then I wanted to make my own chest to hold all my pens, but I’m so allergic to sawdust that I couldn’t finish it. Maybe I’ll figure out how one day.
Apparently I was wrong that I could send just anyone a Paypal request for payment, and they could pay it, without them being a member of Paypal. She’s afraid to join Paypal, sure that they will charge her money somehow, so we’re abandoning Paypal, and back to waiting for the check to arrive. She is giving it two more weeks, and then she’ll cancel that check and send me “another” one. We’ll see.
