Merchant Newsletter - October 8, 2005

Microsoft to power the next Treo! 



Palm's switch from Palm OS to Microsoft Windows Mobile 5

 
So you followed all of our suggestions, shipping ONLY to the AVS verified address of the cardholder, only to find out that the shipment was "redirected" to a mail-forwarding address, and is now on its way to Nigeria!  While this has not happened to any of our merchants (that we know of), "now" seems like a good time to arm our merchants with a preventative measure.

To prevent this, when shipping high dollar or high-fraud/theft items via UPS, request "Adult Signature"  instead of standard signature. This adds 75 cents to the service, but could save you thousands. Their rules do not allow redirection of "Adult Signature" shipments.  In addition, just to make sure some helpful UPS employee does not "help" the customer override the safeguards, write "NO ADDRESS CHANGE - NO REDIRECTION" in the Reference number AND Address 3 / Department field (assuming you are using UPS Worldship.  

You will need to judge for yourself if the possible inconvenience to your customers, as well as the added cost to you is commensurate to the extra level of fraud protection.  If you are selling dog collars, it is probably not worth it, but if you are shipping plasma tv's, we strongly recommend it!

There is a new security measure coming from Mastercard, that you may be seeing in the future, Mastercard banks will now have an option of issuing cards with a hologram right on the magnetic strip:


 

NOTE: October is fire prevention month:  I am reminded of this as our local TV  channels are broadcasting coverage of huge fires here in California.  Take a moment when you get home, and change the batteries in ALL your smoke detectors.  Don't have any?  GET THEM!  



Palm Inc. shocked the PDA community when it announced that it's next model will use the Windows operating system instead of the Palm operating system!  Verizon provided much of the impetus for the deal, said Joe Fabris, director of wireless and business marketing at Palm, in an interview after a press conference. Palm and Microsoft had talked about working together for a while, but Verizon's interest in a Windows Treo for its EV-DO network persuaded the companies to put their heads together, he said.

Verizon will have an exclusive on this device for an unknown period, but we assume that eventually, the other carriers will have this unit as well..



Rest assured, since we already support the Windows Mobile system, this will simply be one more PDA Phone we are compatible with. The new screen is 240 by 240, a little smaller than the standard Windows Mobile screen, so we will release a special edition of Pocket Verifier Professional just for this phone.

Adding insult to injury upon PalmSource, (the company that owns and writes Palm OS),  The Samsung i500 will soon be no more. The i500 was pulled earlier today from the business section of Sprint, and although it still appears on the consumer side, it has been confirmed as sold-out and discontinued.  

The death of the i500 marks the end of Palm OS phones from Samsung, as they have reportedly closed their R&D Department for Palm OS Phones after Sprint failed to carry the i550.

How is this possible? Well, it began when Palm Inc. split into 2 companies in Aug 2003: PalmSource, which does the operating system, and PalmOne, which makes the hardware.  PalmOne recently bought it's "half" of the Palm name, and renamed itself back to Palm, Inc.   PalmSource was recently bought by the Japanese firm "Access" this year, leaving Palm (the hardware company, formerly PalmOne) free to follow any operating system it wants to.

Palmsource has signed an agreement with the cell phone manufacturer LG, so we may still see more Palm OS PDA Phones in the coming years.  I personally hope so, the Palm OS platform needs far less support!

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