Silk Road forums

Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: incogmagnito on January 27, 2013, 08:35 am

Title: vendor ratings, FE and safety ... instead of pure spam
Post by: incogmagnito on January 27, 2013, 08:35 am
Rather than simply vent my frustration at the fact that I have wasted a month being able to post anywhere and made only 20 posts, I will try to turn this into a useful post for newbies ... Here are my questions/issues:

1. Ratings - 5/5 given to a vendor seems to mean very little - when I read actual comments I see that packaging can be (very) poor, communication slow and deliveries hit and miss and yet vendor gets 5/5. Why? I feel we need to stop doing this as this is disservice to community and neither helps vendors to improve. I feel that comments like "FE on vendors request. Nothing arrived and vendor refuses and re-send or rebate because I am a newbie" should not be next to 5/5 score. Make it at least 3/5.

2. FE - in Black Market Reloaded guys have an interesting system where they break an escrow into two parts - shipping and actual product. Some people sassed this out and started breaking their total price into two chunks 50% of which should be released upfront if user is a newbie. Seems to be a lot more reasonable. At least having this option instead of an arbitrary "users who spent less than $1000 should FE or order will be cancelled". This could allow for a lot more flexible approach

3. GPG/PGP - Due to lack of time I still find this whole area just too taxing - too many things to install, read, absorb, etc ... I agree it is important, but here is a small tip I would give to those paranoid buyers who are worried about putting their address into the order form - use www.privnote.com and generate a link that can be used only once and its contents are being deleted as it is displayed first time. This way even if your order remains on the system and imaginary perpetrator gets to this record all they will ever be able to see is a dead link

and 4 and my biggest frustration so far - where is more mescaline? :) I would really welcome ideas or suggestions on how I can get access to extracted mescaline

Sorry for the long rant - may be I should have broken it up into 30 pieces and be off :)
Title: Re: vendor ratings, FE and safety ... instead of pure spam
Post by: PissnNails on August 24, 2013, 06:08 am
Nice post.
Thanks
Title: Re: vendor ratings, FE and safety ... instead of pure spam
Post by: Naimeax on August 24, 2013, 06:17 am
Good post, I agree with the change you suggest. I noticed however a lot of vendors won't use privnote autodestruct messages... Why not? I don't understand what the security issue is... Anyone able to explain?
Title: Re: vendor ratings, FE and safety ... instead of pure spam
Post by: JoyceBradburyKing on August 24, 2013, 06:18 am
That contradicts the rating system I suppose. But you should be reading the content of the feedback rather than just looking at overall rating when making your decisions. For your own sake.
The actual written feedback is infinitely more useful than the numbered ratings.
They could add in a rating breakdown for the most important aspects, that might be more useful.
Title: Re: vendor ratings, FE and safety ... instead of pure spam
Post by: incogmagnito on August 24, 2013, 10:04 am
in light of the latest news on NSA, etc. I am kinda changing my mind on privnote - there are a lot more things that can go wrong there than with GPG, so learn your PGP :)

What can go wrong? Packets of data can be intercepted and what you type can be captured, or what is displayed ... or privnote might be hacked or subpoenaed ... or it might be a honeypot to start with ... GPG, especially at higher levels of security should be a lot more trustworthy than privnote.

Be safe,
IM
Title: Re: vendor ratings, FE and safety ... instead of pure spam
Post by: Weaponstech on August 24, 2013, 11:44 am
very informative, thanks a lot for posting. : )
Title: Re: vendor ratings, FE and safety ... instead of pure spam
Post by: rwitherspoon on August 24, 2013, 12:09 pm
I think it's pretty much understood that unless something went really horrible like- you never got your shit, even though you used your correct name and address, and the vendor refused to communicate with you, or something to that effect that most people are going to leave a 5/5.  You have to actually read the reviews, that's where most of the value is. 
Title: Re: vendor ratings, FE and safety ... instead of pure spam
Post by: Naimeax on August 24, 2013, 05:12 pm
Plus by going to page 15 or 20 of a Top vendors reviews, you can get an idea of the volume of their business too.. it's pretty cool... 10 reviews per page at page is 200 orders, and then look at how many day's ago the orders on page 20 were made.. 14 day's ago, then look at the items that were purchased mostly...

Anyway, I thought it was cool... =)