Should we allow selling at all on Boards?

Hagar

I think Boards should get out of the for sale / Adverts.ie business altogether.
I think there should be a total split between Boards.ie and Adverts.ie.

It seems the time when when you could have faith in the integrity of another Boards user has passed. Yes there are still honest people here but we also have scammers and rip-off merchants.

There is too much scope for fraud and it only ends up with people loosing money and Boards good name dragged through the mud. The current thread regarding Optikus and non-receipt of tickets is typical. I can't see the situation getting better, if anything we are going to attract more con artists.

I know a lot of effort has gone into setting up Adverts.ie but was it a wise move?
Ok, there may be a commercial aspects I'm not aware of, if so let it be independent of Boards.

If Adverts.ie is going to try and take on Buy & Sell on the web what does the winner get?
The reknown of being the best site for scammers to use to rip people off?
Buy & Sell is sometimes referred to as "Try & Steal" because of the alleged level of dealings in stolen / dodgy / non-existant goods.

Do we want Boards to end up with a similar nick and rep?

stevenmu

Hagar wrote:

It seems the time when when you could have faith in the integrity of another Boards user has passed. Yes there are still honest people here but we also have scammers and rip-off merchants.

There is too much scope for fraud and it only ends up with people loosing money and Boards good name dragged through the mud. The current thread regarding Optikus and non-receipt of tickets is typical. I can't see the situation getting better, if anything we are going to attract more con artists.

Imo we shouldn't let the scammers and con-artists determine what we do or don't do. We don't close banks because people try to rob them and we shouldn't close Adverts.ie for the same reason. At least with Adverts, as compared to other services, there's some means of trying to check a persons history and minimise the risk of being ripped off. It may not be perfect, but it helps.

It may help to put some guidelines up somewhere visible, showing people how to check a users history and recommending things like meeting a seller instead of using banck transfers and so on.

Gillo

Hagar I can see where you are coming from, but I have to disagree.

I don't know the number of transactions that happen, but I imagine most threads result in sales, so there are very very few complaints and the vast majority of people would appear to be happy with their purchases. From past experience I have bought and sold on boards I have never had a problem, I actually found boards when my bro suggested that I register on it as I was trying to sell something, since then I have been a regular poster. The only problem I have buying or selling was I advertised something and a day later realised that I could have got a better price, it was my fault I hadn't researched the price but I took a hit and something got a great deal.

As for the people involved on the ticket's thread(without wanting to get off topic) I know they appear to have been stung and yes one of them is leaving cert age so the 180 a ticket is a fair bit of money. Hopefully they won't lose "faith" in boards.

What I would suggest though, wasn't there a rep thread where people could get given good or bad reps, from other posters. Could this be brought back in general or brought back and made shop specific? In the past if I am buying something I have checked the sellers previous posts and threads to try and see what they are like (but you have to subscribe or be a mod to do this), if I feel the poster is dodgey I won't buy. As a general rule I only meet face to face also.

RE*AC*TOR

Absolute nonsense. What's needed is more caution on the side of the buyer. I wouldn't be so quick to lodge money into someone's account.

6th

I think AMP should develope some sort of stupidity filter for adverts.ie

irlrobins

Think you'd pass?

6th

nope

super_furry

I think that the issue of ticket sales should be looked at seriously and if necessary be done away with. I'd be nearly certain that most of the trouble in the for sales sections comes from tickets - from touts to carry on like the Electric Picnic affair. That's not to say that it doesn't work. I've bought and sold tickets here without any problems.

The rest of the for sale section is great though - I've never had a single bad experience and it's one of the best features of the community to my mind.

Smellyirishman

There is, it's called the Amp test....


Anyway, I disagree. Scamming will happen everywhere, the buyer just needs to be a little more carful and aware. I have bought and sold items over boards that I would not otherwise have bought/sold and I have never been stung.

irlrobins

RE*AC*TOR wrote:

What's needed is more caution on the side of the buyer.

Always the most important fact when buying anything online.

Vexorg

The issue here is unusual, an "establsihed" member with a history was involved. It certainly does not mean that the classifieds will be closed, moving the classifieds to Adverts.ie is just using the same logic as having the boards at boards.ie and journals @ journals.ie. Sometimes these changes result in more users coming to boards, sometimes not, its not an exact science:)

@ Stevenmu - have a look at the forum rules - its on every single page, it gives plenty of advice. Do you think it can be improved?

V

Tha Gopher

Sorry but really, anyone who makes online payment (or posts a cheque) to someone they dont know and have never met pretty much deserves what they get. Ive bought and sold on boards before (tickets- bought once, an had to off my Oxegen tickets for below cost price because there was such a feckin glut of them Id be lumbered otherwise. I so wanted to tout but there just wasnt the market). Its always been in person, money changing hands, in public, safe and responsible.

Certainly dont close down the buying/selling.

Cuddlesworth

Vexorg wrote:

Do you think it can be improved?

Put in a "dont buy from Optikus" at the end?

stevenmu

Vexorg wrote:

@ Stevenmu - have a look at the forum rules - its on every single page, it gives plenty of advice. Do you think it can be improved?

V

Ah, tbh I haven't really used adverts much yet, so I'd only glanced at the rules. The guidelines that are there seem fine to me. Maybe if the problem becomes more common (it seems to be a very rare occurance at the moment) they could be highlighted in some way.

Mr. Presentable

Buying and selling on Boards is fine. So long as the buyer is careful. Perhaps education is the issue - you don't hand over you money in a shop until the whiskey has been put down in front of you, why do it with a stranger.

But, of course, we don't fully regard fellow Boardsies as strangers, do we?

Serbian

Every time I have bought or sold on Boards.ie I have met the person face-to-face. I don't think I would ever lodge the cash into someone's account here.

If you absolutely must send money to someone, you should send it via Paypal or some other payment system that allows you to dispute payments on your account, and make sure that the account is linked to your credit card only (if you have one). This way, you can dispute the payment if you never receive the goods, and failing that, you can do a chargeback on your credit card and get the money back that way.

If someone has been scammed here and has lodged money directly into the culprit's bank account or sent them a cheque that was lodgement only, it's important that they file a report with their local Garda station. You can find the number for your local station here.

Tar.Aldarion

It should stay, there are rules in place and stupidity is somebodies own fault.
I would never transfer cash by insecure methods unless I trusted the person(only a few users I have not met) or I could track them down quite easily.
I've only bought an mp3 player for 300e, off tusky, bank lodgement, then he sent it.
If it didn't show up, I would have found him.
If you don't know the person or enough about them to find them, don't risk your money.
I see no reason to shut it or anything, people shouldn't be so lax with their money, it's their fault if they send money and never hear from the seller again. Paypal.

ozt9vdujny3srf

Yes, we do.

Hagar

nipplenuts wrote:

But, of course, we don't fully regard fellow Boardsies as strangers, do we?

There's the rub, we tend to think of them as people we "know" at some level so we are not as guarded with them as we are with "total" strangers.

I'm not really suggesting the the ads be closed down. I Just think they should be separated by a large gap from boards.ie proper. If the selling end of things deteriorates into a place where people cannot be trusted do we want the same mistrust to spread to Boards?

nuttz

Serbian wrote:

Every time I have bought or sold on Boards.ie I have met the person face-to-face. I don't think I would ever lodge the cash into someone's account here.

If you absolutely must send money to someone, you should send it via Paypal or some other payment system that allows you to dispute payments on your account, and make sure that the account is linked to your credit card only (if you have one). This way, you can dispute the payment if you never receive the goods, and failing that, you can do a chargeback on your credit card and get the money back that way.

If someone has been scammed here and has lodged money directly into the culprit's bank account or sent them a cheque that was lodgement only, it's important that they file a report with their local Garda station. You can find the number for your local station here.

Totally agree with this poster. Maybe CuLT could add to the guidelines/rules that people meet in person and make the payments in person when at all possible.

adverts.ie benefits from the exposure boards.ie can give, I think the current offers in the comp forum is a good idea also.

Vexorg

@Serbian

Using paypal is off little value as I found out. I bought from a seller in the uk, he didnt send the item, disputed with paypal who found in my favour, but could do nothing. I had expected them to clawback the funds from the guys bank account.

If you go the chargeback route paypal can limit your account. So its not as useful a service as you may think.

Vex.

seamus

OK, totally ignorant of the Adverts/For Sale charters as they're in place....

Perhaps it should be made clear that length of membership/Post count is absolutely no indicator of reliability. Perhaps any reference to join date or post count should be removed from adverts.ie and the adverts clones entirely (if it's not already). This way, if you don't recognise a username, you're encourage to proceed with extra caution.

A certain amount of it requires some personal responsibility too though. There's little chance that I'd transfer any large amount of money to anyone without the merchandise in my hands. Even if Vexorg himself promised that he'd send me that Opteron and would I please transfer €200 into his bank account, I'd feel wary.

Cuddlesworth

Lol, I love this impression that paypal is great. 99% of the time its the credit card company that pays you back not paypal. They wont give you money back if the other account is empty. They have frozen accounts that have had dealings with scammers, years ago. Its a flawed system backed up by a good credit card fraud system.

jimi_t

I'm the one of 'leaving cert age' who was stung over the picnic tickets, and I certainly don't think it should be closed down. Since that whole debacle I've spent over 300 on other various bits on bobs on boards/adverts.ie and all the transactions couldn't have been more pleasant (face to face in all of them, but thats just normal procedure if the buyer and seller live in Dublin). I was caught out, and it shook me a bit, but one bad egg being rooted out is hardly a cause for serious concern. We just have to watch out for the deluge of new users on adverts.ie with no boards account and for the ultimate concern that adverts will turn into the buy and sell.

Sleepy

Hell, I bought my car on Boards.ie so I'm definitely not in favour of getting rid of Boards.ie totally.

I've put money into people's accounts here before for them to post items to me (and accepted money into my own when I've been the seller) but they've been for low value items (CD's Books etc) so even if I did get stung it would have only been to the tune of 10/20 euro which I've no problems gambling on a boards.ie user's honesty. Anything larger than that I've met in person and done the deal for cash.

CuLT

Hmm, I like this idea of transaction advice, we've always just left it to the users to sort out between themselves because at the end of the day, it is (was?) a classifieds service rather than ebay-esque.

But I don't see a problem with a section on transaction procedures and etiquette.

I'll use this page to write it up before adding to the charter.

If anyone has suggestions for it, I'm all ears (my knowledge of paypal is limited, so extra info/advice in that area would be appreciated).

Ruu_Old

The last time I bought something from boards was using the old FS, this was regular for me twice or three times a week with admins and regular users and never got burned so I wouldn't like to see this gotten rid of, as mentioned a number of times caution on behalf of the buyer is vital.

Serbian

Sleepy wrote:

Hell, I bought my car on Boards.ie so I'm definitely not in favour of getting rid of Boards.ie totally.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that we should get rid of Boards.ie :P

Vexorg wrote:

Using paypal is off little value as I found out. I bought from a seller in the uk, he didnt send the item, disputed with paypal who found in my favour, but could do nothing. I had expected them to clawback the funds from the guys bank account.

I was burnt by ObeyGiant.com a few months ago and lodged a dispute with Paypal who were able to get my money back for me. Maybe in your case the seller had no money in their Paypal account and didn't have a bank account / credit card attached so they couldn't take the money from there. If you do a chargeback, Paypal do limit your account alright, but if you are just using it for online payments, you can always setup a new account under a different email address.

I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's certainly better than popping €50 in the post and waving bye bye.

amp

Hagar wrote:

The current thread regarding Optikus and non-receipt of tickets is typical.

It is not typical. Typical would be when it happens all the time or even most of the time which it doesn't.

I've bought most of my PC upgrades and my Atari Jaguar off boards.ie and have never had any trouble. I do take responsiblity for checking out the people I buy off before going ahead and I almost always meet the person when buying. Boards.ie is not responsible for doing those things. You seem to think it is.

Your post is over the top, reactionary and full of crap.

Buyer Beware

Hagar

amp wrote:

It is not typical. Typical would be when it happens all the time or even most of the time which it doesn't...

It may not be very common but the way it happens is typical, user sends money in good faith to someone he believes he can trust as a fellow boardsie and get stung. I doubt if he would send off money to someone in the buy and sell in the same way. It's the abuse of trust within our community that gets me.

amp wrote:

Your post is over the top, reactionary and full of crap.

No, it's not. It's fair comment on theft.
Reactionary, now there's a label that can be stuck on absolutely anything and still mean nothing.
Just because you're a cmod don't go over the top on me, leave out the crap etc. it's not needed, thanks very much.

ecksor

Being a CMod or a Mod or a User isn't relevant, everyone has the same opportunity to comment upon any topics raised here.