Absolutely. That and becoming a permanent MRH sponsor...

Definitely yes

I was expecting anonymous poll instead thread like. Not so many people are willing post here and reveal their identity. Therefore, number of yes here needs to be multiplied by 10 (?).

BTW, perhaps the main reason I still don't have Brownsville is that I can't order it with CC.

Vilius

online only

because i have limited time, i only order my train stuff online and with a credit card.  if a company isnt doing those things, then its very unlikely that ill ever purchase anything from them.  even one-person shops can do online using things like paypal and basic book keeping.  and i second mike's suggestion: become a permanent mrh sponsor.  i dont bother with any other modeling magazines - again, no time.

Online

My preference for anything is that I can buy it at 11:00 at night when I have a few minutes to myself.  Having to call a company during the day is generally not something I have time for and I will generally just go the path of least resistance and order from whoever I can get it from easiest at the time I'm ready to order - which, as I say, is generally late in the evening.

George, I would love to..........

..............order some of your fine kits online if you might consider moving up to include O scale.  If that's not possible I do think you should consider on-line and PayPal.  Thanks,

Peter

This is an anonymous poll

This is an anonymous poll ... it has a click tracker on it. The comments are optional.

FSM....

sorry, but I will never buy a FSM kit, because there are none in N!

...

Sorry, but this is a no-brainer at this point, there's no need to poll, it's like asking the general public if you should sell hotdogs at a baseball game.  The biggest problem for FSM at this point, is the number of very good kits now available through all the companies who Are online already.  Find a good website builder and Do It!!

Yep, "this is a no-brainer

Yep, "this is a no-brainer at this point, there's no need to poll, it's like asking the general public if you should sell hotdogs at a baseball game"

I agree, awesome kits and .... I will buy too .... IF you scale down to N scale!

No brainer

No brainer?

Not according to George. He doesn't live online like most of you do, so he's not convinced anyone would want this.

So we proposed doing a poll to prove it to him. He's not expecting a huge response - but we know different!

Some old-school hobby vendors need to be shown with concrete information the value of the internet. True, there's not a lot such vendors left, but there are a few and FSM is one of them.

where's the poll?

I don't see an option to vote....and yes, I would by an FSM kit online if I liked it, and if it was in Normal scale, and it fit the southwest in the 1980's

My ordering habits

Yes, I like to go to a brick and morter and hold it in my hands, but that is becoming impossible now.  The closest train hobby store> 50 miles now.  The last train dedicated hobby store I was in was great.  An MRH supporter listed on the site, I was driving past and had a side jaunt added to visit them about 175 miles from home.

If I have to order online, then supply a phone number in the order site, cause I am going to call you and offer you my credit card number over the phone or I will buy somewhere else.

There is NO SUCH THING AS A SECURE WEBSITE.  So, my credit card number doesn't go online.

And to those of you who think otherwise - I did try it about 3 times.  I got HACKED on the third one with a fortune 10 companies website - my employers!  Took several months to straighten it out, though the bank shut down the card when someone tried to send 2 $1000 wires to the middle east.

The poll is a button in the ad

The poll is a button in the ad in the June issue or a link in this week's email - click the button or the email link and it counts your vote - and then you land on this page. Just coming to this page on the MRH website doesn't count. You need to punch the POLL button/link - this is simply the landing page for the poll.

How to do secure online ordering

Here's how to do secure online ordering:

1. Get a separate credit card JUST for ordering online. Only use that card for online orders.

2. NEVER use a debit card for online ordering. A debit card goes against an account with real money and fraud on a debit card account can be messy.

3. If you do find strange charges on your special online-only credit card, then report it immediately. If the charges are found to be fraud, then the institution will disable your card immediately and issue you a new card. You will also not be liable for the fraudulent charges. In a week or two you will be back in operation and it will be like nothing happened.

4. When making a payment online, always make sure there's an encryption lock shown in your browser bar for the shopping cart. Otherwise, you're sending your account number in the clear and anyone with any tech savvy at all can steal it.

I've used this process for several years now and I order something online almost every week. I've only had fraudulent charges on my card one time, and it took all of about a week to recover. It was easy to fix and I enjoy the benefits of ordering online a lot.

It's also worth mentioning that if a firm will take Paypal that it's superior to using credit cards. That's because there's nothing to steal when you use Paypal to pay online. Paypal asks for your account password when you make a payment and that's always an encrypted value that's virtually impossible to steal. If you make your password hard to guess (I do - I use mixed case letters and numbers) then you're very secure. I have been using Paypal for over ten years and I've NEVER had any problems with it.

+1 for PayPal

My process exactly. PayPal with a very complex, secure password that gets changed frequently. I order online constantly. It is my favorite shopping method. With gas at $4.20 a gallon, shipping charges are a bargain. Been with PayPal for a long time. No problems. Now, PayPal has a fraud protection program just like the credit card companies.

Not a fan of PayPal

They may be secure, but I just think the fees they charge are not worth it.  I've got an online only card as Joe says, and I've never had a problem.  And I literally do hundreds of transactions every year.  And if someone did charge something to my card?  I'm insured with my credit card company.

PayPal

Fees? What fees?

Temp credit cards

Alan!

The "fees" Dave refers to are for sellers who take PayPal as payment.  Buyers through PayPal don't have those fees.  PayPal charges a seller a percentage just like the credit card companies charge a retailer, usually 2 to 3%. Also PayPal charges a "transaction fee" on each individual transaction.  Yes they can add up, but not taking PayPal nowadays is like not taking credit cards in general and only accepting cash or checks!  Cash cannot be replaced or insured but almost all credit cards have some sort of buyer protection attached.  

Fees

Its not just the seller fees, but because I'm a Canadian, the fees they charge to exchange my currency into US dollars is more than my credit card by quite a bit.  They also charge me to take money out and put money back into my bank account.  If I used PayPal as a bank account, the fees wouldn't be so bad, but I'm not going to pay my bills out of PayPal.  I'm sure I've also been charged a transaction fee for making a payment.  

I don't know if that has anything to do with being from Canada or if things have changed much, but I used PayPal quite a bit when I sold off my N scale stuff earlier this year and I had quite the awakening of how much was actually taken on a large amount of money.  

Again, if I was a full-time business, PayPal is probably an economical way to take credit cards from people, but as a one-off for me, I just don't find it worth it.

Paypal

has been publically hacked several times now.  Not to mention that people can cause the payments to be refunded by complaining in the right way.  No way is paypal secure.  My ebay account is so old, that it does not have an attached paypal account or credit card.  I do all transactions by check or MO.  Or I have a buddy that I pay once in a while to do paypal for me (2 or 3 times a year).

As for when I do order online, I take your scenario, Joe, one step further.  I have a dedicated card for just online.  It is actually a debit card, but with the following characterirstics:  1. No overdraft, 2. Attached to a seperate account just for online ordering.  Running balance on the account is about $5.

i only ever put money into the debit account just before I hit the enter key online to spend the money.  I have a whole seperate account I transfer moneyfrom via the bank just before I hit enter to spend it.

Joe, remember my bio that you are currently working with - there is no such thing as a secure website.

Okay, yes, anything can be "stolen"

Okay, yes, there's no such thing as a secure anything. If there's a way to break into it, somebody might try it.

And it doesn't have to be a website. Many years ago now, my wife and I mailed out our monthly bill payments and a week or two later we started getting all these delinquent notices and past due phone calls.

Then we started noticing fraudulent charges to our bank account.

Putting two-and-two together with the authorities, we determined that someone had broken into the public mailbox where my wife dropped our payments, took our checks, duplicated our account information on custom checks of their own (apparently by ordering checks) and then went on a buying spree.

Of course, breaking into the mail like this is a felony. Needless to say, they threw the book at these guys - and our account was in a total mess for over a month.

This is the worst fraudulent event we've ever had, and it did not involve the internet at all. Point is, nothing is totally safe, even mailing checks and Money Orders.

PayPal

Ah, I follow you. I was talking about using PayPal to buy online. There are no fees to the buyer, at least not here in the US. Those Canada arrangements sound brutal. No wonder you don't use PayPal.

I am aware of PayPal fees to a seller from my experience on eBay. Yeah, they know how to make money that's for sure. I just factor the charges into my minimum bid amount and shipping charges.

GS, would love to, but