Silk Road forums
Support => Feature requests => Topic started by: pizzaboomerang on March 13, 2012, 05:51 am
-
I propose a few hoops are added for new vendors to jump through. Let's say Bob wants to be a vendor and pays his $300 (it is $300 right?) registration fee. Then Bob is required to send out 5 free or at cost samples to respected members of the community that are strictly customers, say 25 or 50 transactions and a good reputation. These members report on the forums whether the product is as advertised, shipped discreetly, and of good quality. Then for his first 15-20 sales the vendor must leave the payment in escrow until the product is received and provide DCN. If the product doesn't arrive the seller has proof it was sent and can work out a refund/reship/solution of some sort on a customer to customer basis. After this brief probationary period the seller is free to conduct business as they please. It wouldn't have to be structured exactly as I've described above but I feel some sort of vendor vetting would deter scammers to a great degree. Naturally it wouldn't eliminate them completely but scammers are lazy. It's why they scam, easy money. If they were forced to jump through a few hoops and prove they have legitimate product before being essentially left to their own devices I think many would just stop. It seems ridiculously easy for someone to buy a vendor account, list some bogus products and walk with a few hundred if not thousands of dollars in BTC.
-
I think the mandatory DCN would be the most important part. It wouldn't have to be shared with the customer but would offer the vendor some modicum of protection against shady buyers who claim a product "never arrived." While the disabled early finalization for the vendor's first however many orders would allow buyers to try new vendors without fear of being burned and not receiving a product they used their hard earned dollars to buy.
-
how it is now is fine. just all ways stay in escrow dont finalize early, also making the DCN rule is not fair for all the vendors that cant use them b/c there non usa or the ones that do overseas shipping. a buyer will about never get scam if they stay in escrow. also about the free samples that should be up to the vendor. if you all want free samples post good reviews on the forums and post about how so and so has good stuff when someone asks. that how i picked who i gave them to when i did. and how i will pick if i ever sell new stuff. if you do take a free sample be safe dont sign for it and follow all the other rules you should know of when buying on SR.
-
Well I don't want free samples haha. I'm not a respected member of the community and they wouldn't have to be free maybe just the price the vendor pays. Like I said what I posted probably shouldn't be implemented exactly as written I hadn't even thought of the fact that folks in other countries cant use DCN. And I disagree that things are fine as is, there are some great vendors but it seems like there are more and more scammers every day. I've watched it happen on sites in the RC scene. The scammers grow and grow, new buyers get burned and don't return and more experienced users become disenfranchised, soon enough the community falls apart. I think some sort of protocol needs to be put in place to verify that new vendors are legitimate to prevent that from happening. Certainly there will always be scammers but why make things easy for them?
-
I tend to like the disabled finalize early idea with required dcn for a period of some number of transactions.