Hey guys. I know around the sub lately I've been preaching about why it's so important to check forums on a market before you considering buying based on feedback.
Often when new markets arise to popularity, you'll see a lot of vendors preaching feedback from other forums/reviews on defunct markets. This is OK, for REPUTABLE VENDORS, and we, as the consumer should encourage that kind of practice. If and when a vendor has a great reputation, and has many loyal buyers, we're going to want that to be brought to light. This makes good business for everyone. But what we want to AVOID are Scammers, pretending to be reputable vendors, with hardly any REAL reviews, with stuff along the lines "A+ Vendor" "Vendor for President" "Vendor is awesome" as the review content. These are signs of total copy paste duplicate shill accounts. Very broad and vague statements are also very easy to notice as red flags.
As an example, the reviews a bulk buyer and supplier wants to see, are reviews along the lines of
"Stealth was top notch, product tested xx this and xx that, people loved it!" (usually a lot more detailed, but this is kind a guideline of the information you'll want to see)
ALWAYS FILTER THROUGH CRAP REVIEWS, AND CHECK THE FORUMS FOR VENDOR DISCUSSIONS. No one wants to see/hear the shilling, and for some reason, a lot of scamming vendors don't understand that it's obviously a load of shit. This is where I want to protect the consumers that browse these markets, and make sure that none of us are victims of bullshit shilled scammers masquerading around as vendors.
Here is an example of a good vendor thread Names have been cleared of course.
Here is an example of bad practice red flags in a new review thread
One of the Shill accounts, notice the ~5 minute difference between creation and post
Another example, again notice the ~5 minute creation to posting timeframe
In the rest of the thread mostly all of the reviewing accounts are similar. This is behavior to watch out for, so ALWAYS check the forums before you purchase. Anything that seems too good to be true, probably is.
Good information. Another important thing to remember is often a vendor that has been having problems the there feedback has not reflected the problems because buyers are weary of leaving a negative to a vendor that they are waiting on a package from. If a vendor has your money and you leave him a negative that means that your not going to get anything from that vendor so people don't leave negative feedback very quickly that's where the forums are good for up to the minute info because negative feedback is slow to come in.