Using PlayerAuctions & How to trade successfully

Using Player Auctions for Trading on Sythe

Many of you have been posting questions regarding the website, http://PlayerAuctions.com. The purpose of this thread is to explain what it is, hopefully to put your questions at rest. It is set up in the form of a FAQ series. Hopefully this short guide will clear up any confusions about trading using PA.

NOTE: This will eventually be stickied. I plan on making or finding similar guides for all of the other payment methods and assimilating one sticky to avoid clutter.

1 - What is Player Auctions?

Player Auctions is a website that is similar to eBay and other online trading sites. You register an account and have the option of placing a for sale offer of online goods or buying online goods from someone else's offers. After a trade is completed, the players submit feedback for each other to keep track of the professionalism and trustworthiness of both parties.

It is very easy to set up your own PA account. See RsProd's guide on how to do so.


2 - Why is it so great?

Most customers of PA use their service because they offer charge back protection for payments involving PayPal. The vast majority of Sythe members use PayPal for trades, but it is often considered a very dangerous payment method for untrusted traders. (See this thread for reasons why.)

Additionally, PA is its own middleman system. When a buyer places an order, the payment is placed on hold until the trade is completed and each person confirms the trade. Additionally, the funds are held for up to a week before disbursement to give the buyer more time to dispute the charge if something goes wrong. This means that it is safe for both sellers (by avoiding chargebacks) and buyers (by avoiding scams).


3 - Okay, so what is the catch?

The biggest problem people have with Player Auctions are their fees. The sellers have to take the fees, which are upwards of 10-15% of the total value of the trade, so it is particularly distasteful for those who use it for selling. However, this is bad for buyers, too: sellers have to make a profit, so prices are often higher than they would be here on Sythe.

Another problem is that Player Auctions requests personal information from all members in order to ensure that it avoids fraud as best as possible. All people who deal with more than $200 (or are sending $100 in a single transaction) have to submit additional information about themselves, and even fax/scan a copy of their ID card in extreme cases. This strict verification process causes problems for people who are wary of their information being out in the Internet, but it can also be a problem because legitimate traders will have their payment denied because it seems to fishy. If the payment is denied, the refund process can take several days.


4 - Can I give/receive a vouch for a PA trade?

We do allow members to vouch for eachother in a PA trade, as long as the person receiving the vouch has a selling thread here on Sythe. In any instance where PayPal vouches are accepted, PA vouches are also accepted.

 

Hello guys, there are several things worth considering before making a trade with another user.

The purpose of this guide is to help members navigate through the process of trading safely.




[1] Precautions.

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Look up the user's profile on Sythe


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Post count
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If he has posted a lot in a short period of time, you should check the quality of his posts carefully - he might be posting just to fake activity!

Join Date
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* If he's been registered on Sythe for at least 1-2 years and has a fair amount of posts, it shows that he's dedicated and should know the Sythe community to a good extent.

* If he's been registered for 6-11 months, he's been with the community for a while and may have done a few trades already.

* If he's been registered for less than 6 months, you should inspect his activity more carefully.

Look up the user's trading history


Vouches

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How many vouches does he have? Keep in mind that vouch count isn't always an indicator of quality and that some scammers get many or cheap vouches. Take a closer look at his vouches, the people he traded with and if necessary, contact the people involved in his biggest trades.

Scam reports




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Make sure that the user has no scam reports on him. If he does, show extra caution!

[2] Making a trade
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When you're certain that your trading partner is relatively trustworthy, you should send him/her a private message with additional, personal information and ask for the same in return.

Make sure that the private message has a descriptive title to avoid misunderstandings.



Once personal contact information has been exchanged, you should confirm that you are talking to the person whom they claim to be. This can be done in several ways - for example, you could message them the most important parts of any chat conversations and ask them to confirm what you agreed on. This should weed out most impostors, but keep in mind that safety still isn't guaranteed.

If you see that this person is not an impostor - you still need to know one thing,, an impostor, can try to scam two people at the same time and make them to send a private message to each other, so provide the more details you can, and ask him to do the same thing.

If you still don't trust the person you're trading with, you can use an MM/OMM (MMs are usually used for small trades, while OMMs are mostly involved in bigger trades). The OMM list can be found at:

http://sythe.org/showthread.php?t=778174

You should confirm that the MM/OMM isn't an impostor either. Double-check his contact details and proceed to contact him privately as described earlier.

That's not all, you need to know the extra steps you need to take :


^ If the member does not have a very high reputation - use google, google shows many things about the people, google his username, MSN/Skype contact details, all his used emails, full name (Facebook is very good for this too).




^ Going first, make sure that the user is legit, do not care about his price/product, if you have more reputation than him - make sure that he goes first, if he does not - use a MM/OMM.

^ PayPal - make sure you accept a payment as a gift or via claim and cancel method. If payment is made via credit card or a bank account (e-check), it can be reversed no matter what the payment type is. I suggest you not to accept these types of payments from the new members.

Make sure to verify his Paypal information, get a proof from him that he is really the same person, that he owns that Paypal email, in this way you will avoid fraudulent Paypal accounts. Moreover, ask him to add a note in the payment information that he already received the goods and that he is happy about them (ask not to include anything about virtual items).

^ Trade speed, scammers wants you to make a fast trade, so if it is a fast trade, always ask for very much details, do not hurry, do not write PM's in a hurry.

^ No Sythe account, if the member says that he does not have a Sythe account - that's a sign that probably he is a banned user make him to create an account, if you do not want to make a trade with him now - wait till he gets a little more reputation.

^ Western Union, if the member is paying to you via Western Union, make sure to provide the services only after you claim the payment!

^ Teamviewer, do not let the person to connect to your computer via Teamviewer (unless you know he is very trusted), he can send a malware to you, or to trade the money to himself if you are logged on on RuneScape, sometimes even Teamviewer security settings can not stop the scammers, so be very careful.

More security advices for you

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^ Always use a hard to guess password, on every website try to use a different one, be very careful while using Facebook, nowhere use the same password.

^ Do not click on links which you do not know, check if a link is hidden, maybe it is a phishing link, do not download the files from untrusted websites/from the topics made by leechers (do not fall for fake Jagex or other phishing emails).

^ Use a Kaspersky/Nod32 Antivirus program, Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware program, from time to time run a full scan.

If you will follow these steps, you will reduce a chance of getting scammed to minimum

* Most of these steps can be used on the other forums/websites, using of these steps everywhere is strongly advised.
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