restrict buy and sell section to

jaomul · Feb 27, 2014

Members who either have 100 posts or anyone who pays subscription so we don't see people just joining, trying to sell/ scam and legging it.

480sparky · Feb 27, 2014

That doesn't bother me much. I just see a post count of 1 and move on.

What bothers me is those who are compelled to respond, "$2,000? For THAT? Are you crazy?!?!? You can buy 'em on ebay for $1250 all day long! Good luck with getting 2,000 for that old crap!" or, "I wouldn't even use that garbage to shoot photos of dog turds!" or worse yet, "You do realize you are posting your first post and have no 'rep' here, don't you?"

Some forums restrict buy/sell forums to postings by the OP only.

Derrel · Feb 27, 2014

I agree with this idea "100 percent". 100 posts would really change the makeup of the for-sale crowd. No offense to anybody currently trying to sell anything in that sub-section, but within the past couple of months, I have seen a few people that I immediately thought were scam artists. And over the past few years, there have been some BLATANT rip-off artists, who were caught "selling" the same items to multiple "buyers". The TPF warning statement is understandable, but I'm not sure that it helps this site in ANY significant way to allow people to come here, sign up, and basically almost immediately offer items for sale. I think that allowing first-time posters to offer expensive items for sale here in fact, detracts substantially from TPF's reputation. If people want to sell stuff, or scam people, why not let them do it on Craigslist? Allowing criminal activity here really is not a great policy.

Overread · Feb 27, 2014

Here the thing;

1) Post limits. These offer no actual protection to users. Those out to scam will simply post "nice photo" comments around the site until they reach the limit; unless we made the limit prohibitively high at which point it defeats the purpose of the section for the average user- whilst still not actually protecting them.
The same is true of membership duration limits - a scammer will simply wait out the month or two to use the section.

2) Paid accounts - this could be a minor protection, but I doubt it would really offer much. A $25 fee is nothing if you're going to run off with a few $100 from someone in a scam. Furthermore the forum owners don't have the background setup not resources to really start tracking people to try and take action.

Both of those methods clearly don't deter the criminal whilst at the same time they cause inconvenience for new and legitimate users of the forums.

In the end the section is very much buyer beware. It's a noticeboard for people to post their advertisements to; its up to them to present themselves and for purchases to exercise caution on their own part.

The forum admin/mods will remove clear spambots and scams and we will take action if there is clear evidence of a user abusing the section - although typically this has to be more than two users slinging accusations at each other. Otherwise we've simply not the setup to really take effective action to improve security.

Derrel · Feb 27, 2014

100 posts is enough of a track record that potential buyers could EASILY click on the profile of any seller, and look at their post history, and EASILY ascertain if the seller was a "Nice pic!" "great shot!" poster, or a real, genuine person who is an actual member.

Why be such an apologist for the current system, overread? Why tell us a party line? Are you people even LISTENING to the suggestions made here? Or do you have this stuff ready to parrot? You've got a reply in three minutes...

"Inconvenience for new and legitmate users of the forums"...wow...I utterly do not believe that for a second. Not. One. Single. Second.

WHY are you making excuses, and why are you encouraging and allowing and enabling criminals here?

Does TPF get a cut of the sale price? Do for-sale posts generate click-thru ad revenue from TPF sponsors?

"In the end the section is very much buyer beware".

YES, yes it is VERY MUCH BUYER BEWARE, because TPF policy does jack-squat to filter out rip-off artists. Period. TPF allows it. Enables it. Tolerates it. Tacitly encourages it by having zero requirements except an account and a user name.

The excuse that, "we've not the setup to really take effective action to improve security." Wow. I would love to hear that statement backed up with a actual explanation. Can nobody count to 100 there?

480sparky · Feb 27, 2014

Derrel said:
100 posts is enough of a track record that potential buyers could EASILY click on the profile of any seller,.........

By the same token, a post count of 1 is all many need to see. If they have more, it's easy to look up their profile to see when they joined, how active they are, whether the posts are the "Nice pix!" or more engaging.

Another option is to simply shut the section down and call it a day.

Overread · Feb 27, 2014

Derrel I do read and listen, but this has come up before several times in the past so the reply to me is easy to put out. Furthermore I'm simply stating how things are from the moderator/admin perspective. That is how we see the feature and our viewpoint on it - by all means users can make counter arguments to it to show a different angle or a different take on the situation.

Post counts are a fiddly thing and not something that can be well used for this. Heck I recall the 50mm in the "one lens round the world/country" challenge going missing to someone who had a pretty high post count and forum activity level.

Also the count doesn't differentiate between a scammer looking to abuse the members of the site and a legitimate user who wants to use a specific feature and is jumping through the hoops to use it (ego posting al to of posts very quickly to get the count up).

pixmedic · Feb 27, 2014

I'm not on very many forums, but even here on TPF i am pretty cautious about buying. It's not like ebay where you have some protection. A post count doesn't really mean much to me. 2000 posts of "nice shot" and "welcome to the site" do little to assuage my fears of being scammed. I would only send money to a member i felt had real vested interest on TPF

It WOULD however, take a potential scammer a little more effort to put in 100 or so posts than just a few minutes to make an account. I would be interested in seeing how a mandatory post count affects the buy/sell section. does anyone here have any knowledge of someone actually buying from a 1 post salesman here on the forum?

Several popular forums let anyone respond in the buy/sell section, but only paying members can start new threads. It is obviously not a policy the Forum Foundry wishes to adopt. Does anyone know of a forum with a mandatory post count for buy/sell sections where that is an effective deterrent?

Gavjenks · Feb 27, 2014

Why don't people just say "here, i'll open up an ebay buy it now, and paste in this description so that it's on record there, and you can just buy it 5 minutes later" if there's any question?
Their fees are fairly minimal, and if you already have an interested buyer, you need not put any effort into flowery descriptions or any new nicer photos or anything.
Then you're both protected to a reasonable degree.

MAJOR side benefit: It allows you to see their ebay user rating in the meantime... if it's 40%, then you can go "Lol okay maybe not." and leave.

astroNikon · Feb 27, 2014

I have more than 100 posts .. so I wouldn't be able to sell anything unless I had exactly 100 posts ?

LOL

okay ... but understood about people jumping on here trying to sell stuff. I've seen them come and go from here. People who seemed to have legitimately inheritated someones camera equipment, etc etc or sellers trying to sell their d700 or this or that. So there's two sides to that coin.

It would help in the sense that the seller would have some level of TPF "in the know" even though, being a BBoard, you really never know who is on the other side !!

pixmedic · Feb 27, 2014

Gavjenks said:
Why don't people just say "here, i'll open up an ebay buy it now, and paste in this description so that it's on record there, and you can just buy it 5 minutes later" if there's any question?
Their fees are fairly minimal, and if you already have an interested buyer, you need not put any effort into flowery descriptions or any new nicer photos or anything.
Then you're both protected to a reasonable degree.

Some people don't have ebay accounts. And a lot of people don't trust ebayers with only 1 or 2 feedback. Personally, I don't mind as much on ebay because ebay and PayPal protect you fairly well. (They have for me anyway) PayPal holds your money until the item is delivered, and longer if there is a dispute opened. Much harder for a scammer to take your money and run on ebay.

I would be much more inclined to buy from a new member here if they were selling through eBay and just linked the eBay page.

ratssass · Feb 27, 2014

FWIW I bought my 24-70 Sigma here from someone with way less than 100 posts.....I'm thinking (IIRC)) less than 20.No problems whatsoever.However,I didn't just go about it blindly.I found a lot of background info,right down to a satellite photo his house.I had CC protection,as well as paypal protection.
Like Sparky said.....between "Join Date" and "Posts" ,well,those are the first filters...
I'll bet I didn't have 100 posts in the first year I joined here,and I probably lurked here for a year prior to that.
Lastly,the last thing I need in my life is someone else protecting me from myself if I haven't asked for it.