I'm Andrew Lee, Co-founder & CEO of Purse, AMA!

[2drewlee]

Andrew, thank you for the excellent service. It was a brilliant idea and I'm glad you followed through on it. I'm interested to hear and see the Merchants feature realized too. Sounds great.

I have had some minor trouble with buyers taking my order, claiming they shipped it and then eventually bailing out for various reasons. They always seem to be users with 0 reputation. I think this may be people gaming the system to give their orders higher priority by taking mine out of the queue temporarily. I was thinking there must be ways to stop this like a 3 strikes rule or perhaps requiring buyers to put up something, like some bitcoin in escrow - though that obviously presents a bootstrapping issue if they are there to buy their first bitcoin.

Also, it would seem like if they don't post a tracking number in some reasonable time, prime items usually ship same or next day, then maybe it should raise a flag, at least warning the buyer that the contract will be cancelled if they don't post evidence that the item has indeed been ordered. Generally when I ask for the buyer to post tracking info if they don't then the order inevitably fails. I don't think I've ever even gotten a response with a justification for the lack of tracking info so it would seem like a pretty good predictor of gaming.

Any ideas how to help avoid this situation? It's the only thing keeping me from using Purse.io more as it can significantly delay the order time.

Perhaps higher level spenders can choose what level buyers they allow to take their order?

Thanks!

Thanks for using Purse! As you've noticed, reputation is already a huge component on Purse today, and we'll continue to make improvements to order tracking and reputation.

[BTCIntern]

Hi Andrew,

just dropping by to say hi,
hope you guys are doing good.

You think you might resume services in Germany in the future, either purse or merchants?

thanks
(vnnkl )

[LISAM]

Which digital currency (litecoin,dogecoin, peercoin etc) do you think will be the biggest competitor to bitcoin in 5 years

[2drewlee]

Hi Andrew,

just dropping by to say hi,
hope you guys are doing good.

You think you might resume services in Germany in the future, either purse or merchants?

thanks
(vnnkl )

Great to hear from you. We'll launch Merchants globally by the end of the year.

[2drewlee]

Which digital currency (litecoin,dogecoin, peercoin etc) do you think will be the biggest competitor to bitcoin in 5 years

Purse is coin agnostic, and we accept multiple coins through an integration with Shapeshift.
Personally, I think Bitcoin has too much momentum behind it to be displaced as the dominant digital currency.

[gasull]

1) In the US, bitcoin is considered a property, so when you exchange Bitcoin for a good or service you need to do accounting for your taxes. Does Purse.io have any features that help with this accounting? (Last time I checked, it didn't)

2) Since the EU ruled that bitcoin can be used as cash and is exempt of VAT tax, is Purse.io going to focus on that market?

3) Congrats on the new marketplace project. Have you considered integrating Purse.io marketplace with OpenBazaar? It could just offer every vendor an OpenBazaar address with some addons for things like accounting, easy online store building, etc.

Thank you.

[jimmajamma]

Andrew, thank you for the excellent service. It was a brilliant idea and I'm glad you followed through on it. I'm interested to hear and see the Merchants feature realized too. Sounds great.

I have had some minor trouble with buyers taking my order, claiming they shipped it and then eventually bailing out for various reasons. They always seem to be users with 0 reputation. I think this may be people gaming the system to give their orders higher priority by taking mine out of the queue temporarily. I was thinking there must be ways to stop this like a 3 strikes rule or perhaps requiring buyers to put up something, like some bitcoin in escrow - though that obviously presents a bootstrapping issue if they are there to buy their first bitcoin.

Also, it would seem like if they don't post a tracking number in some reasonable time, prime items usually ship same or next day, then maybe it should raise a flag, at least warning the buyer that the contract will be cancelled if they don't post evidence that the item has indeed been ordered. Generally when I ask for the buyer to post tracking info if they don't then the order inevitably fails. I don't think I've ever even gotten a response with a justification for the lack of tracking info so it would seem like a pretty good predictor of gaming.

Any ideas how to help avoid this situation? It's the only thing keeping me from using Purse.io more as it can significantly delay the order time.

Perhaps higher level spenders can choose what level buyers they allow to take their order?

Thanks!

Thanks for using Purse! As you've noticed, reputation is already a huge component on Purse today, and we'll continue to make improvements to order tracking and reputation.

No offense but you didn't really address my questions in any substantive way. Your answer feels a bit like spin.

While reputation currently is a component I don't think I'd characterize it as "huge" in that i cannot seem to choose who gets to place my order which is what the first part of my post was about. This question was meant to present a problem that is affecting me and I imagine others that are using your service. If you can address or solve this problem you can materially improve your service and therefore get more users/revenue.

I'd like to use Purse for many purchases for the holidays but if I have to tend to my order all the time as I have on a few occasions in the past, or cannot count on delivery within a reasonable window I won't be able to use it.

I was expecting something along the lines of "we've witnessed specifically what you're experiencing and have plans that will address it in part/whole", "our statistics show that only happens 2% of the time so perhaps you've had a streak of bad luck", "we're adding a feature to allow a spender to choose the level of the buyer who fulfills their order" etc.

[2drewlee]

1) In the US, bitcoin is considered a property, so when you exchange Bitcoin for a good or service you need to do accounting for your taxes. Does Purse.io have any features that help with this accounting? (Last time I checked, it didn't)

2) Since the EU ruled that bitcoin can be used as cash and is exempt of VAT tax, is Purse.io going to focus on that market?

3) Congrats on the new marketplace project. Have you considered integrating Purse.io marketplace with OpenBazaar? It could just offer every vendor an OpenBazaar address with some addons for things like accounting, easy online store building, etc.

Thank you.

Hi gasull,

Great to hear from you, and thanks for the questions! You can easily track tax liabilities if you link your Coinbase account to Purse and Libratax.

EU ruling does make Europe more attractive.

We'll explore opportunities to work with OpenBazaar when it launches.

[OgNasty]

Any plans to allow the purchasing of used items from Amazon through Purse?

[2drewlee]

No offense but you didn't really address my questions in any substantive way. Your answer feels a bit like spin.

Let me take another stab at the answer. 0 reputation users are challenging because our service needs to be usable for them to build up reputation without causing delays like you experienced. There are a few ways we mitigate these events now:
1. Users with low reputation are restricted from low discount rates. If you set a discount rate at or below 10%, your order is matched with a VIP earner.
2. Users who cancel orders to hedge or speculate on Bitcoin price are banned from our system altogether.
3. We improved our order tracking to get real-time updates on orders. If we detect cancellation on Amazon, we usually cancel the orders the same day.

Many of the practices above were recently implemented, and we have many more in store. We'll continue to improve our service and experience.

[2drewlee]

Any plans to allow the purchasing of used items from Amazon through Purse?

It's more likely that we'll roll out Merchants for used items before we enable used Amazon items through Name Your Discount.

[jimmajamma]

No offense but you didn't really address my questions in any substantive way. Your answer feels a bit like spin.

Let me take another stab at the answer. 0 reputation users are challenging because our service needs to be usable for them to build up reputation without causing delays like you experienced. There are a few ways we mitigate these events now:
1. Users with low reputation are restricted from low discount rates. If you set a discount rate at or below 10%, your order is matched with a VIP earner.
2. Users who cancel orders to hedge or speculate on Bitcoin price are banned from our system altogether.
3. We improved our order tracking to get real-time updates on orders. If we detect cancellation on Amazon, we usually cancel the orders the same day.

Many of the practices above were recently implemented, and we have many more in store. We'll continue to improve our service and experience.

Much better answer. Thank you! I'll try again and if things have improved I look forward to doing my Christmas shopping almost exclusively via Purse (I've been almost exclusively using Amazon for the past few years).