Topic: 2.0 Trading Rules and Guidelines. Mail Fraud.

Hello everybody.


Aside from the other changes to collection management (previewed and described here: announcement), we have promised a post regarding our trading rules.

The current ones are too vague, not prominent enough, and users do now know how they are enforced. This leads to uncertainty and confusion, and we would like to clarify that. Users are being flagged as scammers and banned, but it's not visible unless you visit their profile. All this environment may also lead some people to believe that they can get away with scamming without repercussions.

We need to change some rules to properly protects the fair users and discourages less serious traders and scammers.

After some discussion we have come to the conclusion that we need to do what all other major trading forums have done: implement a public forum for trading resolution, more strongly regulate and moderate feedback, and create a public list of names and addresses of proven scammers.

We will also encourage users to file for mail fraud when they are being scammed.

Below are the links to our first (rough) drafts for:

(the password for the alpha preview is let me see)

These will be posted on the help section, as well as stickied as topics in the trade forum.


These documents are not yet final. We would love to hear your feedback on these proposed changes.

Re: 2.0 Trading Rules and Guidelines. Mail Fraud.

Are you still open to revisions to the trade policies? Some sections are still somewhat ambiguous.  Example (emphases added):

2.2. The sender is responsible for the cards to get to the destination, and to prove that he sent them. Only the sender can obtain delivery confirmation proof and insure the cards against loss or damage. If a problem has occurred, please resend your part of the deal, return the cards you received (if applicable), or make appropriate monetary restitution (the parties involved can decide on which one of these options is best). As a sender make sure you use signature-required delivery confirmation and insure the cards for larger trades so the cycle of lack of proof can end.

Proof of mailing (sending) is different than proof of delivery.  In order for the document to go unchallenged, it should be unambiguous.  I'm a wordsmith, so I'm more than willing to help review and revise, as needed.

Also, consider using bulleted lists to detail trader responsibilities. Such lists typically help one to avoid the ambiguities that can arise when composing a paragraph of prose.

Shoot me an email if you would like me to assist with that documentation.

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Black and Blue--not just for bruises anymore.

Re: 2.0 Trading Rules and Guidelines. Mail Fraud.

A public list of names and addresses would be awesome!  Will the burden of proof always lie upon the sender?  The reason why I ask is that I'd hate to have to spend $2 for each trade just so I can have a tracking number.  And most people would hate signature confirmation, since most of us are rarely home when the mail is delivered.  smile

It seems that if somebody has a high enough feedback, they should probably have the benefit of the doubt that they shipped something that they said that they did.

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Re: 2.0 Trading Rules and Guidelines. Mail Fraud.

One suggestion that I might have to the feedback process and lost mail / mail fraud was if there was a way to see which traders have "lost" a lot of mail, in either direction.

For example, person X often has small trades "lost" on the way to his house (assuming small trades without DC). Although it's usually on the senders to prove it, and that's the risk they run in not using DC. However, if I know that person X has made 5 lost mail claims out of 50 trades, I would know that person X might be suspicious, and I'd want to make sure that used DC for his trades.

As a high-volume trader myself, with lots of smallish ($5-$20) trades, I don't use DC for most trades -- the expense isn't really worth the reward, and most people here are overwhelmingly honest. If we're moving to a system with DC becomes more formally necessary, and one where people with higher reps may not get the  benefit of the doubt, then I'd be really interested in some sort of system that gives me as a trader more info on how many disputes they've had -- besides just feedback. If someone claims they my envelope never arrived, I'm likely to apologize profusely, resend new cards, give them positive feedback, and probably not mention it in the feedback. Thus the repeat offenders may be hard to identify.

thanks!
-RFioren

Re: 2.0 Trading Rules and Guidelines. Mail Fraud.

Do people do that?  I have 80 successful trades at this point, and I've never had anybody claim that they haven't received my cards.  And I don't usually bother with DC until it hits $40 or so.

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Re: 2.0 Trading Rules and Guidelines. Mail Fraud.

marumari wrote:

Do people do that?  I have 80 successful trades at this point, and I've never had anybody claim that they haven't received my cards.  And I don't usually bother with DC until it hits $40 or so.

I've had it happen once to me in 290 trades (my send got lost), and twice to me on the receiving end.

I'm not concerned about it today. I feel like right now, with the rules being informal, that it's very "gentlemanly" and honor system. I'm slightly concerned that as the rules become harder and firmer (and as deckbox grows) that it will become more common.

Right now, I have 290 positive trades and no negatives. I don't really fear an occasional bad trader taking advantage of me, in large part because the community would probably take my word over a newbies. But if the rules become very strict, I worry that I would "lose" against any newbie if I didn't have DC proof.

I hear a lot of bad stuff on other trading sites with very rigid rules where people get hosed regularly if they don't use DC on every trade. I don't want this site to become a place where you HAVE to use DC, or strongly risk getting ripped off, no matter how high your rep.

Re: 2.0 Trading Rules and Guidelines. Mail Fraud.

+1 To rfioren.

I'm still newish in comparison (41+) but I hate doing DC for anything under $50.

Requiring DC (although if you have a paypal account it's free) just adds another layer of hassle that I need to jump through. I generally just throw a stamp or two on and call it a day.

Re: 2.0 Trading Rules and Guidelines. Mail Fraud.

+1 to rfioren

Canada Post is not too kind when it comes to DC. As far as I know, the cheapest way to get DC is to use Registered Mail which is an additional $8.25 within Canada and $14.50 to the U.S.A. and internationally. That's if it's lettermail. If you use a bubble mailer, it qualifies as Oversized lettermail and tracking is simply not available. So, if DC is required that would eliminate any small trades due to cost and larger trades requiring bubble mailer don't even have the option. These rules would basically prevent me from trading.

If anyone knows otherwise, I'd love to know.

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Re: 2.0 Trading Rules and Guidelines. Mail Fraud.

apyrexia wrote:

+1 to rfioren

Canada Post is not too kind when it comes to DC. As far as I know, the cheapest way to get DC is to use Registered Mail which is an additional $8.25 within Canada and $14.50 to the U.S.A. and internationally. That's if it's lettermail. If you use a bubble mailer, it qualifies as Oversized lettermail and tracking is simply not available. So, if DC is required that would eliminate any small trades due to cost and larger trades requiring bubble mailer don't even have the option. These rules would basically prevent me from trading.

If anyone knows otherwise, I'd love to know.

I believe the gist of the wording is that each sender is responsible for their own delivery, and the only way to prove delivery is to use delivery confirmation.

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Re: 2.0 Trading Rules and Guidelines. Mail Fraud.

apyrexia wrote:

+1 to rfioren

Canada Post is not too kind when it comes to DC. As far as I know, the cheapest way to get DC is to use Registered Mail which is an additional $8.25 within Canada and $14.50 to the U.S.A. and internationally. That's if it's lettermail. If you use a bubble mailer, it qualifies as Oversized lettermail and tracking is simply not available. So, if DC is required that would eliminate any small trades due to cost and larger trades requiring bubble mailer don't even have the option. These rules would basically prevent me from trading.

If anyone knows otherwise, I'd love to know.

I know otherwise.

Registered mail is as you say, but if you want tracking for anything larger, you have to send it as a small parcel and ask for it. Don't skip out and try to put stamps on yourself; take the package and address to a real person in a real post office and have them weigh/measure everything and give you the rates with tracking. The cheapest I've seen is about $16 to the US.

Yeah, that's a lot for a small trade, but I am of the opinion that aggressively pursuing scammers for small trades is it's own protection. If I'm shipping you $10 worth of cards and you rip me off, I'm only out $10 but you'll be prevented from ever trading on the site again, which doesn't seem worth it. On the other hand, if I'm sending you $100 worth of cards, it's totally in my best interest to pay for tracking.

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Re: 2.0 Trading Rules and Guidelines. Mail Fraud.

LootPinata wrote:

I know otherwise.

Registered mail is as you say, but if you want tracking for anything larger, you have to send it as a small parcel and ask for it. Don't skip out and try to put stamps on yourself; take the package and address to a real person in a real post office and have them weigh/measure everything and give you the rates with tracking. The cheapest I've seen is about $16 to the US.

Yeah, that's a lot for a small trade, but I am of the opinion that aggressively pursuing scammers for small trades is it's own protection. If I'm shipping you $10 worth of cards and you rip me off, I'm only out $10 but you'll be prevented from ever trading on the site again, which doesn't seem worth it. On the other hand, if I'm sending you $100 worth of cards, it's totally in my best interest to pay for tracking.

Thank you for your reply. $16 seems reasonable for trades of considerable value. I still agree with rfioren about trusting long time members with flawless reputation.

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Re: 2.0 Trading Rules and Guidelines. Mail Fraud.

apyrexia wrote:
LootPinata wrote:

I know otherwise.

Registered mail is as you say, but if you want tracking for anything larger, you have to send it as a small parcel and ask for it. Don't skip out and try to put stamps on yourself; take the package and address to a real person in a real post office and have them weigh/measure everything and give you the rates with tracking. The cheapest I've seen is about $16 to the US.

Yeah, that's a lot for a small trade, but I am of the opinion that aggressively pursuing scammers for small trades is it's own protection. If I'm shipping you $10 worth of cards and you rip me off, I'm only out $10 but you'll be prevented from ever trading on the site again, which doesn't seem worth it. On the other hand, if I'm sending you $100 worth of cards, it's totally in my best interest to pay for tracking.

Thank you for your reply. $16 seems reasonable for trades of considerable value. I still agree with rfioren about trusting long time members with flawless reputation.

I don't know how well it works from the other direction, but I just mailed a small bubble mailer with DC to Canada for about $5 right from the post office.

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Re: 2.0 Trading Rules and Guidelines. Mail Fraud.

Thank you for all the feedback guys, we've been following the discussion and there are some great points made in this thread.

We don't want to force people to use DC in all cases. The sender's choice is between using DC, in which case there will be no risk of problems, or not using it, in which case if the receiver claims mail was lost, the sender has to resend his cards.

Most of this issue revolves around who is responsible for lost mail (or claims of lost mail, which in absence of proof of delivery is the same thing).

There has been another discussion on the topic in the Reddit MTG Trades subforum: http://deckbox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4599 . The two viable options in case of lost mail claims are: splitting the loss or the sender covers the loss. The thread has good arguments for both sides, and is an interesting read. In the end we felt arguments in favor of making the sender responsible were a bit stronger, trade resolutions easier to enforce and execute and the process clearer to understand.

Looking forward to your feedback!

Re: 2.0 Trading Rules and Guidelines. Mail Fraud.

rfioren wrote:

One suggestion that I might have to the feedback process and lost mail / mail fraud was if there was a way to see which traders have "lost" a lot of mail, in either direction.

For example, person X often has small trades "lost" on the way to his house (assuming small trades without DC). Although it's usually on the senders to prove it, and that's the risk they run in not using DC. However, if I know that person X has made 5 lost mail claims out of 50 trades, I would know that person X might be suspicious, and I'd want to make sure that used DC for his trades.

As a high-volume trader myself, with lots of smallish ($5-$20) trades, I don't use DC for most trades -- the expense isn't really worth the reward, and most people here are overwhelmingly honest. If we're moving to a system with DC becomes more formally necessary, and one where people with higher reps may not get the  benefit of the doubt, then I'd be really interested in some sort of system that gives me as a trader more info on how many disputes they've had -- besides just feedback. If someone claims they my envelope never arrived, I'm likely to apologize profusely, resend new cards, give them positive feedback, and probably not mention it in the feedback. Thus the repeat offenders may be hard to identify.

thanks!
-RFioren

As many of the other posters, I really like this suggestion as well. Do you have any ideas on what would be the cleanest way of doing this?

Some trades with claims of lost mail will not get to the state of a Trade Dispute, so moderators will not be involved at all. Thus there has to be a mechanism which allows the traders to specify at the "leave feedback" stage that there were issues in this trade (lost mail) but they have been resolved, and how.

Maybe just an additional option alongside feedback, with a predefined list of trade characteristics, like:
 

  • Trade went perfectly smooth

  • The other trader claimed my cards were lost in the mail, and I resent them

  • There was significant delay in the sending, but everything was resolved

  • This trade has been the subject of a trade dispute, but it has been resolved

  • The trade was changed after being accepted because of other trader's requests, but we have come to an agreement

  • ... other options? ...

This information would then be displayed alongside the actual feedback score and message on that trade.

This would force people to leave feedback that future traders will find meaningful and helpful, even in case of "+1".

How does this sound?

Re: 2.0 Trading Rules and Guidelines. Mail Fraud.

I might not force everyone to enter additional comments for a perfectly smooth trade. What I might do is something like this:

Feedback phase:
+1 = Perfect trade, no issues [does not see follow-up]
+1 = Good completed trade, but some minor issues (e.g., card condition, delays, lost mail)
0 = Satisfactory trade, but significant issues
-1 = Bad trade, did not receive cards

The last 3 options would drive some sort of secondary list, where you could select all that apply. I'd suggest that each check-box possibly require an explanation. My list would look like this

(X all that apply)
[ ] Card condition significantly worse than described/expected [please specify]
[ ] Wrong/missing cards included [please specify]
[ ] Trader changed cards after trade accepted [please specify]
[ ] Significant mail/delivery delay [please specify]
[ ] His/Her cards did not arrive at first, and had to resend [please specify]
[ ] My cards did not arrive to him/her at first, had to resend [please specify]
[ ] Poor communication or etiquette [please specify]
[ ] Other [please specify]

As I said, I'd love to be able to look at someone's trades, and see that X% of them had delays or poor communication or lost mail, so I could be wary.

I don't want these comments to be seen as punishment -- I've made many of these errors myself. I've still given and received +1s because we can work it out, but it'd be massively useful to see patterns with certain behavior.. And I also think that tracking this will make it somewhat of a deterrent for bad traders.


Hopefully something like this wouldn't be too hard to implement. Happy to take other feedback or add other reasons. I don't want to add a million reasons-- I think probably 5 or 6 is enough, and encourage people to write comments explaining why.


[EDIT] I suppose if you left -1 feedback, some of those options probably don't apply, and you should see a separate list, or maybe just enter in a detailed comment, since most likely your cards never arrived.

Last edited by rfioren (2012-12-20 16:56:08)

Re: 2.0 Trading Rules and Guidelines. Mail Fraud.

You guys are all aware that you can enter your own feedback into the text box next to the +1 -1 box, right?  There shouldn't be a need to specify a dozen options; rather, the text box should be increased so that you can type in any details if they're required.

Re: 2.0 Trading Rules and Guidelines. Mail Fraud.

TyWooOneTime wrote:

You guys are all aware that you can enter your own feedback into the text box next to the +1 -1 box, right?  There shouldn't be a need to specify a dozen options; rather, the text box should be increased so that you can type in any details if they're required.

Yes. But most people, myself included, don't enter in meaningful feedback. My suggestion here is mainly to encourage people who encountered an issue but still had a "successful" +1 trade, to explain if anything happened.

My rationale: I've had packages go missing on route to me, and one go missing that I sent. I believe they were honest losses, so I gave positive feedback. However, if someone had a pattern of losing shipments, I'd want an easy way to know that, if I'm trading with them. Basically looking for a system to track patterns of behavior that's more defined than just open-ended comments -- especially since nearly all comments are rated +1, even if there are minor issues, and most open-ended text comments are not really useful as-is.

Re: 2.0 Trading Rules and Guidelines. Mail Fraud.

rfioren wrote:

Yes. But most people, myself included, don't enter in meaningful feedback. My suggestion here is mainly to encourage people who encountered an issue but still had a "successful" +1 trade, to explain if anything happened.

Herein lies the problem.  If people are too lazy to enter in a few words here or there (I type something about EVERY trade I do), then how can we expect them to go through the trouble of sorting through a dozen feedback options?

rfioren wrote:

My rationale: I've had packages go missing on route to me, and one go missing that I sent. I believe they were honest losses, so I gave positive feedback. However, if someone had a pattern of losing shipments, I'd want an easy way to know that, if I'm trading with them. Basically looking for a system to track patterns of behavior that's more defined than just open-ended comments -- especially since nearly all comments are rated +1, even if there are minor issues, and most open-ended text comments are not really useful as-is.

I'm fortunate that I've never had cards I shipped get lost, but I have had issues where cards sent from other people were lost.  In each case they were more than willing to make up for it.

Regardless, it's not like we should expect Sebi to be building some sort of a searchable database of trade comments or some other weird set of options to choose between.  I'm all in favor of improved measurement, but, to this end it's really not worth the trouble.  The simple fact is if someone has overwhelming positive feedback, we should treat that individual as being worthy of trading with.  If they've had a few items lost in the mail, and they didn't make up for it, we should have no hesitation to give them a -1 trade.  But if they make up for the item being lost, there's no reason to penalize them for the failings of the USPS or whatever.

Overall, I get that this is a serious issue/problem, but I don't think it needs to be as complicated as people are making it.  The consensus that I've seen on this site is that if cards are sent and the sender cannot confirm they were sent, i.e. Delivery Confirmation, then they're still liable to get the cards to the other trader.  If they're lost, well, that's part of the risk of doing trades by mail. 

In either event, I'd prefer a quickly viewable feedback value like the site currently has (with possible comments like they currently are).  If they have some sufficient level of positive feedback to satisfy me, I'll start up a trade.  If they're new, I insist they ship first.  And if they have negative feedback, I likely won't trade with them.  I don't really think we need to bog the site down with options that won't be used, much like you've pointed out about the option of typing in comments.

Re: 2.0 Trading Rules and Guidelines. Mail Fraud.

I agree that it may be overkill. I'll continue to use the site either way. I've managed to complete 300 trades without a major issue, although a handful of minor ones.

I'll leave it to Sebi and the devs to decide if it's worth it or not, or if they can implement it simply. Since he seemed interested in my idea to the point of suggesting a mockup, I responded with my own.

As I said further up in the thread, my biggest fear is that with more clarity around the rules, that some people may take advantage of those rules, and would lead to a change in the culture of deckbox, where people don't trust eachother or look for excuses to take advantage of others (i.e., common complaint with some other online trading boards with very strict rules).

Re: 2.0 Trading Rules and Guidelines. Mail Fraud.

+1 to Remy's idea above. 

I agree that senders should be responsible for the cards reaching their destination.  I think that such a system will work well if, as suggested, we are given additional checkboxes to note certain issues (such as claims of lost mail or poor shipping practices).

I would be _really_ reluctant to ever give someone less than a +1 feedback.  I am even unlikely to describe a problem in the comment next to the positive feedback.  I think the only way to get users like me to record this important information is to provide checkboxes.  If I can check "Cards were sent without hard toploader/inadequate protection," or "trader claimed not to receive cards; cards re-sent," I could do so without the fear that it will be taken personally.

In this fashion, we will all get the protection we need.  If I get damaged cards and a user has ten instances of inadequate protection marked on his trades, it should be easier for me to prove my case.  More importantly, I will continue to be able to send without DC, knowing that deckbox has ways of weeding out serial scammers.

I think a question that remains to be addressed is how to display this new information.  I wouldn't want to make it as prominent as feedback, because I wouldn't want a few negative issues to discourage trading.  But if traders have access to the information, they can make informed decisions about how to protect themselves, or whether to make the trade at all.

One last benefit from this: codifying these (somewhat) minor trade issues and adding checkboxes would likely help people learn to be better traders.

Thanks!
-Tom