Trades ~

[woostar]

Sorry to make my first post today a negative one....

I'm sick to death of backfired trades ~ and there seems to be more and more happening everyday. As from right now Freeclickz is no longer going to support trading until I've spent the next 24 hours writing a few rules. Once these rules are in place, it is up to you to stick by them or face the inevitable onslaught of scammers.

This is something that seriously needs to be addressed ~ There are people out there that are making a hell of a lot of money on trades: only to be put on hold by us a few days later when we realise (suffice to say alot of miffed members that have an account full of holds).


I'm opening this up to the forum ~ instead of disallowing trades full stop I need your help to come up with some fair guidelines to protect you all.

No. 1 on my list:-
I'm going to add a page where you can typing in the forum members username and it will tell you if someone by that name has already signed up (not fool proof but a start).

Please leave any ideas here....

W.>

[Usualwill]

Woostar,

I'm with you 110% on this - I've noticed over the last few months that trading seems to have become more a game of chance instead of being based on trust and thats a real shame.

As a network owner I'm not sure that there is too much that you should be expected to do to be honest. I mean as users, we should run the risk of trading and not you. Having said that network owners should have in place systems to protect the integrity and respect of their network, along those lines maybe the following could be ideas:
- Users should have the ability to report scammed trades for network owners to investigate and take appropriate action
- Not sure about this one - but is a green, really a green? By this I mean can someone go green and then have that green revoked because the offer wasn't completed for example. If thats the case maybe there could be another status such as confirmed green (i.e the offer has been completed and fully verified by network owner). This "confirmed green" couldn't be revoked as network have received payment from merchant for completion of offer and as such it is legitimate. If I was paying someone to go green, maybe I would consider only paying them once it was verified.

As users I think we should make much more use of the exceem trading feedback system, its a good indication of how reliable someone is. If you look at Ebay, whilst it does have some payment protection, people largely decide who they will buy from based on their feedback rating - in fact people will even pay more to buy from someone with a proven track record.
With that in mind the trading rules in exceem should be changed so that it does not necessary require both sides of the trade to be completed immediately where one of the traders is not known (i.e has little or no feedback). i.e if I as a reliable trader want to trade with someone with no feedback then I should be able to say that I will complete my side of the trade only when they have completed their side. Once new traders have proved themselves reliable (say more than 3 positive feedback) then they too would have this right. Its not foolproof but it does offer some protection to genuine traders and forces new traders to prove their worth. Of course if most traders have positive feedback then offers would be completed immediately as it is today.

Just a couple of ideas to throw into the discussion - hope they are useful

Cheers,

[mozfadz]

Can't you just ban more than one sign up from one IP? Like if I've already signed up to freeclickz from my IP, the next time I try to access the signing up thing from my IP, it just doesn't let me?
I don't think its possible but if it was, it would prevent alot of fraud!

[drunfola]

again agreed with you both, i cant input anything as its already been discussed between you two, but agreed with wooster some kind of network tracker should be put in place so you can see if theyt have an account with that network, avoiding double sign ups

[woostar]

Thanks for the comments so far ~ Unfortunatly mozfadz we can't just ban IPs: If we ban the proxy IP we then block a whole town of access: and real IPs are easy to fake.
I'm actually sitting here now trying to write an automatic validation algorithm that will come up with a red flag system for your signups. While it won't be as accurate as our system for sending out gifts (that also goes thru a human validation stage) but it will weigh up alot of contributing variables that should give you an idea of how reliable they are as a protential trade.

W.>

[drunfola]

wow.... it didnt make much sence to me, but it sounds good

[kendgreat]

lol - I dont know what it means but if it means less scammers then Im behind you.

[Tab]

I was speaking with Jon about this last night and after thinking about it I haven't really got any answers but more questions. Each Network owner is obviously free to run their network how they see fit, however I think the following needs be thought about very carefully.

Exceem and other forums are completely separate entities from our freebie sites, and as such people trading for greens really have nothing to do with our network and it is totally down to the users, trading at their own risk. If people are being scammed then it is down to the forum to decide how to deal with their users. Please don't get me wrong, I am not saying that we as network owners should do nothing, but what exactly should we do? Place the scamming user on hold for not upholding their part of the deal? is it fair for us to do that? What if someone in the real world - not an exceem user - contacts us and says that they paid their neighbour a tenner to go green, but they just took the tenner and did nothing. Should we then put that user on hold? Does it in all fairness have anything to do with us?

I personally don't feel its an easy situation to deal with. Any thoughts on the above questions welcomed.

Tab

[Bazza]

That makes a good degree of sense tab, the only area i think there should be something done in, is if someone falsely promotes their link in exchange for them giving whoever signs up a reward. then they are in a slight way spamming their link, and also making the site they are getting refs for look bad.

[drunfola]

a simple solution would be to remove all trading fullstop but i understand alot of people need it

[Bazza]

lol thats just rediculous.

[Stigmatized]

Agreed Bazza. One of the main points of these forums, are to help others trade, understand the sites etc.

[drunfola]

i know that, but dont u think it looks bad on exceems behalf that fraudulent trades are going on within the trading system? also trading is too expencive, seems to remove the point of freebies, scammers see the money taht s involved in trading and target it. if exceem is to keep a trading forum it should make sure the feedback system is being utilized

[Bazza]

The admins can ban anyone suspected of fraudulent activity in the tades system, and if you dont want to trade you dont have to, but good luck finding newbies that will pay £25 for some sites.

[drunfola]

i know that, what im saying i was scammed 2 times one was a reasonably freash member and one was brand spankin new, its just the blatently lie and expect to get some green out of it, its just plan wrong, its like walkin into a shop, and forgetting to pay

[woostar]

to be honest; Tab has a point...
My heads been battered the last couple of days trying come up with an answer.

W.>

[drunfola]

i speak on behalf of other members we are sorry guys

[GafferTape]

As been suggested:

"if, I as a reliable trader want to trade with someone with no feedback then I should be able to say that I will complete my side of the trade only when they have completed their side. Once new traders have proved themselves reliable (say more than 3 positive feedback) then they too would have this right."

I think would help. Perhaps also that the new trading system is network specific, it makes it more difficult to keep an eye on members, and it does seem to generally reduce the number of people looking at potential trades.

You need to exercise some common sense in trading as well, trading with brand new users who have no trading history and very little posts is a massive risk.

[Jon]

100% agree with you woostar, and exceem will never expect any freegift site to take any action against scammers, though we do pass on the offending ref links to rid the comunity of scammers, what freeclickz (and other networks do) is down to their own policies

as to the point about people with low feedback going green first then the higher feedback person going green after their green is recieved is something that we will put to discussion amongst the exceem staff

The problem is with some recent scammers is that they have chatted via pm/msn/email rather than in the trades ssytem comments in public were everyone can see whats going on, and from now on you can post ref links in the trades system, so there is no longer any need to pm for trades at all.

[Stigmatized]

Ahh wohoo! That's good. Makes it a lot clearer what is going on. I've had so many PM's from new members with 0 posts saying "trade this that and the other", just gotta ignore it, however, if admins want to know who they are feel free to ask, didn't do any harm, I guess people really need to read the rules before posting or PM'ing .. its not really that hard to do!