A New Scamming Model Arises

[BNB]

Be careful

It's more complex than it looks. Market is in demand of certain products, people with money will take the risk.

You can see this by amounts scammers exit with. This goes on repeat, so BHW should consider stepping in with anything they can do in their power to lower this.

If it was simple, it would be solved.

 

[Lukmat]

It's more complex than it looks. Market is in demand of certain products, people with money will take the risk.

You can see this by amounts scammers exit with. This goes on repeat, so BHW should consider stepping in with anything they can do in their power to lower this.

If it was simple, it would be solved.

It is simple.
Focus on:
1. People who are here long time:
-check registration date
-check their posts, avoid accounts were you have "discount pls", "sample pls" and other short posts to get the counter
-read what they write on forum
2. Do not buy via Telegram, only via PM
3. Avoid WTB and HAF sections. If you need account, find it in The Marketplace
4. Avoid buying illegal services like banking, payment accounts, fintech accounts, threashold and ads accounts. You want to scam corporation, deal with scams
Most of forum scams are around these accounts. People want to cheat Google Ads, make fake Stripe account, etc.
These kind of products should be dissallowed from forum.
You should avoid such accounts even in The Marketplace. Most of advertising account sales threads are soon or later closed with unhappy customers.

30 seconds, WTB section. Look at this, the person who opened this thread in WTB is just asking to be scammed:

 

[deppo]

2. Do not buy via Telegram, only via PM

Agree to disagree here. TG is perfect for people with good communication skills. Those sho have spoken with me extensively over weeks and months know pretty well the kind of value they are getting. Could never have helped them out through PMs here like that.

You should avoid such accounts even in The Marketplace. Most of advertising account sales threads are soon or later closed with unhappy customers.

Let's revisit this next year if we are in good health and not having been nuclearly annihilated.

 

[Lukmat]

Let's revisit this next year if we are in good health and not having been nuclearly annihilated.

Wish you good luck with service stability. Many sellers in this niche cannot survive more than few months and not dissapoint their customers.

 

[Zwielicht]

Maybe not go as far as this, but putting more responsibility on users. Stating that crypto transactions over TG are excluded from the dispute resolution section can make users avoid it, but it can also cause scammers to stay on the forum for longer without being scammed.

It's a real problem and I'm really not sure what we should do other than not allow crypto payments over TG, but it's also not enforceable, so it basically sais that it won't be covered under dispute resolution.

I can't answer the main suggestion of this thread since it has to do with the marketplace and I don't manage that these days (meaning I'll leave this thread open until either the forum owner or the marketplace manager responds), but I can respond to this suggestion for the disputes section.

I had briefly looked into the possibility of adding a rule for disputes concerning crypto payments made on Telegram. The theory was that it might discourage sellers from pulling this stunt if the dispute were to be automatically won in favour of the customer, especially since the sellers often have a habit of deleting the chats on Telegram. However, if you keep up with the disputes, you'll notice that there are some cases where the buyer is trying to scam the seller through the disputes section with falsified information (you know, since the chats can be deleted by either party). We don't want buyers to get scammed, but we also don't want to open up sellers to scams either. It's a complicated matter, because even if we did ban Telegram specifically, the scammers are just going to insist of using a similar platform that allows them to delete messages.

We have educational pieces around the forum about avoiding scams. I know everyone is tired of hearing this, but marketplace 2.0 is also being designed to incorporate features to keep both buyers and sellers safe.

 

[DarkerAds]

I suggest doing KYC f

right, lets do kyc for articles that can get your butt a lawsuit served

 

[Adelina_BisonClick]

We have educational pieces around the forum about avoiding scams. I know everyone is tired of hearing this, but marketplace 2.0 is also being designed to incorporate features to keep both buyers and sellers safe.

Looking forward to new updates;

For my type of seller, I posted my TG account and Skype in the marketplace thread, but for two months now, almost no one has sent me a PM, and no one has ever even approached me on Skype. My customers prefer private chat because they come from different countries and do different BH business and they also expect safe chat.

I hate TG, I got scammed for $2000 in TG last month, I posted in the lounge about my scammed experience, but I have to use TG again because for me, customers prefer it there.

Here are a few of my suggestions:
1, add a few buttons below the ad post, these buttons can be directly linked to the seller's contact information; when the buyer clicks on it, the seller's contact information can be obtained and will pop up again to warn the buyer to prevent being fooled; and this also avoids scammers imitating the seller's contact information.

2, according to the value of the seller's goods to stipulate the price of the market post, for example, my product is about $200, I would not consider to cheat people, because the black hat JV and the market posting add up to $180, I will not for $20 to go to great lengths to chat with others.

3, Utilize deposits to increase the reputation level of the marketplace seller.
For example
$1000 deposit, beginner marketplace seller.
$2000 deposit, intermediate marketplace seller.
$3000 deposit, advanced marketplace seller.
This may not be friendly to me, but I'm willing to do it in order to increase my reputation or get more customers to trust me.

 

[roydan]

It use to be Skype where people scammed. You can’t blame telegram.
People scam by letter, ban all letters?
Scammers scam.

At least then the chat would have stayed up for a mod to see.
Today we use direct link more often than before so it's harder to hide behind the "I never got the money" claim.

Ideally, BHW PM is the safest way to communicate with a seller you've never worked with before, but it's not as convenient as other methods.

I can't answer the main suggestion of this thread since it has to do with the marketplace and I don't manage that these days (meaning I'll leave this thread open until either the forum owner or the marketplace manager responds), but I can respond to this suggestion for the disputes section.

I had briefly looked into the possibility of adding a rule for disputes concerning crypto payments made on Telegram. The theory was that it might discourage sellers from pulling this stunt if the dispute were to be automatically won in favour of the customer, especially since the sellers often have a habit of deleting the chats on Telegram. However, if you keep up with the disputes, you'll notice that there are some cases where the buyer is trying to scam the seller through the disputes section with falsified information (you know, since the chats can be deleted by either party). We don't want buyers to get scammed, but we also don't want to open up sellers to scams either. It's a complicated matter, because even if we did ban Telegram specifically, the scammers are just going to insist of using a similar platform that allows them to delete messages.

We have educational pieces around the forum about avoiding scams. I know everyone is tired of hearing this, but marketplace 2.0 is also being designed to incorporate features to keep both buyers and sellers safe.

I didn't differentiate between a seller and buyer scammers. They work differently, but they are all the same.

I meand to not deal with these in the first place. A buyer who pays with crypto over TG should be the one responsible for taking this risk, as well as a seller that chose this method of communication.

This has a huge downside as well, which is why I never suggested it on a thread of its own.

 

[Lukmat]

The main problem is not on forum. It's sellers going to outside forum to make a deal.
It's no problem to introduce the rule, that all bigger deals like $500+ must go via PM box
And to force people doing it, make global annoucement in forum header like with theme previously.


You can speak with your customer via Telegram, but then both parties should come back to BHW PM box and describe transaction. For what, for how much, TAT
I really don't understand, why BHW allows to spam Telegram contact inside HAF/WTB. We have here great PM box.

@Zwielicht most of these scams are from not The Marketplace, where sellers are afraid to loose reputation or account, but from HAF/WTB.
Every topic someone want to buy something, we have list of responses like "write me on tg". That should not be allowed.

 

[Zwielicht]

@Zwielicht most of these scams are from not The Marketplace, where sellers are afraid to loose reputation or account, but from HAF/WTB.
Every topic someone want to buy something, we have list of responses like "write me on tg". That should not be allowed.

I handle the disputes here on BHW alongside @BassTrackerBoats, so I'm aware of some of these scams originating from the freelancer sections. However, since @deppo's opening post is in regards to people purchasing marketplace seller membership, opening a sales thread, and then scamming users; that's what needs to be addressed by a staff member to answer the query and close the thread.

In regards to your concern about these types of scams in the freelancer sections, the team only adds or adjusts rules based on data now, so someone on the team will need to gather and review that information before any further action can be taken.

Anyway, in the meantime, let's keep any further responses in this thread to a minimum so that those in the position to properly address these concerns don't need to sift through more than 3 pages of content. I'm sure your concern regarding the freelancer section will be addressed, but if not, open a separate forum suggestions and feedback section about it asking for a rule review/adjustment.

 

[mareks]

The main problem is not on forum. It's sellers going to outside forum to make a deal.
It's no problem to introduce the rule, that all bigger deals like $500+ must go via PM box
And to force people doing it, make global annoucement in forum header like with theme previously.


You can speak with your customer via Telegram, but then both parties should come back to BHW PM box and describe transaction. For what, for how much, TAT
I really don't understand, why BHW allows to spam Telegram contact inside HAF/WTB. We have here great PM box.

@Zwielicht most of these scams are from not The Marketplace, where sellers are afraid to loose reputation or account, but from HAF/WTB.
Every topic someone want to buy something, we have list of responses like "write me on tg". That should not be allowed.

Actually, it is on forum now. Before it was not. Now look screenshot I was shown, how one of the old members act to guy who he scammed yesterday. Besides, I also fall into his BST trap and he said to guy he has new thread coming in OTHER account.

EVEN I TRANSACTED HERE IN DM, because I thought, why would seller who spent around 800 usd would scam me, they do not care anymore, they have 48+h to scam as many people as possible, then they have another thread. Rinse and repeat. This problem is growing rapidly. If he will not refund me today, i will post it tomorrow to stop his scams.

I totally agree with you regarding slow escrow, that is not the way. BUT listen up please.

Escrow with crypto and almost instant speed can also be done, I am working with crypto industry and there are solutions which you would like to use yourself. Since people wants everything here and now. It was solved years ago. I can share it if Diamond Damien wants.

 

[andyframpton]

I believe your brother because you may not have more funds to pay for the membership. So don't be embarrassed, you can earn money to pay for the membership

What a shitty post.
This thread is about trying to make the site better not who has a bigger one.
You want to flex your wallet do it in the lounge.
Also if I had to choose who I was doing deals with it wouldn’t be some one who joined a few months ago and has under 100 posts.

Back to the subject.
KYC and escrow would be a site owners nightmare. Lawyers would need to be involved. The price of posting in the market place would go up, which in turn would push prices up all across the board.
Also I don’t think that many people would comply with KYC.
I think no matter what changes the site does there will still be scammers trying to get around and new measures to scam.
Sadly it’s a fact of life.

 

[Advertkey]

Because of my carelessness, I was also deceived. Because of a payment record, the fraudster photoshopped a picture. I was very anxious at the time. In order to provide better service, I did not carefully check the decimal point of the payment record. Therefore, after I returned the money, I Being blocked, the cheater can no longer be found.

 

[Rimperio]

This is the most stupid suggestion. No offence.
I consciously resigned from using card payments, PayPal here on BHW.
4/10 transactions were friendly scam from buyers. After they receive stuff, they were making chargeback, fraudulent refund request. Many of them... 5 minutes after transaction.
I lost that way Transferwise, Payoneer and even Revolut because people were overusing it. I had to resign even from using SEPA wire transfers because few guys tried to friendly scam with SEPA mechanism contacted bank ... hour after transaction!

For BHW I am using only crypto. We have here crowds of sneaky guys, who are making living from that.
I see you can pay with cards mostly for subscriptions in saas/micro saas. Most sellers are using only crypto.

Reason is not because sellers want to scam you. They want to avoid beeing scammed by buyers.
Try, accept PayPal on BHW. You will loose account after month with debts.
--------------

Another question for escrow fans. How the middleman will avoid friendly scams? Because BHW will loose card/paypal accounts very fast. They will need to hire a lawyer to respond to all these disputes / chargeback requests. On the end, payment providers will say "stop, that's enough".

Escrow would work.
There is zen.land crypto escrow service which are already on BHW and maybe the big guys could make some sort of deal for better fees or something.
Maybe BHW could have his own escrow service ?

 

[Seomaniac070]

Funny how these same scammers have ads on the BHW website as well.

ive been looking for someone that can run ads for me without scamming me, it's simply impossible.

Found only 1 and he just had bots clicking the ads lol

 

[Alex_B&W]

Are there esrow on BHW? For me really problem. Customers ask me a lot of questions, I try do best service. When they say, okey, I 'm ready to buy, they wait for any item, after that they will pay)) I offer escrows, but i don't know how it's work, usually they just want to get item, don't want use escrow..( But I can't send accounts without pay) Scammers need to die

 

[Echo]

Thank you everyone for your input. We're going to lock this thread as it's getting off track, but we'll definitely provide an answer within 48 hours top!

Update: As promised, the reply is below:

I've read through all of the posts, suggestions, complaints, and concerns. I'll address the main bits (as most are repeated) and the OP question.

Just look at the Dispute section, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out how the same people just buy new marketplace seller accounts after they get banned and "rebrand" themselves.

Do NOT allow new "marketplace sellers" submit threads for products costing more than 5% of the $750 marketplace seller subscription fee.

You want to post a $100 product for sale after you joined this forum? Good, here's your fee Sir, $2,000.

This way you discourage this "business opportunity" for scammers, make the marketplace somewhat more trustworthy and unclog dispute section too.

What i suggest is that those sellers pay more than 30$ to open a thread

I'd just not allow TG communication, or at least the combination of TG and Crypto.

If people can't use common sense, at some point we got to force it on them.

It wouldn't have bothered me that much if it hadn't harm BHW's rep and took so much resources from the staff.

lets be honest here, BHW is a forum that makes the owners money and makes its customers money. they dont want to up the fee as it will deter their own current customers.
completely understandable.
but in the last 6 months+ there has been an influx of account spamming to 100, opening a thread for a huge amount and then scamming them.
my suggestion? atleast 12 months old & 200 comments & active for the past 6 months.
will they stop? no. but it'll surely cut down alot of easy come, easy go scammers.

theres always other ideas of checking the IP's of the accounts, checking the crypto accounts, etc but we all dont know what goes on behind closed doors.
due diligence is still left up to the buyer in the long run.

The only way to stop scams is to establish legit communication & payment systems.

All BST threads should lose off-forum contacts,

And I know that BHW can afford create escrow inside forum. It would make BHW the best place to make business. Really, not sure why it was not done before. Maybe people were more honest 10 years ago here.

Many guys are yelling here to force sellers to use escrow services. I heard it will not be required in The Marketplace 2.0 but only option.

The main problem is not on forum. It's sellers going to outside forum to make a deal.

The quotes above are just some of the points I'd like to touch on here. Marketplace Seller account has a much higher price because it bypasses the requirements that Jr VIP membership has. However, it instantly labels them as Marketplace Seller - no posts, no history, brand new account. That doesn't deem them as "scammers", it just allows business to bypass the Jr VIP pre-requisite. As we don't have a post/thread history to review for Marketplace Sellers as we do for Jr. VIP, we need to do more due diligence on this account type (as you should when buying), hence the increased cost.

People/buyers should ALWAYS do their due diligence and read about how to avoid getting scammed when buying a product or service, regardless of the membership. We've posted a guide for it, all you have to do is read it.

Marketplace Sellers are not going to be "punished" just because there are a few people who try to game the system. If you think about it, it's not fair. There will always be people who try to break the rules and scam people, regardless of the rules or the platform they use - currently, we have a process for that and there's a dispute resolution section for when things don't turn out the way they should during a business between two sides.

As for increasing the pricing/fees/entry point, you have to think about all sides here. As mentioned, there will always be people with vicious intentions. However, the majority of the sellers are small/mid business owners and entrepreneurs who just want to find new customers and serve them. Making it extremely expensive or very hard to become a seller on the forum would make it impossible for those people to join. That also means that we're limiting the members from having a variety of quality services to choose from, services offered by those businesses.

Multiple people mentioned Marketplace 2, and there is some speculation about it. We totally understand the curiosity and we know you're looking forward to it. Trust me, we're actively working on pushing it live as soon as possible (even though we don't have a specific date for the launch yet.)

Marketplace 2 would solve a lot of the issues/limitations we experience in this (current) marketplace. Just to highlight some of the bits that you'll get, specifically related to what was discussed in this thread:

• No random Marketplace Seller - every seller would go through a vigorous precheck process and sign a legal contract with us before joining and selling their products - which means KYC is in line with marketplace law. Joining Marketplace 2 as a seller would be optional. You (as a seller) can always stick to this (current) Marketplace. Marketplace 2 would be our version of highly curated services offered by merchants that are happy to verify and able to deliver what they advertised repeatedly, backed by their brand on BHW. Keep in mind that the current Marketplace would still be available just without all of the added benefits our customers and merchants have been asking for over the years.
• Every order would go through BHW, so you're not going to send your money directly to sellers. What does that mean for you? We can verify every order, so scamming would be very difficult to accomplish
• Only internal communication between a seller and a customer - breaching this would result in terminating the contract the seller has signed (ie they'd be banned from the platform)
• Disputes are also handled internally by Staff - we have all the order information, what was delivered, what was not and dialog between the sellers and customers, there won't be any need to send us screenshots from Telegrams and such to work on your case and resolved the dispute.

Those are just a few of the features that I look forward to in MP 2. There are a lot more, of course.

Asked - Answered - Closed.