On day when I worked for the college IT department, we were rolling out computers to student apartments. We set-up one computer and the girl's room mate came out and asked if we wanted to go to her dorm for coffee. We said no cause we were really busy setting up computers. I thought the boss would tell us off if we were hanging about, but instead he told us off for not going into the room. I was going to go back later and ask for coffee, but didn't for fear of tripping the Spook-o-meter.

John Spartan, you are fined one credit for a violation of the verbal morality statute.

Buckie?

Yes, I had a similar issue with Paypal a few years ago, when I sold a friend's Xbox on Ebay. I sent the Xbox out to the buyer, after receiving the funds on Paypal and transferring the money into my bank account, confident that I had the cash in hand.

Two days later the Paypal transaction bounced, telling me that the buyer had been suspected of using a stolen credit card. My Paypal balance fell to -£250, and a dispute was raised. I provided proof of postage, and a full explanation that I had followed the process fully. However this fell on deaf ears, and within a few weeks I was being contacted by a third-party debt collection firm asking for the money.

At this stage I had no choice but to pay the money back to the debt collectors. Scandalous, really, that Paypal would favour the buyer who used a stolen card (and received the Xbox) even though the money had cleared fully to my account in the first place.

Paypal protection? Yeah, protecting themselves.

To contact the reporter on this story: Todd Shields in Washington at tshields3@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Allan Holmes at aholmes25@bloomberg.net

Why would you save an image of the crap for the purpose of reselling the machine? Aren't you just adding to the problem? Surely, as a self proclaimed geek, it's your responsibility to eventually sell that machine with a clean image.