Silk Road forums
Support => Feature requests => Topic started by: braves821 on July 03, 2011, 10:41 pm
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I have seen numerous complaints about the escrow system, buyer feed back, people getting scammed.
1.)Escrow is in place to protect both parties, i am a buyer and i can recognize the flaws in the system directed towards sellers. I think there should be an option to by-pass the escrow. I buy from the same few people and am confident in their business practices, if something were to go array i am sure they would do just as much to fix the problem than if i used escrow. I made several purchase when btc were at 25$ but by the time i received product and released the funds a btc was worth 17$ meaning that the seller took a 8$ per btc loss for all of those purchases. I would love to be able to pay directly to certain vendors to ensure they are getting the money they deserve. I am not saying do away with escrow, i just think a few changes could be made. If an escrow system by-pass is put in place one option that would be opened up would be to charge the BUYER to use escrow.
2.) Buyer feed back - i am 100% in support of this but as many people have said it could lead in a disruption of services- would love to see more debate on how to implement this
3.) People getting scammed - IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A WORKING RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR VENDOR DO NOT GO OUTSIDE OF ESCROW. ( to site mod's i know yall hate people going out of escrow and i have seen talk of banning people for by-passing escrow but i do not like to see vendors i purchase from getting shafted by my purchases because BTC values plummeted and SR goes down for 3 days and no one knows WTF is going on )
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1) The ability to sent BTC directly to another user is already there.
2) Would you like SR to publicly display how much of a drug pig you are?
3) Absolutely. This isn't ebay. You are doing something illegal. Buyers should be buying small/sample quantities first to establish trust with a vendor and to ensure they have their delivery procedures correct.
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response to rake
1) you can send payments outside of the escrow system but then you cant leave feedback for vendors if you do it this way (that i am aware of)
2) never thought about it that way, very valid point, but what if it was just as a vendor you give a thumbs up or thumbs down and a buyer rating could be calculated out from that? No need to list amount of purchases, what purchases were, or the vendors who left the credit.
3) 100 % agree
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you can also hit finalize on an order before you actually receive it, this way they get the money right away, sr still gets its cut and you can also leave feedback. so you could buy, he hits sent then you hit finalize, grats just went around escrow. you dont even have to leave feedback anytime soon after finalizing.
When it comes to protecting sellers i dont know, dont think reviews would help people could just make new accounts. i saw a thread of sellers talking about delivery confirmation. i think thats the best bet. hopefully with contested orders sr takes into account sellers history and buyers history. if some dude tried to say greenco ripped them off for instance i would hope sr looks and says yea right bro. sellers ratings should play a part in contested orders.
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Lots of escrow ideas out there... I had what I think was a good idea so I'll just throw it out:
SR could allow vendors to offer a 5-10% "discount" for immediately releasing, say, 50% of the amount in escrow, but only make this option available for repeat customers of that vendor. Buyers would be under no obligation to accept the discount & 50% escrow system.
I say "discount" because this really is a markup for 1st time buyers; all repeat business would effectively sold at a lower rate than for 1st time buyers. This would cushion vendors for bitcoin swings without completely eliminating them (SR is, after all, a BTC site, and dealing with BTC should go with the territory. It would also help sellers offset the risk & cost associated with reverse scammers (which I assume are almost always first-time buyers).
The nice thing about this discount scheme is that no additional information is released on buyers like all of the suggested buyer rating system. It's worthless for a buyer to get false good feedback from another vendor: the only relationship that counts is this specific buyer-vendor relationship, which both seller and buyer knew about anyway because they both were parties to earlier order(s). And there's no need for the SR system to keep logs of purchases, only a single bit: "buyer X has finalized a successful order from seller Y", with no need to store a link to the item ordered.
Vendors could also not offer certain products unless it is repeat business, like the 40 btc mega-pack you just aren't going to ship to a first-time buyer.
The advantage for buyers is that, since the full amount isn't in escrow, they can feel free to take a little more time (say 24-48 hours) to sample the product after arrival without tying up all the vendor's funds. With the current system, I feel rushed to give quick finalized feedback to sellers due to BTC volatility. I think that's why there's distinct lack of seller feedback that discusses product quality, and most feedback is about packaging. I think buyers will be less likely to give 3/5 for "bad packaging" if the product is superb, or to give 5/5 for a great packaging job but a shitty product. Better product feedback would make SR a better place.
Anyone have feedback?