Anti-Scam restrictions / Scam prevention

Gameflip - Questions & Suggestions
1

As I understand it, In order for a sell to get their money they have to wait up to 3 days UNLESS they have 100+ rating. Scammers quickly rating themselves up with fake sales and are banking on scamming a few hundred dollars from people (ex: Alexis Norman). There are a few restrictions that can be made to help combat scammers of this type.

  1. First and foremost, education. GameFlip does a good job of informing buyers not to hit complete prior to getting what they paid for, but for some reason buyers still got scammed because they rated first and trusted the bot would deliver their key. Maybe add an additional warning after hitting complete “Are you sure you wish to complete this transaction and lose your GameFlip Guarantee? Please note that anyone asking you to rate them prior to sending your product is a scammer, and GameFlip will not be responsible for any losses incurred.”

  2. Change the requirements for buyers to get money instantly from 100+ rating to 100+ Unique ratings & 30-60 days of account activity. This should not affect the legit sellers much if any.

  3. Add restrictions to the Auto Delivery Keys. Force the seller to select the type of key and how many keys they are selling and restrict the character input. For example I have an Xbox listing to sell the first 4 Gears of War games; it is 4 25 character codes. Give 4 separate input blocks with 25 character limits and force dashes after every 5 characters. for PSN it would be 12 characters with dashes after every 4 characters, etc…

  4. Remove the sellers ability to block buyers comments on listings. This will allow people who do get scammed to comment on the scammers other listings to warn other buyers away. At the same time you would have to make harsher punishments for those that abuse this feature, harass, or use this to help boost their own sales. Maybe make it so you can’t post a comment if you have the same item for sale.

  5. Make it so the seller has to wait 3 days for their money if they get 3 or more scam reports on their listings. ofcourse moderators should have the ability to lift the wait time if it is found to be a legit sale.

These are just a few ideas I has since I ran into 2 scammers in one night. Fortunately I did NOT get scammed and GameFlip returned my funds. If anyone else has any other ideas that could help combat these scurge, please post them below. These toxic sellers are destroying a great app.

@DunnBiscuit @Tali @op_JOkEr @AponeGF

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2

Those are indeed good ideas.

^ To make it even more evident, this part should be bigger or in bold form or different color etc. To make it obvious for the new buyer that this will happen. I know very few people actually read the FAQ, so to avoid those simple scams the more information for the buyer, the better.

3

I wholeheartedly disagree with this one, though. Did you ever consider how easy it is for a buyer to flame or scam others?
E.G.: Right on this very moment I have a potential scammer buyer who escalated a dispute from a 100% working key (I always move the key directly from HB’s vault to Gameflip’s vault) saying that “the key didn’t work”. He provided 0 evidence of his claims and it is taking so long for the Staff to resolve the issue that I’m now afraid both my key and the money are gone for me.
He certainly has had the time give/trade the key or activate it in an alternative account from all the time he had.
So why shouldn’t I be able to block that guy and his comments? You gotta see it from the seller standing point too, mate!

4

Hello!

Thanks for the great suggestions here, we are going to read all of them carefully and see what can be done.

In advance, regarding the suggestion number 1: education. I am already tracing a plan to educate the whole community, not only regarding scammers, but regarding many other processes regarding the marketplace.

If you have any other kind of suggestion, just post it here.

Thank you.

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