But it is broken. Despite the "buyer beware" warning in the FAQ, a lot of mod/admin time is taken up with deals gone wrong.
Why are mods/admins spending a lot of time on deals gone wrong? It seems to me the problem there is that the mods/admins aren't really following through with the consequences of posting "Buyer Beware."
Not that I don't appreciate the fact that they care - but if it's becoming an issue of time and investment, then perhaps the mods/admins should simply re-evaluate their processes for getting involved and to what extent.
Let me ask you a simple question - of the many cases that mods/admins are getting involved in, how many of them involve either buyers or sellers who didn't use "best practices?" (Like using Paypal and operating within the 45 day limit). If you've posted such "best practices" in the FAQ and people choose to ignore them (for whatever reason, good or bad), then you as an admin/mod should not feel very responsible at all for helping clean it up.
I'm curious if the people who like it the current way LIKE that there's more of opportunity to defraud someone?
One of the things that we LIKE is the fact that there isn't a paid staff or license fees to on-line commerce software or anything like that which would necessitate fees or anything - so we can directly interface with our buyers and sellers. It's like Craigslist, except with a tighter-knit community (and the reputation system that such a community can build and respect).
I've found that on these boards, if you use common sense and play it smart, you're bound to have far fewer problems than you would otherwise - including when you compare to the trouble rate on places like Ebay.
Changing the entire system, just to safeguard people who are more careless with their money, is just catering to the lowest common denominator, and will inevitably take away from the community "feel" that this place has.
