SAFER ONLINE PURCHASES - Cue Buying Proxy Service managed by forum volunteers

[DeanH]

I had always wondered why the feedback feature was not being used
I will from now on as well

[hotpot]

I would leave feedback from all my buys , sells but i honestly cant remember who they are as there have been so many .

[DeanH]

I would leave feedback from all my buys , sells but i honestly cant remember who they are as there have been so many .

show off

from now on as a start

[hotpot]

Another thing i would like to see is the forum having a courrier account thats paid for by the members interested. It would,nt cost much between us and would be a one stop solution for buying and selling abroad . am i barking mad or do others think alike . I,ve had some nightmares sending cues abroad , really have .

[The Stig]

If you pay by normal paypal then your covered but that way you have to pay fees, if you pay by paypal Gift then your not covered as thats a free way to transfer money from one person to another. Thats how it seems to be from my experience.

If your buying from someone on a forum then its best to get a landline number before you part with any cash.

[thelongbomber]

Maybe i'm being too trusting here, but if you pay by paypal, are you not covered if something goes wrong ???

Even if Paypal has some policy that partially or completely covers you, it's your word against someone elses and Paypal acts as a go between to try and resolve the issues concerned.

[thelongbomber]

Im not sure JR but like others have said there seems to be more people coming on here and just using the forum to sell things . from now on i,m gonna make sure i leave feedback when i buy and sell . i think Ferret will read this and make his own conclusions on a solution .

I think Ferret will eventually step in and put up his thoughts. I don't think we can remove fraud, scams, and bad purchases altogether but some sort of trusting system between members will probably help.

[thelongbomber]

Another thing i would like to see is the forum having a courrier account thats paid for by the members interested. It would,nt cost much between us and would be a one stop solution for buying and selling abroad . am i barking mad or do others think alike . I,ve had some nightmares sending cues abroad , really have .

Oh ya. Good idea. So discounted rates via UPS or Fedex you mean? Not a bad idea. Can it be setup so that payment is required at time of shipment? Ferret could apply for the account, and we would all get to use the lower rates.

[hotpot]

Oh ya. Good idea. So discounted rates via UPS or Fedex you mean? Not a bad idea. Can it be setup so that payment is required at time of shipment? Ferret could apply for the account, and we would all get to use the lower rates.

Yes muck thats exactly what i mean , i dont mind paying a small fee if everyone benefits .

[hunter101]

To have an active account with the big Couriers you need to be sending a minimum of 50 parcels each week i think.

[poolqjunkie]

This is a good idea but in reality to ask someone you dont know to drive around for you and take the responsibiliy of handling your money and then go through the trouble of packaging and sending your cue for you for free is never going to work I am afraid.

What if the cue is lost or damaged, do the middle person--who offered to do it for free to begin with--have to refund your purchase, claim insurance for you, or help you with documentation and claim your insurance for you or be responsible in any way? What if the person made a careless mistake in inspecting the cue, will he be held responsible (e.g. looked at a H&O cue not knowing it is a fake)...what about if he accidentally damages the cue while he is trying to package it for you...In an ideal world everyone would be willing to help everyone but in the real world unfortunately I do not think most people would be willing to take up so much responsibility and trouble for someone they do not even know--especially when it is volunteer work.

The more practical thing to do, if you are so worried, is just to use an escrow. I know people use escrow for diamond and art purchases so I am sure the right escrow can help you to verify a cue as long as you are willing to pay the service fee.

You can also ask the seller to send the cue to the original cue maker for a refinishing job, and ask the cue maker to verify the cue for you and then send it to you from his place. I know people who have done that. You are paying the cue maker for a refinishing job, but you also get to have his opinion on the cue, and you can be rest assure the cue is refinished to like new condition so no longer need to worry about dents and so on.

You can also ask if you can pay the cue maker a fee so he can handle the payment details for you like an escrow. Since you will be taking so much of his time and expertise it is only fair that you pay him a fee to compensate for it, in my opinion.

[ferret]

there are a number of options to help reduce fraud but in reallity there isnothing we can do to stop it 100%

To be fair there have only been a small number of problems and to my knowledge all have been resolved in the end. Personaly I have had to get involved 3 times with members having proboems purchasing or selling items in the forum and each time it has taken a number of hours to relolve.

We could charge all member with less that x posts or x feedback a fee for posting a item on the forum, I have a merchant account for the forum where I can take credit card payment, by taking the payments via credit card I also recieve the card holders name and address from the bank BUT anybody can borrow a relatives or friends card to make online payments, I have done it myself with permission in the past.

The idea of a seperate auction site is a good one but I would not have th etime to run uey another website but I could set one up if any of you are interested in running it.

Personally I would not purchase anything from a new member just coming on here to sell a item and this is why the 10 posts limit for posting in this section was setup, before you purchase from a new member have a look at their post history and if they are just signing up and posting crap to get access to this section then do not purchase anything form them.

I have looked and several auction addon's for the site but nothing I have seen yet helps to protect against fraud.

One last idea would be that I can take payments for anything purchased through the forum and keep the money in the sites merchant or PayPal account adn when the items have been delivered and arre as described then forward the payment on, but again by doing this I would get charged 2.5% +25p by my merchant and I think PayPal is 3.5% so I would have to tak ethat off of any incoming transaction or charge a set fee for offering this service (Note that this will also take up some of my time)

Some site I have see in the hpast charge $5 to each party for this service.

A final note, all items sold through the forum should be posted with some kind of tracking available, 1st class postage which does not offer tracking and is only covered for a small amount of money is useless, spending the extra few £'s to make sure your cue is tracked and insured is worth every penny.

I did suggest a service a few months ago where a member pays £5 a year to be a verified member, I send that member a letter via snail mail, in that letter there is a code, the member then pm's me that code and they have a verified addfress and status on the forum for 12 months, this would help with the new members, but as a added cherry I would increase PM storage space and avatar size for the verified members along with a speacial icon next to their name so every body knows who the verified members are.

You can use the feedback option within iTrader for all transaction you have made on the forum. Simple way to track what items you are purchased and sold on the site is it look back through your posts or started threads, in the first post of every thread at the bottom you will see a link saying leave feedback, you can also ask people who have purchased items from you to re-visit the threads and asl them to click this link and leave feedback.

[ferret]

A few additinal notes;

When a member registers for the forum they are put into a usergroup called Registered Members, once they reach 10 posts they are promoted to the Members usergroup.

The only other promotion that takes place ont he forum is when you have recieved 1,000 posts you are put into the Custom User Title group where you can edit the line of text under your name that is displayed in forum popsts.

I just had a look in the admin panel and these promotions can woirk in 3 ways;

1. Based on posts
2. Based on number of days registered
3. Based on reputation (A feature that was turned off by me a number of years ago because people were going arouind a rep swapping with their mates and giving all posts by their friends + rep when they may not have deserved it just to upp their score.)

So we could edit the forum rules as suggested and only allow members who have been registered on the forum for 3 months to sell something.

Keep in mind I have set the registered usergroup to have other things turned off also like access to Private Messages, members profile pages and The Snooker Lounge forum.

• Revoking PM access was to stop PM spam which we had a problem with once.
• Revoking access to members profile pages was to stop people signing up just to get information from members profiles, which I am sure I can do away with now! (Before you could access a members email address but you can no longer do that.)
• Revoking access ot The Snooker Lounge was to encourage members to post to access this section as this is where most of the interesting discussions happen.

By the forum rules business's are not allowed to trade on the site but we all know they do, so maybe also changing the rules for this while we are discussing thisection would be appropriate.

I would class a person selling more than 10 items in a 6 onth period a trader or business.

eBay charge for selling items so I do not see a reason why TSF should not also charge business's or traders for this service, but if we are to do this we would have to open the doors to every Snooker business and not be selective. Maybe a seperate section for business's and traders would be appropriate, this would keep private sales seperate then.

[hotpot]

Personally i would like to see the options pinpointed and then put to the members to see what the majority want . I like the idea of having to be a member for three months before you can sell .

[The Stig]

An idea might be for anyone thats selling an item then they have to PM a mod their full name and address + landline number + main email address (not msn, yahoo or similar) before a thread can go live, i'm no expert on how forums operate but i'm sure this info could be held in some kind of database or on a spread sheet.

A landline number i'd say is important because they can't exactly give a number from a telephone box or similar because they can't be near that phone 24/7 just incase a buyer decides to ring them.