Continued from…
If there’s more to discuss, let’s do it here and leave the poor guy’s trade thread alone. 
Okay Robert, lets start this thread with what you said: (Oh, that rymed. I could be a rapper! Okay…No)
From Robert Miller: [i]Let’s be realistic here.
You’re never going to eliminate scammers. Some people are just dishonest and you’re going to find them wherever you go, including this hobby. Now, taking the ostrich approach (head in the sand, no BST options at all) pretty much eliminates this at face value. Of course, you’re just as likely to get scammed via e-mail or PM as you are in an open forum. The real difference being open forums tend to attract scammers due to the open air nature of it all. A public forum gives them the best possible amount of potential marks with no effort at all.
People often cite the Nation’s BST forum as a sterling reason to avoid such activities. To this I say you’re being overly paranoid and pessimistic. I would go as far to say that less than 0.5% of the Nation’s BST transactions end up being scams, and a part of that percentile is often chalked up to miscommunication and/or shipping issues, not illegal activity. I think some people mentally collude other underlying issues the Nation may possess when considering a BST forum here, as adding one is certainly not going to transform YoYoExpert into anything else. The friendly atmosphere, and enforced rules regarding profanity, trolling, and poor attitudes will remain in place, I’m sure.
I cringe as I type the above, as I realize what most people will infer from my words. I’m not bashing the Nation. Please don’t get this twisted. But I also lurk there on a daily basis. I’m well aware of what goes on there, and so are most of you. Introducing a BST system here isn’t going to change the rules, and thus will not change the quality we’ve come to enjoy here.
On the other hand, having a BST-like forum also tends to attract new people to a site. There’s tons of selling and trading in this hobby, especially considering it’s a hobby predominately indulged in by younger people with fixed incomes. When you give them the ability to BST, they tend to stick around and integrate themselves into the community that’s facilitating it. This leads to new and fun members to the community, new opportunities for all of us to BST product, and (in theory) should increase the hosting site’s retail component revenue. This is a boon for us, no doubt.
But should you go this route, the question of implementation remains. Just understand that whatever you implement isn’t going to completely remove scammers. It’s also not just a simple matter of “outing” a scammer and applying the banhammer. There are quite a few more things that have to be considered when dealing with a confirmed scam. It’s a situation that often requires careful action. Sometimes people forget that helping the victim any way you can should be your first priority, and removing a scammer second.
Thankfully, all of this is much more rare than certain folks would make it out to be, and can be reduced even further by exercising good judgment. There is basically an unwritten set of rules one ought to follow when doing BST activities, and most problems you see come from breaking these.
I may write up a guide on this subject should the need arise.
Finally, let’s try to move away from the “don’t turn this into the Nation” rally cry. BST forums aren’t going to change us. We are who we are because that’s what we choose to be, and we thankfully have leadership that helps us enforce this. If the rules imposed by Andre were unacceptable to us, we’d be somewhere else, right? So we like the rules here, are are lucky enough to be in a place where the rules are enforced. If this doesn’t change, then we don’t change. BST forums or not.
This is the detail that I think people are somehow forgetting in the shuffle.
[/i]
Wow, Samad. You must have quick little fingers to type all that so neatly and organized. But I do agree with you.
/cough cough…copy and paste…cough cough
Actually, I typed all that. ;D
I think it is a good idea as long as it’s watched and kept clean, the only problem I have with other BST is that they have posts that are like two months old and the transaction has already taken place it just seems cluttered. And forget abut doing a search it comes up with too much to look through.
Maybe we can let the maker delete his own post?
But I cannot figure out how to avoid scams, unless we give it to someone, and that someone gives it to the other someone. (that made cents right? ;D)
Well, I don’t think we need to be considering an escrow service or anything, but…
You never trade with people you don’t know and trust at least somewhat, and you never use a questionable shipping method. USPS Priority Mail makes for a great choice. It’s cheap, the package moves fast, and you have tracking and DC. This seriously cuts down on the funny business, and often lets someone who was going to make a real bad choice rethink it.
You also never, ever use a questionable method of payment. Cash, checks, and money orders are a complete no-no. Might as well kiss the money goodbye if the recipient is at all dishonest. Money wire services like Western Union are completely out of the question as well.
Credit and debit cards, along with PayPal, are your only safe options. PayPal is a little iffy, as they have a huge list of completely idiotic “proof” they often request before they’ll process a return for your money. Even if they do, if the scammer has cleaned out his PayPal before the attempt to recover your money occurs, you’re out of luck. PayPal will leave you holding the bag. Every single time.
If you must use PayPal, and a lot of people do, make sure that your PayPal payment is being funded through a credit or debit card attached to your PayPal account. This way if PayPal leaves you holding the bag on a bad transaction, you can then turn to the bank or lending institution that issued the card for restitution.
With or without PayPal, the best thing you can use is a debit or credit card. If something does go wrong, you can call your issuing bank and request a chargeback. I haven’t met a bank yet that isn’t willing to do this for one of it’s customers, especially if they don’t have a history of you abusing this service.
For those of you who don’t have a bank account, or aren’t old enough to possess a line of credit, you can always use a pre-paid card service. I understand that GreenDot is an excellent choice in this regard, and available at Wal-Mart stores nationally. I’m sure there are plenty more of these services available.
Ignore this advice at your own risk. ;D
I don’t really see the problem with a B/S/T in this forum. If you guys want to avoid scammers, then don’t B, S, or T. There are a couple of problems…
We don’t want scammers.
There are already lots of members that haven’t given addresses and billing information.
I think the best solution is to make the B/S/T section separate from the forum. For example, on the top of this website, where there are tabs such as LEARN, NEWS, SHOP, and FORUM, there could be one that says B/S/T.
In order to join the B/S/T section, we’d all need to provide our regular forum info, plus the address and billing information. Also, people such as Andre and the Moderators and Forum EXperts can vouch for certain members in their profiles.
I think the best way to actually execute the B/S/Ts are to have both parties ship their goods/money to Andre, and then once he receives them both, he can send them to their destination. If he doesn’t receive both of the parties’ goods/money, he can ship the stuff he did receive back to it’s owner.
This idea does create a lot of work for Andre, so he might not want to do that. It also increases the chances of something getting lost in the mail. However, this can almost eliminate scammers.
Guys let me give you one word…
Tomonzzzz
Haha, jk!
I belive he already hit up our beloved forums Samad, remember the guy begging fro free stuff that Andre locked? I have a sneaky feeling we were invaded by D-Bag McGee!
Hes lurking on AIM and on YYN still as well.
lol. Maybe. ;D
yeah tomonzzz kept on asking me for a yoyo. OVER AND OVER!
-mike
Now I claim the opportunity to point this out. This is a great example of common sense. If we do end up with a BST section, people on this forum can point out a scammer when they see one. I think this was mentioned at least once in DocRobot’s long post. And I do believe that if a BST section will attract scammers, we have some fine people here to filter them out.
I have to agree with Robert though. Its not like everyone on the BST is going to be a scammer.
Also, an idea. I realize that there is a list of scammers on YYN. Perhaps André could get their IP address’s to prevent them from coming here? I’m not saying that once they come, they have to leave. They deserve another chance. But perhaps they could trade with someone who has a good rep, and they have to ship first.
Anyone agree with this idea?
Ok, I’m feelin’ ya on most of this…
The only chance a scammer deserves is the chance to make things right with the people he’s already ripped off before he does anything else. If they’re new here, then they haven’t had a trade go bad here yet. Let’s keep it that way.
Except for the fact that collecting reliable information is impossible, as anyone can give you any information they’d like to. Tomonzz is a prime example of this. Everytime I turn around that kid is giving someone a new shipping address. Probably friends and/or family who are, wittingly or not, in on his shenanigans. Not to mention that a couple of the addresses I’ve got for him link to what I’m fairly sure are abandoned properties. This is traditionally linked to scams all their own, and suggests to me that begging for yo-yos is the least of his illicit activity.
Not to mention that a third-party (which is what YoYoExpert would effectively be in this case) forcibly collecting this type of information, unless involved in a commerce transaction, is illegal in most jurisdictions.
Ahh, but this is basically using Andre as an escrow service. I don’t think he’s going to be down with that, and if he was would probably charge a fair price for his services. Given what the average escrow service tends to charge, given the insurances they legally have to offer you, it would be a price you’d be unlikely to pay given we’re talking yo-yos here. Doing this without proper license is unlawful, and the least of your worries. The Feds aren’t going to kick your door down over it, but as soon as something goes wrong you (as the escrow) are caught in the middle. It’s just a big headache waiting to happen. Doesn’t even matter what went wrong, it’s going to be at your feet in no time flat.
Ultimately, you’re at the mercy of both the honesty of the people you choose to deal with, and your own common sense. You can’t really implement a system that blocks stupid.
A B/S/T would be nice here but I personally think we should not have one, for the time being at least. Andre seems to be setting up everything still and you would have to think of how one would regulate it which would be a lot more work on top of everything for him. It should be thought about a lot before creating one and what rules would need to be written. So I say for the time being we should use the B/S/T on YYN until it is thought through. just my thoughts on the matter
I would LOVE this. I’m very scared to go onto like ************** and ********** BST and would love one here. The scammers— YYN has what like 2000 members maybe more? And the scam rate there like .01%. For us it would be WAY lower .0001%…