!!! New Traders Court !!! (2018 version)

[4evermaat]

New proposal: That the willingness of a company to commit to an FPA advertising campaign requires that a company rep respond to any scam alerts or any @mentions within 4-7 calendar days, or their advertising can be suspended until they respond.

This can also be placed on the review page that they have not responded and the advertising has been suspended.

Now I'm not sure how much that would affect advertising dollars for FPA, but why should they be allowed to advertise if they cannot even respond to consumer complaints timely?

This is more than replying to reviews page. They must also actively sweep the scam alerts folder as well as their own dedicated company thread.

They must also have at least one username that is active. So if they have more than 1 name, one should be designated as primary. Even if that person leaves the company, they should still be able to receive emails from that person. It should be setup so that both corporate + all individuals that monitor social media are present.

 

[AsstModerator]

Please do NOT report a scam in this thread or ask how to report scam in this thread. To get to this thread, you already came through the Scam Alerts folder. That is where you need to open your own thread. If you are lost, it's simple.

1. Click here to go to Scam Alerts.

2. Look for the Post Thread button.

If you can't find the button, look towards the upper-right. You should see the button and also see your username. If you don't see either one, you aren't logged in. You must be logged in to post.

3. In the thread title, please mention the name of the company. That is very helpful for readers.

4. In the post, say more than "I've been scammed!!!!" Give some details about what happened. This will make it easier for people to help you.

5. PLEASE DON'T TYPE IN ALL CAPS. It just makes your post harder to read.

6. Once you have a thread for your issue, please to not open additional threads about the same issue. One trader having one problem with one company needs only one discussion thread.

 

[4evermaat]

I have a new suggestion about reviews. Current default sorting is Posting Date descending (newest to oldest review). But there should be a new sorting method. Primary sort by "open case status". Then secondary sort by date descending.

There should also be a new sort column to show this "open cases" column.

View attachment 48743

Open cases will include:

1. Trader's court case pending (voting)
2. Trader's court case completed: guilty
3. Trader's court case completed: not guilty
4. Reviews with scam alerts: not resolved
5. Reviews with scam alert attached: resolved

And then secondary sort by posting date.

This will do 3 big things:

1) encourage brokers to participate in the forum to resolve cases.

2) encourage traders to follow the rules and present evidence/discuss case in the forum

3) discourage brokers from trolling with fake [freelancer] reviews

This participation-based sorting technique goes beyond just the numerical score weighting and further incentivizes both sides to minimize trolling resolve the issue. Even with the weighting of the score, you still see this sudden flood of positive guest reviews, and even positive "registered user" reviews to push down the negative review.

@AsstModerator I think this suggestion is worth a re-look. I see at least 2 popular brokers having a sudden flood of newer reviews that effectively bury the negative reviews into the past. And they also reply to these newer, mostly positive reviews. So it seems like the broker is "engaging" with the reviews forum. But those same brokers also make no replies whatsoever into the scam alerts.

If the default review sorting was by "open cases" first, and then date of review afterwards, then it would force companies to work towards resolving cases first. Not taking the cheap way out of paying a PR firm to make their review page more attractive.

Once this change is implemented properly, i would take an additional step to actually disable ability for normal users and especially brokers to sort by date. The default sorting method.

Sorting by date link would actually be unavailable to users not logged it, and most users. Moderators and senior members could have that feature enabled. Rather than show 404 error, just 301 redirect views automatically to the relevant review page, but with page sorting by open cases.

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The other suggested rule where company reps should be required to respond to any scam alert threads within 7 days. Also, they cannot respond to any reviews until they have replied to scam alert threads that they are tagged in (or have been invited to). If they do not respond to scam alerts, they will be blocked from responding to reviews or updating their profile.

This should be programable, and can be made fully automated by forum scripts to tag permissions based on user actions (or inaction).

Companies may no longer just respond to [positive] reviews, but ignore scam alerts where actual evidence needs to be presented and discussed. That's a loophole that needs to be closed NOW.