Collection efforts...

[Day Dreamer]

Hi,

I would like to bring up a subject of utmost importance.

For many reasons, most dishonest, many NP members have been ripped off or taken advantage of by these fly by night noobs and many honest members have lost a significant amount of NP.

My journey started years ago when I joined up and would occasionally get hit with a scam artist, but I never fussed much about any amount under 2000NP.

Many of you know I used to own payables.com.

We competed with paypal during the 90's for the secondary credit market for online commerce and they had more money so I lost the battle. Now I use paypal.com quite frequently to pay my bills, along with many other common bill pay software solutions.

In all of the payment pages of many of these bill pay systems, it rounds off the figure for you. SO if you type in 75 and press enter, its 75.00. I noticed when you donate NP it does not round out that way and by habit I pressed enter quickly on my mouse and ended up overpaying 4 NP members 10,000 NP.

A few days ago I did it again and overpaid a NP member 7525NP by accident when I only meant to pay 75.00. I immediately informed staff. The name pros remained in the members account for 22 hours. Now they are gone of course.

RJ was nice enough to refund the NP from the member thank god. Thank you RJ.

I'm not here to argue how stupid of a mistake this was, but anyone used to paying bills online knows what I mean about rounding it out, and I am not criticizing NP for their system. Its a good one. Its my fault for not making it work.

I have like 340 people that continually need payment for something at any given time and when I log on in the evening to pay members NP I forget sometimes about not putting the decimal in correctly and as a result I have overpaid almost 20,000 NP. I am a dot com guy and as you know India wakes up at about 1am Seattle time.

Stupid on my part.....yes.

However...

I think that a system should be set up in place for members being ripped off to at least get some information.

Its happening way to much to members.

I think that members who are ripped off should be entitled to all of the private information that management has such as IP, and so on so that the members can then collect on the money using any means they deem needed to get the funds back.

Ive had NP members email me and tell me that they have overpaid people too.

During my runs with my forum postings, I have overpaid members 23 times. Only two good souls took the time to return the funds to me.

However, giving the victim member the info on the member that ripped them off would be some sort of condolence to the honest NP'er and anything at all to lead them to the person seems to me to be fair.

Or, have the members log into the portfolio page of the scamming member and fill out a "dispute form" with the time, date and amount of NP bucks involved. Once submitted, the system could maybe FREEZE the N0's immediately. The scammer could then submit a ticket of his side of the story and staff can make a decision. At least this way they cant run and cash in the NP and take off.

Of course it would be abused, so maybe grant dispute filing to members that have been a member in good standing for say.....a year.

I would like feedback and not criticism.

P

 

[RJ]

The dispute system is not a bad idea.

 

[Matthew.]

I think some type of dispute console is a great idea actually, being able to (temporarily) free a member's NP$ from being sold while the situation is sorted out would definately come in handy.

 

[Dan]

I'm not here to argue how stupid of a mistake this was, but anyone used to paying bills online knows what I mean about rounding it out

I don't pay bills (because I don't have any :tu online, so I don't really see what you're saying. On PayPal, you enter 75 into the "amount" box, so it formats it to 75.00. 7525 is a kind of weird typo for 75. There's a confirmation page, too.

 

[ChrisChris]

A dispute system sounds like a great idea but obviously has alot of problems. Fraud, determining who actually should get the NP$, the fact that some poor staff member has to sit there and sort through each one, people abusing the system and plenty more.

 

[dhscott]

I'm sure there would be a lot less mistakes if there was no decimal in the system. Remove it I say.

A dispute area would be a good idea also I think!

 

[champ_rock]

Dispute system is a great idea.. i think it should be implemented and it will safeguard us from paypal chargebacks if we sell NP$ to some newbie who decides to scam us

 

[ChrisChris]

Dispute system is a great idea.. i think it should be implemented and it will safeguard us from paypal chargebacks if we sell NP$ to some newbie who decides to scam us

The issue here is how are you going to prove to namepros that they did a chargeback and that it was for the set of NP$ in question not another one? Emails and the like are easily forged.

 

[champ_rock]

The issue here is how are you going to prove to namepros that they did a chargeback and that it was for the set of NP$ in question not another one? Emails and the like are easily forged.

the reputation of the parties in question needs to be taken into consideration. for example, an old member with a lot of positive itrader would not forge screenshots of a real paypal dispute, whereas a new member with no itrader is much more likely to scam as he has nothing to loose.

and freezing the NP$ is not really reversing the transaction. it can be reviewed by the mods and the new scammers will be cautious and not try these things if they know that there account WILL be freezed without delay as soon as they try to scam anyone.

therefore, in return there will be less cases of scamming altogether.

 

[Dan]

for example, an old member with a lot of positive itrader would not forge screenshots of a real paypal dispute, whereas a new member with no itrader is much more likely to scam as he has nothing to loose.

http://www.namepros.com/domains-for-sale-make-offer/327358-57r-com-wow-a-shill-bidder.html

A dispute system sounds like a great idea but obviously has alot of problems. Fraud, determining who actually should get the NP$, the fact that some poor staff member has to sit there and sort through each one, people abusing the system and plenty more.

:tu:


How about being careful with money because this is the internet and there are scammers? I can't imagine there is THAT many people being scammed for NP$ here everyday where a system would be worth it.

 

[champ_rock]

for example, an old member with a lot of positive itrader would not forge screenshots of a real paypal dispute, whereas a new member with no itrader is much more likely to scam as he has nothing to loose.

http://www.namepros.com/domains-for-sale-make-offer/327358-57r-com-wow-a-shill-bidder.html

ok but please tell the ratio of the new members scamming with respect to the old members scamming
i am sure that new members are more likely to scam if we compare them

 

[WuLabsWuTecH]

I'm confused about the typo thing. How can 75 accidently become 10000? And most people don't bother with decimals, so why were you trying ot pay someone 75.25?

 

[RJ]

Phil was sending lots of NP$ for incentive offers he was doing. In some of the cases he typed 7500 instead of 75, overpaying them by 7425 and 2000 instead of 20 in some other cases. A couple of the members were honest enough to return the NP$ after being requested by Phil, but others took the opportunity to try to hide or sell the NP$.

 

[holyroller]

having had experience in collections, Im gonna go for it and venture to say that maybe 40% of new members given the chance will scam. About 15% of old members.


P

Of course many new scammer are just old scammers with new nicknames.

 

[Coastalguy]

I'm shocked/amazed that there are that many dishonest people out there.

I guess they have no problem looking at themselves in the mirror.

ST