Negative Feedback

tbh I agree. I understand why sebi is annoyed at fairportmagic but I think that forcing negative feedback from users is the wrong way to address this. I can understand why it's a desirable solution here (the admins aren't ready to suspend him but short of that there's not much they can do as punishment), but I don't think it's worth undermining the feeling of due process which the functioning of the BTR system relies upon. Obviously sebi probably doesn't want to have to code in a system whereby admins can also give feedback on trades just for this case. There's a risk that it either will be or could be reasonably perceived as a kangaroo court of sorts guided by the whims and passions of the admins rather than rules and precedent.

I think letting you leave negative feedback, even if you ended up not doing so, is enough. The mere risk of being punished via negative feedback should hopefully be a deterrent to bad BTR reports.

Last edited by 9700377 (2014-10-01 13:41:54)

Yeah, maybe I'm changing my mind on this. The overwritten feedback isn't actually putting words in the other trader's mouth and explicitly says that it is coming from the site admins. It does fulfill the purpose of the feedback system in warning other traders about the user. iirc from following the case the positive feedback *was* left after the BTR was closed, though.

At the least, though, if the idea is that the admins will leave negative feedback when a BTR is filed in willful disregard for the site's rules... then sebi should've just put in the negative feedback rather than saying "we're allowing you to leave negative feedback", and then overwriting the feedback when it turned out to not be negative.

I guess what I dislike is that it just felt personal. There could have been a rule that generated this outcome (I don't think there is, but I could be wrong), but rather than defining such a rule it just feels like the lesson is "don't piss off the admins." I'd feel more comfortable if fairportmagic were allowed to "get away" with this one but if a rule was defined for the future that would explicate how users would be punished for abusing the BTR system.

Last edited by 9700377 (2014-10-01 14:40:54)

Well this is true for any business or venue, that is why you see the text "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" on many policy documents.

If moderators and administrators cannot reason with a user, then it is time for him to leave, because it means he cannot be controlled and he just does what he wants.

I have edited out my previous reply, it was tactless. Apologies.

To get back clear headed to the matter at hand, if we do not enforce a -1, the only other way to punish him would be to completely suspend him from trading. We have no other ways to indicate that he was involved in a convoluted, problematic BTR where in the end he could not even come to an agreement with the site administrator, let alone his trading partner.

Last edited by sebi (2014-10-01 15:44:24)

What are you suggesting jassi? That we just let fairportmagic go with 100% feedback after we cannot reason with him? Don't YOU want to know when visiting his profile that he has behaved the way he did in 2 consecutive BTRs?

Looking forward to your answer.

Thank you for responding. I will be happy to address your questions.

I think you overstepped giving fairpoint a negative. That may be obvious but I’ll just put that up front. I think if you maintain giving him a negative, give it to him for the trade that you actually have issue with, and don’t have a case where you have some weird situation where you gave someone a negative on a trade that you normally would not give a negative for. This just confuses the users to what the rules actually are.
To address the sale of the JMTS between fairpoint and Micah since that is what the neg is really about. You again ran into a situation with no clear outcome, and without any way to make a decision you ate the cost again. I understand why, but you clearly can’t keep doing business this way. It has only come up twice, but your just banking on hope that it doesn’t happen often.
Back to the main point. So fairpoint see’s Micah doesn’t pay anything. He gets a couple bucks and a scuffed/scratched JMTS when he really wanted a minty one. He isn’t happy. So he vents on the internet. Should he have kept his words to himself and not posted again? Probably. Was his anger understandable? To me it was. He sees the situation as someone just got away with a bad trade and will suffer no consequences. You got upset in return because you tried to resolve this to the best of your ability by still taking the loss, and to your POV he is ungrateful. So your annoyed with this guy, then a couple days later he posts a BTR because he is nervous and impatient with a new user about a trade. You think “what is it with this guy he’s a pain in the ass he needs a lesson to knock it off” or something like that. Fairpoint is thinking “god I’m going to get ripped off again why do I keep having problems with traders on this site!” so he posts a BTR early.
Put yourself in fairpoints shoes. He had a bad trade, his trading partner didn’t get anything more than a slap on the wrist, here is a new trader who is not as communicative as he’d like, he’s just sort of down on mail trading, and now he has a neg to.
I don’t think fairpoint is a bad guy. I think he didn’t need anything more than a warning. I think your doing the best you can and are looking for a way out of a shitty situation with the condition issue when it comes to sales.

Since you asked for my 2 cents here is what I would do.
1.    Restore fairpoints feedback. His trading partner didn’t have a problem with him and that isn’t the issue that caused you to neg him anway. It sets a bad example for what is worth a negative and what isn’t.
2.    Give him a clear warning, that what he said and did was not acceptable. He was made whole, and that is the most he should expect the outcome of a trade to be.
3.    Reconsider fairpoints negative. I do think, to bluntly answer your question that as a trader I don’t see his reaction to the outcome of the first trade as anything other than understandable. If he did file a chargeback with paypal then neg him and suspend him. Make it clear to him that this is the resolution, and other solutions won’t be tolerated. If he does business or trades on deckbox he abides by the rules and decisions period. You say he can't be reasoned with, but that isn't exactly true. He didn't take any further action. He was still mad, and made a post he probably shouldn't have, but he didn't do anything. As things stand, he abided by your decision. Except he was later punished further.
4.    Resolve your issue with how to deal with sales/trades quickly. I think you know what the answer is, but don’t want to do it because it scares sellers. Every other online system, be it Amazon, Ebay, TCGplayer etc. hold the seller 100% responsible. They then monitor for buyers that abuse the fact. The truth is I can go buy a card off tcgplayer, state condition not as described and the seller can either take it back, give me a partial refund, or risk his seller status with TCGP. Same goes for ebay etc. The buyer is right, even if he is dishonest. It is the only policy that truly works because you can almost never actually get to the truth. If you’d have had this policy, Fairpoint probably would not have had an outburst if he felt the seller suffered some consequence of sending him a card in poorer condition than described.
5.    I personally would rather know Micah may have sent a card in worse condition than described than to know fairpoint gets mad when someone rips him off (from his point of view) I would be mad too if it happened to me! I may be a little better able to keep myself from having an outburst on the internet, but I would be just as upset. Your feedback system doesn’t adequately warn buyers about the fact that this person may have sent a card in poorer condition than he described it. As a buyer of magic cards, reading this outcome, I’m more hesitant to buy from deckbox. TCGP has a guarantee to their buyers, deckbox doesn’t. I know you hate being compared to TCGP but you are a marketplace where many sellers are aggregated  like TCGP. When I had a condition problem with a seller on TCGP I leave them a 1/5 or 0/5 and other buyers are warned. On deckbox, he did get a neutral. I’m not sure if that is sufficient, because the idea of a neutral on deckbox is it doesn’t affect your overall feedback score.

I think the micah trade can be ignored, although it clearly did inform the decision to give fairportmagic negative feedback in this case. I think the real sufficient cause for punishing fairportmagic was because after he was told that it was against the rules to post a BTR as quickly as he did his response was something like "yeah but I did it anyways because I still think this guy is sketchy." That indicates a willful disregard for the rules and I think that punishment is fair.

You're missing a crucial element (edit: okay, you bring this up later in the discussion), which sebi has brought up and which I noted in the thread was alarming - that after sebi had rendered his decision, fairportmagic openly talked about trying to get a Paypal refund anyways. Trying to skirt the consequences of an admin decision like that should definitely be against the rules, and people should know better than to think it's okay. fairportmagic may be rightly annoyed with his trade partner, but a neutral third party couldn't determine micah's guilt and part of using the BTR system is that you have to be willing to submit to the decisions of that third party, whether you feel annoyed by it or not.

Furthermore, fairportmagic's attitude was pretty antagonistic throughout, implying that the decision should go his way because he had more karma, basically accusing micah of marking his cards (he backed off of this), not accepting a refund, etc.

And I think it's fair to make note of a user's shitty/antagonistic attitude in one dispute and use that as part of how you render a decision in another. It doesn't mean you're punishing him for the first instance of bad behavior, but that you're just using what you've learned about the user to better-understand what's going on in the next dispute.

I don't think all of these issues need to be mixed together. How the fairportmagic/micah trade should have been resolved (an interesting issue in its own right) can be discussed separately from how his dispute with M Lee should have been handled.

Last edited by 9700377 (2014-10-02 15:05:46)