Buyer/Seller feedback?

[Fruitysloth]

So now that the switch from TTF to trombonechat seems permanent, I’m personally at a loss on how to sell or purchase anything on here. There’s a few people that I know from either the facebook forums or TTF (Matt K., Doug Elliot, etc.) but outside of that, I’m not sure how I can sell my things and not end up getting scammed. How do you do your best to make sure you’re buying from/selling to/trading with a reputable person? Is there a place we can provide buyer/seller feedback? Maybe incorporate it into a persons profile? Looking for suggestions/ideas! Thanks for reading my slight rant.

[BGuttman]

We didn't have feedback on TTF either. I guess you are in the same situation.

[Fruitysloth]

We didn't have feedback on TTF either. I guess you are in the same situation.

That’s very true, I just feel that people were more established on there, and scammers looked to be fewer in number, or at least that’s what it felt like from my perspective.

[Posaunus]

A rather strange query. I have seen little evidence (or complaints) of "scammers" on TromboneChat.

This seems to be a reputable site, patronized by mostly honest, sincere trombonaholics. That doesn't mean that some might be asking for a bit more than "market value" for stuff they are selling - but the free market will take care of that.

Have you had any different experiences?

[ghmerrill]

Designing and implementing a buyer/seller feedback feature that's anything more than a searchable list of comments in a sub-forum would impose a huge burden on the site maintainers. And it would create a big chunk of code that would have to be maintained and tested for every update of the board software.

Probably not feasible. (I'm thinking that even contemplating this suggestion has probably set Matt's hair on fire.)

[hyperbolica]

I've never been truly scammed buying or selling on this site or the other. The OTJ classifieds however seem to be a source for people trying scams. They are usually transparently obvious. If you have doubts about someone here, look up their posting history.

One time I got goods that were damaged on arrival, and once I got something that was inadequately described. So that's two iffy transactions out of dozens. I'm just careful not to deal with those two individuals if I don't have to. Most people here are not dishonest. Guys like greenbean, mckevitt, klimchak and others are great to deal with. Sometimes you have to wait or negotiate for the price you think is fair, but I've never had a problem with these guys.

The one real complaint I have is that some buyers will try to low ball you (offer half or less than your asking price). So I try not to deal with people once they do that to me.

A feedback/rating system can probably be had easily through a plug in. I know if this were a wordpress based forum, you'd have several to choose from (free).

[Matt K]

Designing and implementing a buyer/seller feedback feature that's anything more than a searchable list of comments in a sub-forum would impose a huge burden on the site maintainers. And it would create a big chunk of code that would have to be maintained and tested for every update of the board software.

Probably not feasible. (I'm thinking that even contemplating this suggestion has probably set Matt's hair on fire.)

Haha! Pretty much though on top of that I don't know any PHP so I couldn't even do it if I wanted. There are some modules that exist that provide functionality but the problem is they aren't always updated right away... or ever. And we ran into some issues when we initially re-started the site due to some plugins that messed up the user table in the database actually trying to add similar functionality, so we've tried to keep it as close to vanilla, 100% phpBB supported add-ons.

Your best bet if you want to be protected is to always use PayPal and don't pay as friends & family. It's around 2.7% to pay for merchandise, but I've had good experiences with PayPal and being scammed before. Buyer protection is actually pretty good. I think Venmo also offers that as an option though I'm not 100%.

Another good, though not comprehensive way of determining if someone is worth dealing with is their post count. We don't really have any off-topic content (there is a small amount but it isn't like on the TTF where 90%+ of the content was about politics); so someone who has a high post count is likely to have at least contributed quite a bit. That doesn't mean that they contributed something useful! We also have some high profile, trustworthy people here who have a post count of 1 or 2 (Joe Alessi, who we did verify that it is his account, for example). So take that for what it's worth.

There are also escrow services that exist for trades. You can do a pseudo-escrow by using Paypal and having, for example, each of you send the value of the instrument to one another. That gives both of you buyer protection. You'd have a little more than 5% of the transaction in costs though but it's better than losing a horn!

[ddickerson]

Well, I just purchased a trombone from Molefsky, and the deal went down perfectly. So, you can count on him to deliver. IOW, I'm giving him positive feedback.