Anyone buying from ERP

I contacted Louise via a confirmed method so I could be certain it was her and not an imposter, and she confirmed sending out these requests.

Apparently their PayPal account has been frozen (a common occurrence with research suppliers) and they cannot access the funds for 180 days. Their proposed solution is to have customers pay for orders a second time at the discounted price via crypto, and then they will issue a refund of the original payment via PayPal.

PayPal usually allows sellers to issue refunds from frozen funds, so on its face it seems like a reasonable solution. The "good" part about these being PayPal payments is that they give you 180 days to file a dispute, so anyone who makes a "replacement" payment via crypto can still go back later and file a dispute with PayPal if they do not receive a refund.

I am not going to recommend whether anyone should do this or not. Everyone has to make decisions based on what is best for them and their situation. I simply wanted to clarify/confirm whether or not this was really ERP/Louise, and I am reasonably confident that it is.
Thanks for taking the time to delve into this! Your vigilance is always appreciated!

I guess my recommendation to Louise et al at ERP would be to handle things in the proper order: 1. Reverse the PayPal transaction. 2. Give the prospective buyer 48 or 72 hours to pay via crypto with a discount.

That would go a long way in building trust.
 
Dammit, im gonna have to learn crypto at some point. Luckily have been able to secure lots of peps so far but it looks.like that train is puffing the wrong direction.

The alternative is to pay way to much to places like amino lair. Boo.
Any experience with bank transfers? I've seen several vendors that accept them. Im not super excited about crypto either.
 
Thanks for taking the time to delve into this! Your vigilance is always appreciated!

I guess my recommendation to Louise et al at ERP would be to handle things in the proper order: 1. Reverse the PayPal transaction. 2. Give the prospective buyer 48 or 72 hours to pay via crypto with a discount.

That would go a long way in building trust.
I think the big issue is it’s locked, they most likely can’t action refunds right now. So I’m hesitant to send them anything if it’s not guaranteed I even get my original amount back
 
Any experience with bank transfers? I've seen several vendors that accept them. Im not super excited about crypto either.
That scares me more than PayPal. Totally transparent to government authorities regulating the banking industry. So both the US and the CCP will see what you’re transferring from your account to the Chinese vendor.

Move along…,.nothing to see here……

Learn crypto.
 
I think the big issue is it’s locked, they most likely can’t action refunds right now. So I’m hesitant to send them anything if it’s not guaranteed I even get my original amount back
I haven’t been asked, but there’s no way I’d do it unless they refunded the PayPal first. And I’m sure they don’t trust customers enough to do that. But I wouldn’t trust that I’d ever get my PayPal back either. I can see where this creates some cash flow issues for them, but the bottom line is that the money has left your account and is sitting in theirs.
 
I had also paid with PayPal, and the money was transferred back shortly before Christmas. I read that PayPal's guidelines prohibit illegal purchases of medication abroad. I then used ChatGBD to help me carry out a step-by-step crypto transfer. I took a screenshot of each step in the Coinbase app and uploaded it to Ki. The chatbot guided me through the process and told me what I had to do. Although I still wouldn't be able to pay with crypto on my own, I would do it again in a heartbeat..
 
I haven’t been asked, but there’s no way I’d do it unless they refunded the PayPal first. And I’m sure they don’t trust customers enough to do that. But I wouldn’t trust that I’d ever get my PayPal back either. I can see where this creates some cash flow issues for them, but the bottom line is that the money has left your account and is sitting in theirs.

Cash flow issues, I’m sure they haven’t been making enough profit from the months and months of sales to maybe cover a week or two of loss and recognize the risk they ran with using PayPal 🤷🏽‍♂️
 
I had also paid with PayPal, and the money was transferred back shortly before Christmas. I read that PayPal's policies prohibit illegal purchases of medication abroad. I then used ChatGBD to help me with a step-by-step crypto transfer. I took a screenshot of each step in the Coinbase app and uploaded it to Ki. The chatbot guided me through the process and told me what to do. Although I still wouldn't be able to pay with crypto on my own, I would do it again in a heartbeat.
 
If everyone is still worried about using Crypto just use Alibaba like I did. Its dead easy, you can use a credit card, bank account, etc and unlike the other methods its unlikely to be halted easily.
 
There are legit reasons to avoid crypto (e.g. you have a security clearance or otherwise don't want to give the government one more reason to notice you), but let's not pretend using it is rocket surgery. Finding your way to a site like this and figuring out the nuances of reconstituting and proper injection technique is going to be 10x more complicated than crypto. The thing that's irritating about crypto is that instead of being a single step process to pay, it's a 2-3 step process that often include holds where the holds aren't disclosed to you prior to starting the process (making it irritating when you run into them). I'll lay out a process that only requires installing two apps on your phone and will cost you maybe a nickel in fees from beginning to end:

Step 1: Setup a Coinbase account and transfer in more $ than you plan to spend from your bank account. They're currently paying ~3.5% on your cash balance with them so think of it as just another high-yield savings account. The irritating "surprise" you'll run into here is that although you can buy crypto right away if you want to, your funds are locked to Coinbase for 7 days (they want to make sure the transfer doesn't bounce). Just leave it as cash for those 7 days and earn the same interest rate it would have earned in the savings account you moved the money from. If you forget where you're at in the 7 day process click on the "?" on the Coinbase site to see how much longer you have left before your cash clears. If you want the cash back later you can just transfer it back from your Coinbase account to your bank account.

Step 2: After the cash has cleared (7 days) on Coinbase buy some "USDC" with that cash as well as $1 worth of Solana ("SOL"). The USDC is the "money" you'll spend and the SOL is what you'll use to pay to move the USDC around. Everything from this point on is almost instant (no holds or surprises) and just works.

Step 3: Install "Exodus" crypto bitcoin wallet on your phone. In that app select to "receive" USDC on Solana and it will give you an address. Copy and paste that address into Coinbase and tell them to send both your USDC and SOL to that address (same address for both). You now have the crypto you will pay other people with in your wallet on Exodus and its cost you less than a nickel to do all this.

Step 4: When you want to pay other people for goods and services, just "send" the USDC to their address on the Exodus app. Make sure the person knows you're going to send it on the SOL network (so this doesn't get screwed up) and gets you the right address for "USDC on SOL." Every time you pay this way, it should be nearly instant and cost you a fraction of a penny to do so.

Note: You could either transfer over "just enough" USDC from Coinbase to Exodus each time you want to pay, or you could leave a USDC balance in your crypto/Exodus wallet. If you choose to leave more than a few bucks in Exodus, you should probably figure out how to backup your Exodus wallet, since by default it's only stored on your phone and if your phone is destroyed, so is your wallet.
 
There are legit reasons to avoid crypto (e.g. you have a security clearance or otherwise don't want to give the government one more reason to notice you), but let's not pretend using it is rocket surgery. Finding your way to a site like this and figuring out the nuances of reconstituting and proper injection technique is going to be 10x more complicated than crypto. The thing that's irritating about crypto is that instead of being a single step process to pay, it's a 2-3 step process that often include holds where the holds aren't disclosed to you prior to starting the process (making it irritating when you run into them). I'll lay out a process that only requires installing two apps on your phone and will cost you maybe a nickel in fees from beginning to end:

Step 1: Setup a Coinbase account and transfer in more $ than you plan to spend from your bank account. They're currently paying ~3.5% on your cash balance with them so think of it as just another high-yield savings account. The irritating "surprise" you'll run into here is that although you can buy crypto right away if you want to, your funds are locked to Coinbase for 7 days (they want to make sure the transfer doesn't bounce). Just leave it as cash for those 7 days and earn the same interest rate it would have earned in the savings account you moved the money from. If you forget where you're at in the 7 day process click on the "?" on the Coinbase site to see how much longer you have left before your cash clears. If you want the cash back later you can just transfer it back from your Coinbase account to your bank account.

Step 2: After the cash has cleared (7 days) on Coinbase buy some "USDC" with that cash as well as $1 worth of Solana ("SOL"). The USDC is the "money" you'll spend and the SOL is what you'll use to pay to move the USDC around. Everything from this point on is almost instant (no holds or surprises) and just works.

Step 3: Install "Exodus" crypto bitcoin wallet on your phone. In that app select to "receive" USDC on Solana and it will give you an address. Copy and paste that address into Coinbase and tell them to send both your USDC and SOL to that address (same address for both). You now have the crypto you will pay other people with in your wallet on Exodus and its cost you less than a nickel to do all this.

Step 4: When you want to pay other people for goods and services, just "send" the USDC to their address on the Exodus app. Make sure the person knows you're going to send it on the SOL network (so this doesn't get screwed up) and gets you the right address for "USDC on SOL." Every time you pay this way, it should be nearly instant and cost you a fraction of a penny to do so.

Note: You could either transfer over "just enough" USDC from Coinbase to Exodus each time you want to pay, or you could leave a USDC balance in your crypto/Exodus wallet. If you choose to leave more than a few bucks in Exodus, you should probably figure out how to backup your Exodus wallet, since by default it's only stored on your phone and if your phone is destroyed, so is your wallet.
Problems arise when the vendor does not accept Sol and you have to exchange to tron or erc. Exodus does not have all the currencies and there are minimums required for exchanges. I am stuck with small amounts of various currencies that cannot be liquidated. In addition, I had to use outside services for exchanges because Exodus does not do them and the fees were way more than pennies.
 
Problems arise when the vendor does not accept Sol and you have to exchange to tron or erc. Exodus does not have all the currencies and there are minimums required for exchanges. I am stuck with small amounts of various currencies that cannot be liquidated. In addition, I had to use outside services for exchanges because Exodus does not do them and the fees were way more than pennies.
Agreed. I was in no way trying to be comprehensive. Just trying to offer the best "easy" method someone could follow for most of the vendors on here.
 
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