As I spend more and more time in the BST forums, I see more and more rediculous things happening. Whether it be scammers making fake accounts to leave themselves positive feedback and look legit or or people giving others negative feedback when they never even traded. Believe it or not, I have seen people get negative feedback for being mean, and when I checked for details they specifically said that they never even traded.
I think yoyoexpert should have some sort of system similar to ebay where feedback can only be left if a trade actually happened. There should be a form you fill out and send to the other person with your name, address, etc… for shipping info. Then there should be options such as “shipped” and “received” and “leave feedback”. This way it is impossible to leave feedback unless the trade actually happened.
I just feel like this could help lower the amount of scamming and also prevent people from receiving negative feedback when they never traded with anyone. YYE should just have some sort of a more “official” way to trade.
The problem is that YYE does not track BST deals since they happen via personal messages, not via a transaction tracking system. It wouldn’t be cost effective since YYE isn’t taking a cut of the sale. If YYE did this, they would be entitled to taking a bit from each sale, mostly to recoup the costs of the software development.
Funny to read this at this moment, I have a guy on here that is hounding me to trade my Chief on my BST… I looked at his rating, it’s a 3 - two from the same guy - and miraculously both of them signed up on the day they posted feedback for him, and neither have ever posted a single thing on the boards… how do you trade when neither party ever posted or initiated? To top it off, his two posts - 1) about getting a chief or AC and 2) can anyone do anything about a scammer or can a scammer get caught…
Maybe someone needs to go into the yoyo-escrow business (and you thought CLYW were high in price now, wait for the extra transaction fees…)
I would definitely avoid him One thing I cant figure out is if scammers are older kids who know fully well theyre committing a crime or 11 year olds who are trying to get free yoyos but dont completely know what theyre doing. Im gonna side more towards older kids stealing though.
Wow. Whoever that is that’s hounding you is setting off red flags with the behavior you described. Good thing you’re experienced and smart enough to do your due diligence to prevent yourself from being scammed and screwed. It’s something we should all do.
Here’s the thing. Let’s take John Narum, who is a respected yoyo “pro”. He popped on here selling some throws to raise funds to help fix his car. He did so with ZERO feedback. At the same time, because of who he is, he’s respected in the community. I bought from him TWICE, feeling comfortable with the two transactions. What’s to have prevented him from doing the same thing? By that, I mean making up accounts and posting feedback. However, feedback left is time/date stamped, and users signing up are time/date stamped too, so there’s a “virtual paper trail” that is quickly tracked down.
My first transactions were easy. I had already earned respect, but then coming in as a BUYER, I made it quite clear how I operate: I pay first, 100% up front. The seller is completely taken care of. People who are honorable tend to act that way. Those who don’t act that way often slip up and show their true colors.
It never occurred to me to make fake accounts and pad my trader feedback. Even so, it just sounds so sleazy and dirty.
At the same time, this community is active and isn’t going to tolerate this sort of crap. While the community can’t stop it all, it’s taken an active role in enforcing “justice”.
As far as people creating accounts to give themselves feedback, that is pretty easy to catch and those people are usually rooted out before anything bad happens. But as with all things, caveat emptor.
So here’s a question… the guy that I spoke of, looking to scam with fake feedback… I noticed he now has posted a message on people writing an easy to win one of most coveted CLYW throws… anyhow, he has changed his feedback. He went from 3 to 1, and that one is as fake as the others… can you remove or retract (in this case taking his fake accounts and doing that) feedback?
Yea. I looked at that profile. It soooooo obvious it’s fake accounts and scamming. My question is why yye hasn’t done anything about it. When you know…wouldn’t you act?
We’ve contacted people about that. The response is usually that it was a group of friends using the same computer. I have to accept that at face value as we have a number of those cases here and no way of verifying one way or the other in most cases. I explain that feedback from in-person trades with friends is not proper. They usually agree that the feedback should be deleted. If they agree or not, it is.
One thing I cant figure out is if scammers are older kids who know fully well theyre committing a crime or 11 year olds who are trying to get free yoyos but dont completely know what theyre doing. Im gonna side more towards older kids stealing though.