Quote:
Originally Posted by ffactory666
Ye , being on the other side of the world is a bit scary for trades.
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Yeah, that's a long way to come from for an asskicking....
Before I got into RC I did a good deal of computer parts trading. It was a big site w/ tons of traders and opportunity for scammers. Basically the rules there were that one member actually started his own feedback website and that became the std. Ebay refs are BS mostly.
Seq of trading depended on # of + reviews. Two newbies or two longtime traders X-shipped or just paid and shipped. New traders that had less than X many (say 20) + reviews had to ship first to established traders to avoid fake sellers. This was the crux of the system. Anyone w/ a - feedback was doomed to ship first for a while to restore rep. You always shipped using a trackable option, USPS Priority, Fedex or UPS and sent the track # to the person quickly to show the item as shipped.
It pretty much eliminates scammers selling vaporware. You had to build a rep first to be trusted. New members to the site were held skeptically. If you just signed up, quickly sold 20 paperclips, it didn't really count (reviews indicate what was sold,) and no one would then send you $$$ for a laptop or whatever. Things did invariably happen, the the risk was fairly low.
That said, people here are generally trustworthy as the crowd is small and tight knit. If the community were much bigger and problems started popping up I would begin to worry.