What would you do?

Here's your Sunday Philosophy Club ethical problem: The other day, I bought an iPad Case from an auction site. The seller (100% straight positive ratings) advertised it using Apple's original photos and description, the price was 29 instead of the original 49. Prior to the purchase, I asked whether it was the real thing - no reply.

The inevitable happened: The case arrived, but turned out to be an inferior imitation. I contacted the seller straight away, demanding a return. He agreed immediately, and the transaction was reversed at minimal cost to me.

Next stop was the seller rating: I opted for a Neutral (rather than negative) rating because the transaction was reversed without trouble. But the seller wouldn't have it as he preferred 100% happy customers, and my Neutral would be a spot on his clean bill. So he offered a tenner in exchange for my removal of the rating. I refused. And now, he's offering 50 or the original iPad case for free.

What would you do? I feel obliged to the user community of the auction site because I rely on user ratings myself to a substantial degree. Plus the seller did not respond to my pre-sale question. And he came up with some form of compensation only after his clean bill of health came under threat. So the transaction was objectively flawed.

On the other hand, he is now voluntarily prepared to pay up in order to maintain his reputation to the outside world, and presumably, every other buyer could do likewise in the similar situation (he has collected 4 Neutrals in the meantime, btw). Taking the point of view of my original intention of the transaction, I would get for free what I was prepared to pay for in the first place. So the both of us would be happy, and my Neutral rating wouldn't be justifiable anymore.

This is a trivial case, of course, but it's a nice illustration of an ethical dilemma. Just transpose the situation to the value of, say, a house ... so, what would you do?

An incredible story

The small, border village of Schönenbuch has suffered a high incidence of break-ins of late. Some say it coïncides with the abolition of border controls due to Schengen, but I'd say that's a post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

Anyway, here's the stupid story: There was an attempted break-in at my neighbours' house across the street yesterday night. Their house is secured by an alarm, which I heard going off, but didn't do anything about it because I thought it was a car alarm of one of the visitors they had earlier. I didn't realise that everybody had left, so I didn't care, and that was stupid of me because I could have and should have intervened.

But that's not the end of the story. Because of the aforementioned break-in activity, we often have a police patrol positioned behind the house to watch for suspect activity - so yesterday night. But they hadn't heard the alarm either! So there was in fact a police patrol less than 100 metres away from the attempted break-in, and the perpetrators are no worse for wear, except maybe for the thrill when the alarm went off! How embarrassing is that?! Touch wood, but I'm increasingly convinced that we would have had break-ins in my house a long time ago, were it not for the evil Laika!

Romani ite domum!

My nephew Tomi's other hobby horse on Swiss TV for your viewing pleasure ... enjoy!

Alumni meeting

Yesterday, I went to a meeting of an Edinburgh alumni group at the Member's Room of the Swiss Scotch Malt Whisky Society in Schönenwerd. The group consisted of MBA alumni who were kind enough to invite us others, so we were a motley crew from different faculties and graduation years, and I happened to be the most senior of the lot, at least in terms of the graduation year. It was great fun to meet everybody, and I hope we will be able to do that again. The icing on the cake was that I got to see the Member's Room, which I've never been to despite of all the years that I'm a member.

Anarchist!!! ... Cleaner!!!

This is cool! Katharina Zaugg, my former cleaner is becoming an outright star! She is an ethnology graduate and has her own operation, complete with cleaning school, publishing house (she has already published three books) and performances (where she is known to dance with brooms!). Today, she's had a big show on national public radio DRS 2 - you can listen in on it here. I guess I should have taken an equity stake in the early days ...

Local news

Go check out local.ch! It's a very useful site if you're in Switzerland for it gives you a map based access to yellow and white pages as well as to events and classifieds. It's really useful and it works. Yesterday I was looking for a dental technician that I could visit on the way to the train station, and today I was looking for an unlisted hairdresser in Rheinfelden on behalf of my sister. Both worked perfectly smoothly. Oh, and it also displays blog posts from geotagged blogs from the map area. This is the Web 2.0 stuff that's really useful!

In other local news: My mom is currently in hospital to have both her knees replaced. She's had her second operation yesterday, and I am glad to report that everything went well. She's well on the path to recovery, which includes a few more weeks of hospital and rehab stays away from home. In order to make that easier on her, I gave her a digital picture frame today. It's a little TFT monitor that displays a slide show of all pics, movies & sound files that are on the memory card you plug into it. She's enjoying it a lot, especially since it contains literally hundreds of conversation starters. I tested a cheaper one before, but that was a bad experience: apparently buggy software, bad physical quality &c. I spent quite some time trying to get it running, whereas the Kodak one was just plug & play.

Turkish delights

It's already a few days that I've returned from my second trip to Istanbul within a couple of weeks, but I've been kept from blogging about it. While in the Istanbul Hilton, I had an inexplicable (or so it seemed) corruption of all my system preferences on the laptop. Thanks to the trusted backup, that could later be restored without difficulties. But then I remembered that the same thing had happened earlier in Athens where I also stayed at a Hilton. The common factor most likely is the fact that I left the machine running overnight while connected to the web via Swisscom Eurospot, a disgustingly expensive hotel ISP which apparently somehow messes with my machine's preferences. Rest assured that I am not going to take that risk again.

Speaking of risk taking - I have a funny little story to tell about my close encounter with the Istanbul underworld. I spent the Sunday evening walking the town before meeting up with friends later. So, this regular looking guy asks me something in Turkish, to which I respond in English. Turns out he wanted to know the time, and he's a stranger, but frequent visitor to Istanbul by the name of Ali. We strike up a conversation during which he shows me around. A bit later, we decide to have a drink at a place he knows. Hmm, funny, I think, but ok, let's go.

Not long after sitting down at a table at this place "friend" Ali knows, we were being joined by two very blond, very curvy Russian ladies who developed a healthy appetite for the local bubbly. At that point, all my remaining warning lights went off and I asked for the bill. Not really surprisingly, the tab already stood at 2'340 Lira (EUR 1'270). What came next really took me by surprise though, and that was my reaction: I remained rather cool and asked for the police because there was no way I was going to pay. Naturally, our friendly ladies quickly cleared away, and the room's atmosphere turned distinctly unfriendly. Equally naturally, the manager was disinclined to call the police, nor did I have the local emergency number. Thus, the negotiations commenced.

I offered to pay 400 for the wine and firmly stuck to that offer, knowing full well that I didn't have more than 70 with me. That wasn't satisfactory of course, especially since "my friend" Ali offered to take half the bill. When I still wouldn't budge, he finally switched sides and started boasting his boxing prowess and mafia relations, to which I responded in kind (karate & bankers!). After about half an hour of this back and forth haggling, the manager became increasingly nervous and finally took me up on my offer. When I disclosed that I only had 50 in cash, he suggested to escort me to the next ATM as he wouldn't take credit cards for the remainder (why's that, I wonder ...). But once we were outside (he all by himself), I decided that I'd had enough and bade him farewell, not without shaking hands, and swiftly made it to the next cab.

In the end, that little adventure only cost me 50 Lira, and I learned a lesson or two along the way. On the one hand, I am rather pleased with the brazen way I negotiated myself out of that mess, on the other, I am not very happy about having gotten myself into it in the first place - it could have ended much less satisfactorily. I'll be more careful next time. There will be a next time for sure, as this could have happened everywhere, and Istanbul really is a fascinating place, you can take my word for it!

Ian Richardson

I only just heard about the sudden death of Ian Richardson this morning. What a pity! He was one fabulous actor, capable of out-acting his fellow stars with the merest nudge of an eyebrow, as Philip G comments so appropriately. He will be most fondly remembered for his rendition of Sherlock Holmes, and for giving live to the modern day Machiavelli, Sir Francis Urquhart in the BBC production House Of Cards - one of the most prized pieces in my DVD collection.