Chapter 9

I’m very familiar with E-Commerce. Almost every piece of furniture in my apartment I bought online. The keyboard I’m typing this summary with was bought using PayPal. I’m waiting until Amazon Prime day on October 11th to buy a new couch. Even when I go to a grocery store, most of the time I’ve already ordered online before I go to pick it up.

I used to have a bunch of monthly subscriptions, but I’ve cut back on them. Recently, I paid for a month of DAZN to watch a boxing match, but they tried to commit me to a year long subscription. The default choice was to sign up for a year, so I imagine a lot of people were swindled into a year of DAZN they didn’t want. I used to have a Netflix subscription, but now that there’s dozens (if not hundreds) of streaming services, it feels like it’s just turning into cable again, so I canceled it.

I use PayPal for almost everything. It’s tied to my main bank account, but if I lose my PayPal debit card it’s significantly easier to cancel it or dispute charges. It’s very convenient to just quickly PayPal or Venmo my friends when we owe each other money instead of trying to find an ATM and paying the withdrawal fee. I’ve even sent money to my friend in Denmark like this. My brother has fallen victim to a skimmer at a gas station. He used his bank’s debit card, and it was significantly more annoying to fix than if he used a PayPal debit or credit card.

I also use PayPal to buy and sell stuff to people online. I used to use EBay (which maybe not so coincidentally owns PayPal now) to sell old video games I don’t want anymore. Now, I can just have someone PayPal me the amount I’m selling something for, and I’ll mail it to them. I’ve also sold items and currency in a video game using PayPal, which is still pretty wild to me.