Re: Beta testing Enthusify as a new Marketplace platform
Lud,
Actually, the workload with the rest of the site has been pretty steady for about the last six years, and can mostly be attended to at my convenience.
well... i think it's not a question of "where" you spend your time on, but you spend it, and wherever you spend it, it's a lot of time and you will need help.
Sure. I can't prevent all wrongs. But consider what you are saying - a system where the default is protection and people have to actively work around that, versus what we have now where the default is that most buyers are largely at risk. That is a huge difference.
it may be, but that does not stop scammers... ebay with all their protection it is one of the most used tool by scammers... and they win, because most of the times it comes down to the buyer's fault, because they don't read the whole description, or this or that.. If ebay can't stop scams, do you think this solution will??
I keep thinking that it does more harm than good to the community.
Your own experience provides the counter-example to the idea that PayPal's protection is sufficient!
This is the first time I have heard of your situation so I'm sorry to hear it happened to you, and glad to hear you were only taken for $350. Many people are being taken for 10 and 20 times that amount. And I can assure you, PayPal protection is not sufficient because a bunch of people have lost substantial money. The exact reasons are varied but you provided a perfect example from your case.
But where did i said that i wasn't to blaim ?! i was scammed in part because of me... i knew the rules
And I'm sure most of them are more careful the next time too, but that's a hell of an expensive lesson, and I think a better designed system can prevent a lot of them, so I intend to do something about it.
obviously!! after we got a burn, it's hard for it to happen again... the problem here is that i doubt this is a "better designed system".
And i agree... something must be done about it, but not this.... i think if this end up being a solution, there are a lot more that can be done until then...
I am extremely skeptical for the reasons I stated. And again I'll use your own experience as a counter-example: I just looked up the account you said ripped you off. Before the ad that resulted in your loss: He had been a member for 2.5 years, had dozens of posts, appears to have been an NSX owner, and even had a 100% positive iTrader rating with 4 previous deals! There is no screen I can implement that is going to keep someone like that out and let legitimate people in.
yeap... he was a owner, then he probably sold his NSX and thought that maybe he should go out pocketing the max he could.... you can't fight that, how the hell can you guess that a regular member remembers to scam out of the blue?
This proposed solution sounds good but just doesn't work in real life, and that is why I've previously dismissed it after looking at the real patterns of abuse and finding it won't really prevent them.
it does work... and you will say that to every solution just because there is NO SOLUTION anywhere to solve 100% of the cases... there will be always a small % that you can't do anything about it... the question here is if you are willing to "kill" one huge part of the community so to discover later that it didn't solve the problem, because it won't
I don't think Buyers need any extra care, and works fine as it is.
I do not agree with the assessment that it works fine as is, and I will not continue to operate it as is. I thought I had made that clear.
maybe i didn't explained myself correctly... i was talking about the buyer side of the business.... you can limit the sellers from selling, but i don't see how/why you would limit the buyers from buying (unless the Enthusify tool goes ahead)
Step 4: If the buyer does not report a problem with the transaction within 14 days of purchase, Enthusify transfers funds to the seller.
This whole issue appeared here because buyers are clueless... don't you think that a good number of them will "forget" that they only have 14 days to complain?? and after that, the buyer don't receive any package and talks to you and you already transfered the funds to the seller/scammer.
During our alpha tests and pre-build surveys a number of people expressed that 14 days is too long. We choose 14 days based on a review of hundreds of transactions and an assessment of how many days were needed to complete mot transactions. A future enhancement may trigger payment transfer upon buyer and seller confirmation of satisfaction/shipping/receipt.
It seems that you have to look outside of US... 14 days is ULTRA short for international shipping... there are shippings that can take up to a month, not counting on customs warehouses delays and stuff. So this makes me thing that:
- Out of US sellers/buyers are SOL with this sytem in the worst case scenario
- This 14 days is a good tool for the scammers to use giveing the excuse of "shipping delays" to skip this deadline.
What seems that you Lud and Bob are missing here is that no matter what you do, it just isn't in your hands to do what only the buyers themselves can do.
Throwing this type of services to the problem will only make the whole buying/selling experience unpleasent for all... it's like throwing money, by buying parts, to solve a car problem, but here, eventually the problem will be fixed.