Scammers and maybe a few ideas on ways to prevent them

Allen R.

Allen R.

Joined
Nov 1, 2011
Messages
2,908
I took the advise of a mod and started a thread here, It seems like everyday on the forums another person is getting scammed on a sale or trade, is there anyway the system could be changed to say maybe only gold members or higher could trade , I know that just because your a gold member you can still scam but it may help stop someone from just creating an account with the intent of ripping someone off on their knife, I posted in a different thread I am a member of another website that when you sign up you haft to use your internet service providers e-mail, yahoo, hotmail or gmail etc.. e-mail accounts are not accepted on this other site, you also go through a 30 day trial period before you can even enter the area where knives are bought sold and traded, and you haft to pay a fee just to be able to enter that part of the website. Anyone else have any ideas please post so we can make this community better and safer for all who buy, sell ,and trade on here. I always say new members must ship first if i do a trade, I had to do it when i was new on the forums as well, and have not went through with trades because the other party was a new member and they refused to ship their end of the trade first, That's about the only way us honest folks can protect ourselves but on the flip side What's to keep a member who's been on here for years asking for a new guy to ship first , and then ripping him off, this too just happened a few days ago. don't get me wrong I love bladeforums and have learned so much from this site, but it just seems that the scamming is at an all time high right now.
 
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The only thing I can think of is requiring verifiable information ie: Name, address, phone, thing's like at as part of the sign up process to trade in the exchange. It wouldn't completely stop scams but it might cut down on them by making it easier to go after someone if they do pull a scam.

I don't know exactly how to accomplish this though.

Maybe signing up and paying a fee via a method that requires this info? Not necessarily a Gold membership but say $5-$10 just to get your info and have it available if you do pull a scam?
 
My service provider is Verizon, and Verizon will not work with Bladeforums.

We are not having people scammed every day. It may seem that way because when it does happen, we get kibitzers drawing out the FEEDBACK thread with comments, mostly not helping, just expressing sympathy.

Many scammers would be foiled by people being more careful who they deal with.
 
Another thought I suggested was to require a Basic membership. That's $10, and still gives BF at least your name if you pay with PP. A little more accountability than just creating an account and starting to trade.
 
pbcg said:
The only thing I can think of is requiring verifiable information ie: Name, address, phone, thing's like at as part of the sign up process to trade in the exchange. It wouldn't completely stop scams but it might cut down on them by making it easier to go after someone if they do pull a scam.

I don't know exactly how to accomplish this though.

Maybe signing up and paying a fee via a method that requires this info? Not necessarily a Gold membership but say $5-$10 just to get your info and have it available if you do pull a scam?
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Yea I would do that, If you have nothing to hide you shouldn't mind giving the mods your name address and phone number and maybe have them verify it somehow, dunno how they would do it maybe you pay the fee you mentioned so they can mail you something in the mail with say a code , then you give them the code to be "verified" on here.
 
I agree with Lone Wolf. I have been scammed in a trade, had all of the scammers information and his phone number and it didnt help at all when trying to reclaim my stolen items.

If people have to pay for a membership they may be less inclined to steal from people. The guy that scammed me and one other forum member also had positive feedback, 5 friends, and was on the forum for a few months before going through with his scams.
 
I agree with you guys as well, some level of paid membership should be required so you can be tracked down if you rip someone off, I have been scammed myself that's why every time I see someone getting ripped off I try and help them the best I can. I no longer accept or use paypal gift or personal option under any circumstance, but you can still get ripped, Personally I have all my post office receipts and dc cards from most all my transactions that way if a buyer or trader attempts to say I scammed him I have the paperwork, with the weight and DC# at the ready to show I sent what i said i sent.
 
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Allen R. said:
I agree with you guys as well, some level of paid membership should be required so you can be tracked down if you rip someone off, I have been scammed myself that's why every time I see someone getting ripped off I try and help them the best I can. I no longer accept or use paypal gift or personal option under any circumstance, but you can still get ripped, Personally I have all my post office receipts and dc cards from most all my transactions that way if a buyer or trader attempts to say I scammed him I have the paperwork, with the weight and DC# at the ready to show I sent what i said i sent.
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I would gladly pay a small fee to use some if not most of the services offered here on BF.

Unfortunately no matter what precautions you take and procedures put in place there is no 100% sure way of preventing a scam from occurring. I recall one member in particular who had been selling for years with great feedback that decided one day to go the wrong way. No way to have foreseen or prevented that.

I know I'm just stating the obvious here but it really is a shame when it happens. BF is a great place and these incidents, though infrequent have a very negative impact not only on the person being scammed but the community as a whole.

For what its worth, if some level of membership was required to use the trade section of the exchange you can count me in.
 
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The email I use wouldn't work here, so I wouldn't want to see that.

I do think someone wanting to trade should be required to have the same membership as someone that sells.
It wouldn't stop all of it, but it would help.
 
If sellers clearly stated their location, some of us could have chosen the option for face to face transaction. We could also have trusted local friends checked out condition of merchandises also.
 
Not sure how this would work, or if it's even practical, but I read on here somewhere about another forum (not a forum about knives, but don't remember what they traded), where everything went through a trusted middleman. Seems like it would be safe, but I don't know if the middleman was compensated somehow for the time put in?
 
Ken44 said:
I do think someone wanting to trade should be required to have the same membership as someone that sells.
It wouldn't stop all of it, but it would help.
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You don't need a BF rule for that. Just restrict your own trades to people with your own membership level.
 
One of the best ways is to be very careful and cautious in all your dealings.
 
$.02

I have purchased several dozen knives here. I got them all, and they were as represented. But I purchased from well-established members and paid with PayPal using the credit card option. I cannot imagine doing what some of the victims have done - sending valuable goods or money orders to strangers with little recourse. Educating the potential victims (or trying to do so) might help.
 
It would also help everyone if the peanut gallery in feedback would try and restrain their emotions when posting. It doesn't help anyone at all, getting ticked and whipping people into a frenzy. I've been tempted to lock and infract folks for nothing more than creating more of a fray when that is the last thing we need. We do our best to help people get stuff back, but sometimes i'm left wondering why some people bother posting in those threads at all.
 
jwren said:
Not sure how this would work, or if it's even practical, but I read on here somewhere about another forum (not a forum about knives, but don't remember what they traded), where everything went through a trusted middleman. Seems like it would be safe, but I don't know if the middleman was compensated somehow for the time put in?
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I like this to an extent, but it's not the be-all, end-all cure. If you put a Hinderer or CRK Sebenza in my hand I'm going to know right away if it's real or fake, but you might be able to slip a counterfeit Strider past me. We'd have to have experts out there for every brand, then we'd have a problem with a cross-brand trade.

The middleman could take and post pics of both knives for verification, but that's getting into an awful lot of work for him. That could become a full-time job real quick.
 
my hat goes off to the mods here as well just wanted to say , I know you guys volunteer your time here , and do the best you can to resolve any issues that come up, please don't take this thread as an insult in any way to you guys as you are the "police of blade forums" if you will and without you guys, who knows what all would be going on and you guys never get much credit as far as I've seen so I'd just like to take the time to say thank you to all the mods here for all the work you do and the hours spent online trying to keep order in the community, and doing it for free on top of that. Once again, Thank you to you guys, even the ones who have given me infractions :rolleyes: It's all good some I deserved, some , well that's another thread entirely.
 
I don't have any solutions to add except prople should be very carefull who they trade with. Some guys send out these high end knives without thinking it through. People will rip you off !! I just won't trade period. I would consider it face to face but never online. The most recent trend on how to scam someone is the in the trading forum. And these guys have been hit hard. People think about it long and hard before you send your hard earned money to some clown .
 
I have been thinking, and if someone wants a $800.00 hinderer or $400.00 strider or CRK what's spending 10 bucks to purchase a membership, they buy the membership,Rip you off and go about their business. Whenever I do trades I also give the seller or trader my phone number, I've never had a problem on my end I got scammed once but I won my case, but i like to give people who buy or trade with me some sort of peace of mind so I give them my cell# and say if anything goes wrong anything at all dont hesitate to call me, I've had some call because they lived an hour away and he didn't want to wait on the mail he wanted to meet, but it was the holidays and I had family to see so that was a no go, Some have called just to say hey I got the knife and I love it and I've got some friends on here that we just shoot the bull sometimes, that also helps in transaction, some sort of human interaction not just a blank image on a computer screen posting messages, plus if you do give your cell out and scam someone they can post it so the rest of us can blow your phone up and drive you crazy. Fact of the matter is the system could be changed and they could put new rules in play, and be stricter, require this, and somewhere somebody will figure out a way to rip another person off, that's just the world we live in now. A little common sense is gonna go along way on here , as I said I always post if your new or don't have much feedback I respectfully ask that you ship first, If you get an offer too good to be true, It probably is, I recently put up a knife for trade and probably got 100 offers out of those 100 offers about 6 were fair the rest were people thinking I was some kind of idiot and was trying to give my knife away, luckily a good friend of mind jumped in and bought it from me. Bottom line be careful. That's the best thing you can do right now research who you are dealing with, look up their recent posts to see what kind of attitude they have, Check their feedback, I even google them If they are new to the forums just to see if they have ripped anyone off before. If they have "trolled "before in some of their recent posts, I move on I will not deal with someone who doesn't know who to conduct themselves in a respectful manner on the forums, I'm not that hard up for cash.
 
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