Idea to make our market section safer

[TrueBlueGT]

I've been on this website for over six years now & one consistent thing is people getting screwed in the market by unscrupulous sellers. This site is big enough that people can blend in & make some very vanilla posts to up their count while never actually being noticed. Then, next thing you know, you run across a (insert expensive part here) for a great price in the market with the aforementioned person as the seller. Check the guy out & he's been here a year or so with a couple hundred posts; maybe has positive trader rating from a couple small deals. He answers all your questions promptly and seems open & honest so you feel pretty good about the deal. Since it's too good of a deal to pass up you scrape together the money for the part and kick it's ass out the door headed his way. Then you wait. Aaaaand wait. Maybe you get a lame ass excuse about this or that. And you wait.

You try to believe the guy for a bit mainly because you don't want it to be true.....but you got dicked. I've watched guys deal with this shit over & over & over because there is no true way to regulate it.

So with my long-winded preamble out of the way, let me get to the point. How does this board, it's members, & it's staff feel about setting up a dedicated "account" of some type through which funds must flow. This would be a third party account where the money must be accounted for before shipment of item, held until item arrival, and subsequently dispersed upon delivery of the item to the buyer. I'm not talking about every transaction because that would be impossibly time-intensive. Let's say everything over a certain dollar amount ($500...maybe $1000?) has to flow through this account. The administrator of the account/board could retain a % fee for doing so (amount also TBD). Seriously though, we don't have a lot of $1000+ transactions. Couple per week maybe? This could be a serious safety measure for our members & would basically eliminate big-time scammers overnight. If they KNOW they aren't going to get the money, they will go to another board. It will leave us to our vices of blowers, turbos, etc. knowing we'll get that for which we pay.

What say you?

 

[Sniperdog]

seems like a good idea, :thumbsup: I don't know the logistics of it, but doesn't seem to be that difficult to iron out :shrug:

 

[TrueBlueGT]

That's what I thought. It's not something you could force people to do but any legitimate seller should be happy to accommodate this small tweak in the name of mutually assured safety.

 

[s_x_i]

I dunno... could work :shrug:

 

[oldmodman]

Its a great concept but it is legally difficult to control and monitor. And who would be legally responsible for anyone's losses? We can't expect SID to stick his neck out like that.

But it is a great idea.

 

[TrueBlueGT]

What losses? Under this system, there would be no losses because the money would not leave the third party account until the item is delivered to the buyer. If a scammer knows he'll never see the money unless the goods are delivered, he won't even bother. It's not a perfect system but nothing is & it could eliminate a lot of the scamming we see perpetrated in our own back yard.

 

[Sniperdog]

The only hick-up I see is the crook will just be the buyer, and after getting the sale item, he/she will say, nope, "I never got it", and then the honest seller is scammed :shrug: crooks are gong find a way to scam :shrug:

 

[97desertCobra]

Its a great concept but it is legally difficult to control and monitor. And who would be legally responsible for anyone's losses? We can't expect SID to stick his neck out like that.

But it is a great idea.

+1. The legal implications are tricky, handling other peoples money. If there is one thing you don't want to get in between its other peoples money. It is a good idea though.

 

[FordSVTFan]

There are third party clearing houses for auction goods and the like. You pay a legitimate third party a % of the cost of the item. The seller sends them the item, the buyer sends them the money. The third party confirms the payment is good and item matches the description and then sends the item to the buyer and the money to the seller.

Ebay has a service like this.

 

[DaleM]

Use Pay Pal?

 

[BlckBullitt01]

So with my long-winded preamble out of the way, let me get to the point. How does this board, it's members, & it's staff feel about setting up a dedicated "account" of some type through which funds must flow. This would be a third party account where the money must be accounted for before shipment of item, held until item arrival, and subsequently dispersed upon delivery of the item to the buyer. I'm not talking about every transaction because that would be impossibly time-intensive. Let's say everything over a certain dollar amount ($500...maybe $1000?) has to flow through this account. The administrator of the account/board could retain a % fee for doing so (amount also TBD). Seriously though, we don't have a lot of $1000+ transactions. Couple per week maybe? This could be a serious safety measure for our members & would basically eliminate big-time scammers overnight. If they KNOW they aren't going to get the money, they will go to another board. It will leave us to our vices of blowers, turbos, etc. knowing we'll get that for which we pay.

What say you?

Paypal does exactly that... a little expensive tho (IMO). I don't think Sid would want to mess with that as it could turn out to be a legal nightmare.

 

[SonicDTR]

Over on another site I frequent, they push for all the users to use a moderator for all such transactions. The mod acts as the 3rd party to ensure the users dont get scammed. Its purely voluntary, but still there if folks want to use it.

I havent done much business on this board, but every time I did, I a good deal of research on each and every transaction. Maybe me being meticulous prevented me from getting scammed, or maybe I'm just lucky.

 

[Jaysin]

That is a good idea. I will also throw this out there as for as the format. Srtforums has one of the best for sale sections I've seen, they've cleaned it up and got strict about every deal. They require you to post your name, email, address, phone number, then you MUST take a picture of your item, WITH a sheet of paper with your screen name, date, and srtforums.com on it. Once you hit submit thread, your thread isn't even posted until a mod verifies everything, then it gets displayed.

I think this would atleast help weed out a couple bad apples so to speak. I see a lot of items being posted without pics, and people asking to get pics emailed to them, this could help some of the lesser established members hopefully sell their stuff. By having to add the paper with your screen name and date on it also helps a lot too in my opinion.

Just my 2 cents though, and adding to the original idea, as this is more towards presentation than the actual $ side.

 

[DaleM]

Shop at real stores? Hard to get ripped off face to face!

 

[thomas91169]

Its not the forum owners job to moderate transactions.

Forums are only providing a means for a buyer and seller to find eachother.

 

[TrueBlueGT]

Shop at real stores? Hard to get ripped off face to face!

I do a lot of this myself. Often I prefer to buy from an authorized vendor such as lethal. Even though I could find the item sometimes at a bargain price in the market, I KNOW I will get what I pay for from a vendor. That in and of itself has no bearing upon whether there are or are not predatory sellers in the secondary market. As of right now there definitely ARE predatory sellers and this was just an idea to clean them up.

Jaysin has what is possibly a much simpler, cleaner suggestion based on what he's seen work on another forum.

Thomas, thank you for adding so much to this conversation.

 

[Un4GivN]

That is a good idea. I will also throw this out there as for as the format. Srtforums has one of the best for sale sections I've seen, they've cleaned it up and got strict about every deal. They require you to post your name, email, address, phone number, then you MUST take a picture of your item, WITH a sheet of paper with your screen name, date, and srtforums.com on it. Once you hit submit thread, your thread isn't even posted until a mod verifies everything, then it gets displayed.

I think this would atleast help weed out a couple bad apples so to speak. I see a lot of items being posted without pics, and people asking to get pics emailed to them, this could help some of the lesser established members hopefully sell their stuff. By having to add the paper with your screen name and date on it also helps a lot too in my opinion.

Just my 2 cents though, and adding to the original idea, as this is more towards presentation than the actual $ side.

Excellent idea minus the personal information being made public! Email is one thing, but I don't need everyone knowing my name, address, and phone number.

 

[thomas91169]

Thomas, thank you for adding so much to this conversation.

sorry for bringing the facts to the table.

 

[CobraBob]

That is a good idea. I will also throw this out there as for as the format. Srtforums has one of the best for sale sections I've seen, they've cleaned it up and got strict about every deal. They require you to post your name, email, address, phone number, then you MUST take a picture of your item, WITH a sheet of paper with your screen name, date, and srtforums.com on it. Once you hit submit thread, your thread isn't even posted until a mod verifies everything, then it gets displayed.

I think this would atleast help weed out a couple bad apples so to speak. I see a lot of items being posted without pics, and people asking to get pics emailed to them, this could help some of the lesser established members hopefully sell their stuff. By having to add the paper with your screen name and date on it also helps a lot too in my opinion.

Just my 2 cents though, and adding to the original idea, as this is more towards presentation than the actual $ side.

I like this idea. Requiring your name, email, home address, phone number is an excellent idea. I would add a verification by a moderator of the info before the item can be posted.

 

[ChiSVT]

This would be a third party account where the money must be accounted for before shipment of item, held until item arrival, and subsequently dispersed upon delivery of the item to the buyer.

That's way too much to ask of SVTP to offer an escrow service.

I like this idea. Requiring your name, email, home address, phone number is an excellent idea. I would add a verification by a moderator of the info before the item can be posted.

Yup, now that's a good idea.

I'm a member on 3si.org, they have a system where the admins verify all your personal information before you're allowed to create threads in the classified sections. Then again they have a MUCH smaller user base, doing the same on SVTP could become tedious.

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