If you want to maintain a rating system for all the transactions for all sellers and buyers, you need a dedicated person to monitor and do that. Not only he has to maintain the records for each transaction, but he also has to verify that the ratings given by the buyer and the seller are fair.

Sometimes even the buyer or the seller will disagree with the rate given by the other party. If there is any disgreement, messages and flame will be flying around and more often than not, the disagreement will never resolved peacefully.

I am a newbie here. For reasons unknown, my status says 'Posts = 0' even though I post at least once a day. And I do have transactions with 'regular posters' in this forum who FFK me, by reserving some numbers but never buy it. It hurts as I am losing on selling to serious buyers. So, even some of the 'regular posters' in this forum also can not be trusted.

I guess the onus is on the buyer to do the transaction COD if the seller is a newbie. Ask questions to ensure items sold are in good condition. Ask for list of any trades done in the past for the buyer to contact and ask about the seller.

Too bad if the seller is a newbie but want to sell someting, it will be quite difficult to make any sales.

Having said all that, isn't it the aim of this 'Garage Sales' forum to have more seller and buyers to visit this forum? I the aim is to attract more people to visit, then, it should be less restrictive as possible , so that it is easy for newbie (both buyer and seller) to participate.

I think there is already several threads which provide info/list of good sellers/buyers and those bad sellers/buyers. I suggest that all newbies to read the thread before commiting to any trade, like I did. For me, it is my money and I need to be extra careful.

So in conclusion :
1) To maintain the system will need a tediuos work from the moderator.
2) There are already several threads on good and bad buyers/sellers, which is informally a ranking system, but with no ranking points given.
3) All newbies to refer be extra careful when buying/selling online. Check if there have been any previous trade and contact the other party for references.


My thoughts on Sunday morning. Have a nice day everyone!