I’ve been browsing the EE/classifieds section and looking at some good deals. My question is, what happens if the seller never sends me the item after i send them cash/paypal gift / etc. Or what if the item was not as described or was broken (lets say a rail wasn’t secured to an upper, or it came in an unadvertised configuration). Am I completely reliant upon the seller being a good person at that point?
Or, once I send them my money, what if they don’t send me the upper / optic / etc?
Is there any system in place to prevent this type of fraud ?
The short answer is that your strongest protection is offered by the integrity of our community and the reputation of our members. The EE section is offered as a service, and M4C does not actively administer, intervene in or interfere with specific transactions.
Should you have a grievance, you are free to use the feedback system, of course, and you may contact the staff to make them generally aware of the situation. In some cases, we can help by contacting the other party for clarification; however this is neither our role nor is it always appropriate. In cases where we can identify or recognize a pattern of past difficultly or abuse, actions can be take to restrict EE privileges or even remove member accounts, but we have no real ability to act or enforce anything beyond this.
Ours is a community built on trust and goodwill, and keeping it that way depends upon all of us. We do what we can to protect that, but when it comes to private transactions, the old adage “let the buyer beware” is still the operative guidance. We don’t tend to see a lot of fraud here, but when in doubt, referring to the members iTrader rating (and searching the Marketplace Feedback section) is probably the safest way to make an assessment as to who you may be dealing with, and the confidence you should place in any potential deal.
What we normally see here in the way of deals-gone-sideways is not fraud or misrepresentation, but rather slow shippers or cases where some small initial point of confusion gave rise to a more active conflict because of poor/spotty communication between the involved parties.
Good, positive coms and prompt shipping will usually solve 90% of these problems. It’s rare that you are promised one thing and receive another, and even in those cases, we usually see a favorable outcome as long as guys engage each other with consideration and respect.
Again, given our fairly deliberate bias toward a more professional and mature membership base, a lot of what you see that may pass for normal elsewhere is not typically seen here. When the opportunist fanboy-types pop in and try to infiltrate and use our EE boards just to turn a quick buck, we tend to spot them and respond fairly quickly.
This may be obvious, but I would also recommend checking out the seller’s profile and reading some of their forum posts to get a sense of who you’re dealing with. If the seller has contributed to discussions, is clearly LE/military or someone else who would have a lot to lose by committing fraud, etc. you’re probably safe dealing with them. If they have the bare minimum number of posts to allow them to start using the EE, and half those posts say " +1 " or " ^^ This ", you might want to be more cautious. I check out sellers that way on all the forums I read.
Good point. We do rely on you guys to help us spot these, and we aggressively cull empty posts to stop this kind of abusive post-whoring whenever and wherever we find it.
I can think of several cases within the past week alone where we reduced a post count to zero or near-zero when this pattern of conduct was observed.
Just wanted to let you know that we definitely watch for this, and have no tolerance for it. If you wish to be an active participant in this community, then you are welcome to avail yourself of all that we offer, including EE. If you’re just blasting though to sell a pair of clown shoes and seed the board with self-serving white noise, your stay will be frustrating and short-lived.
Can’t prevent everything, of course, but we’ve got your back as much as we possibly can.
Valid concerns. I probably have around 60 transactions between 4 different boards, and (knock on wood) nothing has ever gone sour.
As stated above, good communication is essential. Even if it’s a fast email like “I couldn’t get to the post office today,” it does a lot. The rating system is OK, but the comments are better. It doesn’t take much to ruin a 100% satisfaction rating.
Paypal (the non-gift option) offers some modicum of security, in that they will refund money if the item is fraudulent, but a lot of sellers prefer the gift option, mainly to avoid the 4% service fee. Again, look at the iTrader feedback. If they’ve got 20 transactions and 100% satisfaction, you’re probably ok taking that leap of faith.
Also, make sure you ask questions/get pictures up front. I got burned one time getting a multicam rain jacket. Reading the description after I got it, the guy mentioned the brand name (a made in China brand); however he repeatedly referred to it by the ECWCS acronym. He actually was out of touch on work for about 2 months, got his membership cancelled, poo-poo’d by the board … then popped back online, recognized my confusion and offered a refund/return. I took it and brought it up to the thread I’d started in the “beware of X” subsection, just to help clear the issue. Sadly, I don’t think the board reinstated him. The only real “issue” he had was having to start a new profile and get new feedback. My point is, there are some actions which can enforce the rules, but there’s not a lot of real-world consequences.
If you look at how it’s set up, and that goes for any forum with a similar set up, there’s no possible way to prevent fraud.
I won’t buy something from anyone without a history on the forums, some ratings, and prior communication of some sort is preferable.
The more the $$$, the more I’m going to look very hard at those factors. If it’s low $$, then the threshold for the risk i’m willing to take is higher.
It’s unlikely I’d be willing to spend over $200 or there about unless the person has a long track record here on the above factors for purchase. Under that amount, I’m likely to accept a lower threshold.
Like all gambling, never gamble what you’re not willing to lose. To date, my experience on M4C as buyer and seller, has been A+ experience.
Same here but I am always weary of forged items. Folks buy stuff at gun shows or whatever and they now have a fake aimpoint and may/may not know it and then it is up for sale on the forum.
Heck I ran across a fake LaRue mount at a gun show a while back. It’s a buyer beware world no matter where you are purchasing.
On at least one other board I’m a member of (non-firearms related) it is expressly forbidden in the trading forum’s rules to use the Paypal gift option. Granted it costs the seller a percentage of every transaction (which is often passed on to the buyer), but if the transaction turns sour the buyer has no recourse whatsoever with Paypal when using the gift option to make a purchase.
Good point. I’m sure there are plenty of items for sale out there by folks who honestly don’t know the Aimpoint/Eotech they bought at a gun show is a counterfeit.
I’ve read they still have some because they could claim a mistake was made as to which email to send the gift to and request a refund to send it to correct party.
They don’t have any protection at all when using the regular method of pp due to its policy of no firearms related things allowed. This is why USPS MO is safer because of mail fraud regulations.
Gift or non-gift if you use it for firearms parts you risk losing everything anyways. I had my account locked twice because people mentioned firearms parts. I know several others with the same experience.