I sent this letter to Binh the other day and he liked it, but wanted to know what the group thought... so please read it and give your input.. thanks Ronnieray

Sitting in my car this morning waiting to go to work and I had a thought,
maybe a silly thought , but a thought just the same.
why dont we make some kind of certifacation for sellers? contact the
sellers and ask them to "donate" 1 player. Take it , give it a format,
make sure it meets the sellers claims, if all goes well, they get banner for
there auction page linking to mympx.org's report on their product. If it
fails to meet the sellers claims, then no certifacation is made and the
seller is notified that his product is not up to Mympxplayer.org standards.
mympx.org could became a not-for-profit entity and then sellers could deduct
the product from their taxes as a donation to charity. mympxplayer.org could
sell,raffle or whatever the player to cover operating expenses. if they are
selling 3 differant models, then they would need to send 1 of each for
cert's to run on each listing, not one covers all. If sellers wanted product
returned, this would be acceptable for a small handling fee. If seller is
using more than 1 name, then this could be used with his aliases i would
make a letter to send sellers telling them about how these people selling
hacked players are hurting there business by taking customers that might
otherwise be buying from them, and maybe something like, " once a person
buys a hacked player, they will say they got screwed using ebay for mp4
player and be a lot less likely to want to take a chance doing it again for
there next one. carrying the "MyMpxplayer.org it's legit" certification
banner on their products webpage insures that their customers are getting
what they're paying for, and as more and more legit sellers sign on , the
harder it will be for scammers to unfairly compete. I would also say
something like "sellers not wishing to particapte will be listed as such and
at some point mympxplayer will be purchasing mp4 players, testing them and
filing complaints as warrented. i think if we can represent the bulk of
legit sellers as one voice, then ebay/paypal will be more likely to have to
listen when we report fraudulant sellers. and any complaints we file outside
of ebay will definatly carry more weight if we represent the masses as 1
voice.
anyways its still a rough idea but i think you can see where i am going with
it.

I think you are onto a really good idea ronnieray.

This hopefully will help fight against all the bad traders out there on eBay.

There are already certifications out there on eBay sellers. One example is SquareTrade "Bid with Confidence" certification. You can see an example of this on this page here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290069885460.

Have a look at a screenshot with the SquareTrade's certification within an eBay auction here:




I think this can be accomplished with abit of help and hard work.

The end result is that we want to PROTECT everyone from bad sellers of hacked players. No one wants to be ripped off, so if we can warn people before hand and certify the good sellers, eveyone benefits and the bad sellers loose out.

Great idea!

However, there might be some potential problems, as some sellers might "misuse" the certification.

1. Some non-certified sellers could just use the certification logo (eg having the logo on the ad but not linking to anything). Just like how some ads have the Apple Ipod logo, but clearly it is a nano-clone.

2. Some sellers could send a non-hacked player and get certified, then sell hacked players subsequently and make a quick buck. De-register their account, and re-register a new account and repeat the same thing.

Well just some thoughts, but hopefully these problems do not surface if this proposal was executed.

i think that coul be a great idea, and help so many people.

Great idea, a lot of chances to be misused though. As said before, easy to get the certification, steal or misuse it. Scammers brutaly put links to this site in their ads before, but still sold hacked players. But still a great idea, but takes a lot of work to sustain, and gives the risk that the site devaluates in value if the certification is misused, and it will be. The site could start it's own (ebay) shop, if the prices are competitive with ebay, uxcell, I would buy there.

I agree with lattesurf ......too much room for abuse.

Uxcell is a great example. They support this site yet if you do a search on this site you will find that they have mostly very negative responses from customers.
We now have them selling amv players advertised, promoted and priced as avi players. Just another scam. Perhaps its by their supplier but its still their responsibility to know their product!!

Dave

I thought about this also, if someone can get 4GB or higher player, do you really think there gonna bother only buying 1 and then ordering a box of 2GB's , besides there are ways that you keep things legit, If you are familar with ISO standards, there are audit processes that make sure companies are conforming to the set standards, you make the seller go through audit process to insure conformity,you also spell out in the agreement what happens when they fail to conform.
If someone representing a good portion of legit sellers tells ebay that their sellers are unhappy because " person" is scamming and hurting their sales. There gonna listen a lot closer than just to "john smith" has a problem. This gives sellers a reason to police each other, I have other ways but i dont really want to make them public , but it wouldn't take long for someone falsely using a banner to tell on himself. old saying " Give a "scammer" a rope and he will hang himself. Any ideas or concerns you might have, feel free to contact me. any input i can get will help with tying up loose ends
until next time
download songs, convert movies, play games , do it while you can..but dont get caught

avionik99 wrote (View Post): › I agree with lattesurf ......too much room for abuse. Uxcell is a great example. They support this site yet if you do a search on this site you will find that they have mostly very negative responses from customers. We now have them selling amv players advertised, promoted and priced as avi players. Just another scam. Perhaps its by their supplier but its still their responsibility to know their product!! Dave

Dave,

I believe that's human nature though.

I'm sure UXcell has a lot of happy customers and lots from their eBay store too (just check their feedback). The problem is, if you're happy with something, you don't tend to talk much about. However, human nature within us acts different if we have a problem with a product or not happy with a product.

We tend to 'yell' out more if we are not happy with a product than if we are happy. I know for me, if I'm not happy with a product or service, I tell my friends "don't go there, they're terrible", but often do you say "oh, that's a great place" in general speak?

I'm sure we all have brought lots of things we are happy with, but do we tell all our friends about every product we are happy with? Not really, it's generally the ones that we are unhappy with that we tell other people about.

and sellers might make this cert for their own profit for themselves disregarding the help of this site to them..

Ok I'm gonna toss in my 2 cents worth.

This is a good idea, but like it was posted, It is going to be abused. If a seller is dishonest enough to sell a hacked player, then they are dishonest enough to steal a certification. What is to stop them from going to a good cert. and just copying it and changing the name to theirs and posting it someplace for buyers to see it when clicked on.

I am an admin on a board (www.pachitalk.com) not altogether different than here, but we are dedicated to Japanese pachinko and pachislo (slot) machines. Luckily our market is much smaller than the mp3/4 market.
We have sections for comments on vendors, both good and bad. If you want to say something about a vendor then you do it in there. Some of our users have taken it upon themselves to send links once in awhile to potential Ebay buyers that link to our forums. Our board is free and if the buyer is interested in these machines they usually sign up.

Yes here there is a blacklist, and a couple of your sponsors have their own sections. What is needed on here is a section for the white list. If you have had a good experience we need a place to put these so they are together, so the newbies know where to find someone they can trust.

On PachiTalk we don't allow vendors to advertise, this way it keeps us kind of pure in a way. We have a small self contained auction area that anyone, including any vendors can sell their products. We found that this will keep us from being labeled "so and so vendor's board".

If you're curious about pachinko or pachislo come check us out.

Now I like this idea. There is one problem though [excluding other problems that my fellow members have identified] - How long does it take a good person to be a bad person? 1 second! He could get the certification, Sales could increase and then suddenly on his new found publicity he could go bad.

Although I like the idea very much. Instead of just a static "Certificate" we could introduce something dynamic that periodically checks. Like a set of rules or standards defined to Sellers operating with certain protocols. Adding more dynamic rules and introducing changes as and when necessary. [You know this just sounds like one of Cisco's exams! ]

Also distance factor must be taken into consideration. A seller in China may not be able to send his product to New Zealand [after all costs are an important factor] we should have designated members in certain regions to do this. Also a general warning for buyers MUST be attached with the certification so that buyers are aware when the certification was given and when it expires. That would at least bring the level of problems to a lower height.

Yes there will be cheaters, but there have always been cheaters. This could be a good way for some poor Sellers whose business is affected because of them. No battle is won without a fight. We need backups in place to ensure a streamlined process.

A best bet is that "Put your trumpets out!". The best we can do is promote MpxPlayer. I put a post on my blog regarding the Memory hack sometime after Christmas and its a huge hits taker. [10 hits per day for a single post is large for me!] It has some links to the good posts on this forum. Most of the Google search terms have been "MP4 Hack" "MP4 Less Memory" etc. Even if one of them clicks the link, I have a satisfaction of at least making one person wiser. If such a movement was widespread we could be gaining ground. [Giving one post on your blog a primetime slot for a day won't take anything away from you will it?]

Also opinions should be taken from buyers of the certified seller to ensure that his products still conform to the Standards. Any report and he is blacklisted. This could make very big inroads in these scammers territories. That's frankly my opinion.

[Sorry for the warish look, but being a Strategy fan all of my short computer life... it just happens! ]

Thanks everyone for all your suggestions and concerns.

Let's try to cover them and see what you all think.

Starting from the top...

----------------------

lattesurf,

"Some non-certified sellers could just use the certification logo" - I agree with this. I will look into a script of some sort that 'hides' the URL so non-certified members can not link to it directly.

"Some sellers could send a non-hacked player and get certified, then sell hacked players subsequently and make a quick buck." - That is a valid point too. What we want to do is charge a fee every month for the seller to be certified. This will put off some as they have to pay for it. If a certified seller is caught selling hacked players, then they will be put on the blacklist.

----------------------

Que,

We won't be putting an eBay store in a hurry. I think we have our hands full with supporting these players . We'll try our best to minimise the theft and misuse.

----------------------

avionik99,

Refer to my reply to you earlier in the thread.

----------------------

arviverona,

Can you explain that alittle more? We will put together a WHITELIST which will list good sellers who are certified with this scheme.

----------------------

lddrizzt1,

"...copying it and changing the name to theirs.." - I will look into a way to stop people from linking to the banner directly. Maybe some script or java code that doesn't show the location directly. Also, we will create a banner with a 'watermark' which has a date on it so it will expire. Combine this with a WHITELIST, hopefully it will minimise this problem.

I totally agree with opinion on a WHITELIST.

The problem with "self contained auction area that anyone, including any vendors can sell their products" is that any vendor, good or bad and advetise on it. It can also be a place for spamming. We choose our sponsors carefully. UXcell has been great in that it gives us prizes for it's members, but also selling a large range of good value products. Ok, there are some with problems but that's with every product and seller I guess. Nothing is perfect in this world. I'm sure Sony, Panasonic etc products can be faulty too.

----------------------

geekwrestler,

I totally agree with you on a dynamic certification. I will have to search how I'm going to do it though. But that is the way to go. The dates will change per month and certified members will have to pay a monthly fee. It will be similar to SquareTrade's scheme. This will filter out the bad quickly as suddenly they have to pay for it. Paying for a certification puts VALUE to a certification than getting it 'free' I feel.

"distance factor" - Very good valid point. I will definately consider that to be one of the options to take on board. I will source volunteers from around the world to do the evaluation.

"Put your trumpets out!" - That's a great idea! The more we let people know the better. I've found that a large % of the people with hacked players find this site AFTER they've put a hacked player and find errors. If we can spread the world as much as possible and warn people/educate people before they buy, it will definately make things easier that's for sure.

"Opinions should be taken from buyers" - That is also another good suggestion. I will have to take that onboard too.



Please, if you have any concerns, suggestions, opinions about this scheme, let us know. It's really good to discuss this and hear everyone's thoughts.

instead of the cert being a static make it a flash applet and when its clicked on it could bring you to a page telling u if its still valid. add a warning to the applet that if its unclickable its definitley not valid.

let me help you out on 1 concern, someone named joe_seller steals bob_sellers link, when the bidder goes to the page of the items cert results, the first thing they will see is that the the names of seller is differant.... if that doesn't send off an alarm then there is something wrong. if the address of the report is something other than mympxplayer.org...then there should be an alarm going off in buyers head as well. if someone pays for 1 cert and tries to use it on more than 1 item....that will be very easy to discover.....so easy its not even funny.
there are many things that have been thought out, but to talk about it in public would give those who would do us harm ammo...forwarned is for armed

geostar,

Great idea.


ronnieray,

Also great idea.


EVERYONE: If you have any suggestions, please PM or email them to me. This will keep it away from potential scammers trying to 'cheat' the certifidcation process.