queenlives said:
i suggest placing a reminder sticky in each of the marketplace forums that repeats the prime disclaimer of responsibility as noted elsewhere. the sticky could also suggest reviewing the seller’s prime trader rating and conducting a search of prime for posts related to the seller.
This is something I have been meaning to do in a few forums, I just haven't sat down and written the posts. It is a good idea and I just need to do it, probably starting with the Marketplace. Though I still wonder how many people will actually read it. You would be amazed how many people totally ignore reading any of the rules when they sign up or before they try to post to the Marketplace forums. Though I guess at that point it will be pretty much their fault if they don't read stuff written to help them and put right in front of them.
queenlives said:
for “they took my $’s, haven’t shipped product and won’t respond to my inquiries or return my $’s” complaints, it seems reasonable (to me) that the community should be protected from these types of sellers by prohibiting them from selling on prime. this could be done by temporarily suspending seller’s access to prime until the complaint has been reviewed and deemed valid/invalid by the moderator of the marketplace forum. if the complaint is deemed invalid, seller’s privileges are reinstated; if the complaint is deemed valid, privileges are suspended until the problem is corrected and the seller is placed on a probationary status. trader ratings should reflect these complaints. at first glance, this might seem to create a great deal of administrivia.
This came up years ago at the NSXCA club level. Some members wanted the club to take some sort of action against vendors club members had a bad experience with. While I have never been (nor sought to be) anything other than a regular member of the club, I was pretty concerned about the club getting into the ombudsman business without a well thought out plan - I felt that doing so had the potential to cause far more serious problems than it would solve.
My concerns are the same here. If I am going to go to that level (and I would not ask any of the other moderators to do it, so it would be me), I would first need to be comfortable that:
1. There was a good and well thought out system in place to handle any scenario
2. I had some way to actually validate claims. This is one of my biggest concerns. It does not seem like a large leap to assume that someone who was actually involved in fraud would provide false statements or even bogus evidence to support their side of the case. Say a vendor claims they did refund someone's money. A cancelled check can be photoshopped up in a matter of minutes. What do I do then when the vendor has claimed the refund has been issued and accepted and the person filing the complaint says that is a lie? I do not have the resources or authority to find out who is telling the truth - I would need to be able to get bank records. I would then be stuck in a situation I couldn't resolve.
I also have a number of concerns about the practical implentation (I will just continue the numbering to avoid confusion discussing various points later)
3. I had a conflict-of-interest concern back when someone was suggesting that the club act as ombudsman in the scenario where someone had a grievance with the club itself. Though I don't really sell much, I do sell stuff on here occasionally. What if someone has a grievance with a deal with me? Who should handle that? I guess this is kind of a silly question from a practical standpoint since I don't plan to rip anyone off, but it's still possible someone would be dissatisfied with a deal, regardless of whether or not it was a valid complaint. I did have some people get frustrated with me over the NSX Prime 3-D engraved crystals I offered briefly a while back. I got their money at the time they ordered, but because some of the crystals had quality issues it took a LONG time (months) for me to get product delivered to a few people whose crystals I had to get re-made multiple times in order for me to be satisfied with them. I certainly did not rip anyone off, and I was as frustrated about the situation as anyone, but I probably would have been in violation of any sort of useful grievance policy.
4. What if someone who has an issue with the NSXCA (there have been a number over the years) files a claim against the club? Do I ban all discussion of club activities until it is straigtened out, and ban club officers from posting?
5. How does the two-way street work? Should a vendor be able to get a member suspended from the site if the person tried to (or did) rip the vendor off?
6. Like the club issue, would this apply to Acura dealers? For example, if a member has a valid complaint against a dealer's service department, does that mean other dealer employees (we have a number on here who are NSX owners) should be banned, even though they had no direct involvement in the dispute and may not be in a position to resolve it? The same question applies to other large automotive-related companies. Take Tire Rack for example - a number of Tire Rack employees are NSX owners a members here, and a lot of members here are Tire Rack customers.
7. Am I correct in reading your proposal that effectively every vendor would have to maintain a 100% customer satisfaction rate in the long run to not risk being suspended from the site indefinitely?
8. Does this program penalize vendors who get involved in the online community? Many offer huge amounts of advice, assistance, etc. to people who are not customers. Sure this is good marketing, but some of them are also just NSX owners who want to help other owners too. Is it fair that someone like BrianK could end up getting suspended because someone's circuit board died a month after he fixed it, while there is no avenue to penalize another vendor who do not post here at all?
9. Again, who should this program cover? Who is a vendor? SOS, Dali, Comptech, sure. WhiteNSXs? BrianK? The guy who buys a couple cases of NSX models cheap at an auction and wants to unload them? What about vendors like Tire Rack who many NSX owners may do business with, but who are not "NSX vendors"?
10. If someone gets a refund through say their credit card company, the issue is resolved under this type of system since they would then have their money back, right? So someone would essentially lose their ability to file a complaint under this plan if they acted quickly and got a refund from their credit card.
Anyway as I said I am open to the idea but I am not going to go into something like this without a more solid plan than I have for anything else related to the site, because this has the potential to affect people's livelihood and cause enormous damage if not completely thought through before any action is taken. I will not create a monster I cannot control.
queenlives said:
lud, I have created another document with some suggestions re vendor type, status and ranking suggestions - perhaps too lengthly to post here. please let me know if you would like to see it and i’ll email it over later today.
I would certainly be interested in reading it. The limit on post sizes is set pretty high.. I believe it's set to allow up to 50k of text, which is a lot. Feel free to post it if you want public comment, or you can e-mail it to me at the Contact address from the top nav bar.
ANYTIME said:
Then decided to submit feedback for that vendor all at the same time, would that be wrong?
Please, let's keep that discussion in the other thread. I am going to move any further posts about that issue into the other thread.
pvmike said:
I think, at a minimum, there should be a sticky thread at the top of the vendor forum documenting these complaints.
Documenting what exactly? Why can't we just use the Trader Ratings, which appear next to every person's (or vendor's) user name?
pvmike said:
I've seen at least 20 or so complaints of being ripped off and then ending all communication - that's more than enough for me to say that there is a PATTERN of abuse.
I do not see any vendor with 20 negative Trader Rating comments. Putting that aside for the moment, at what level does it become a "pattern of abuse"? 10 negative comments ever? 10 in X number of years? A certain % of customers? I have a feeling there will be a lot of different opinions there. How many people do you think believe they have been ripped off by say Dell or Verizon or Best Buy?
I would also like someone to educate me as to why, if there are so many clear cut and well documented cases of fraud from a vendor, there is no conviction after all this time. My reply to Dave Hardy above was not as flippant as it probably comes across - I really do not understand what is going on. Perhaps I am simply ignorant of how these things work. I realize some of the people are from outside the country and it may be impractical for them to press charges, but for all the people who feel they were ripped off and live in the US, what is the deal? Several have said they were pursuing this, yet as far as I know nothing has ever come of it. I am not an attorney and (luckily) have no experience with this kind of thing, so someone please educate me as to why this is the case.
pvmike said:
Allow members to post relevent information about the transaction (date, amount, communication, etc.). This way, it gives Dali the opportunity and motivation to make things right without completely restricting him.
Again I'm not really clear on this. This is what we already have in the form of both Trader Ratings and the ability for people to post threads about vendor grievances in the Vendor forum. I'm not sure what else you are suggesting?