Good Companies and Private Traders

[X-ray]

In light of the terrible scams and bad experiences many users have had with eBay and other sellers / companies, can we start a new forum called Recommended Traders?

Those of us who have bought from trustworthy people would then have a place where they could recommend them and subsequent buyers here on AO could preferentially do business with those people instead of risking a bad sale / repair job by a person or a company that hasn't been recommended here.

I think it would be good for us here at AO, good for the honest sellers and companies and stimulate competition here.

[Cyberus]

Hi mate,
In theory its a good idea, but in practice I'm not so sure.
For a start, people could just completely ruin someone's reputation because they had a misunderstanding or a bad experience, when really they're a trustworthy seller.
You know, if someone has a death in the family or some sh!t like that, they might have some impatient {bleep} blackballing their name.

Secondly, you seem to get this 'stooging', where people seem to only post on threads to recommend a seller. Look up DaveM's posts for an example of this.


http://www.amiga.org/userinfo.php?uid=10227

[X-ray]

@ Cyberus

But surely there must be some value in this idea. For example:

I recently bought a DKB3128 board from AmiNTT, a guy who I didn't know from a bar of soap, who is an AO member. I sent him cash and he sent me the board nicely packaged and very quickly.
Now, I have the guy's name and I have a verifiable transaction that I am very happy with. So I think it is worthwhile for me to say that I trust the guy and that I would buy from him again and that he is a trustworthy person.

Now the difference between my comment and let's say, an eBay feedback, is that as I spend more time here on AO I will become known as a reliable guy and my opinion may be valued.
There are many people here whose opinions I value, and I would appreciate knowing who they have had good trade experiences with.
Maybe a safeguard would be to not allow new users or those who are not known to us here (?number of posts / type of posts submitted ?) to make recommendations in the forum.

What do you think? It has to be better than nothing.

[Cyberus]

Oh, there definitely IS value in the idea. I wasn't trying to totally poo-poo the concept.
Its just that we have to be careful, is all.
I've sold a few bits to people on here in the past, and they've been happy so far. I'd certainly appreciate the plaudits. Plus I'd buy from Redrumloa without hesitation.