PlayerAuctions Under New Management

Hey Everyone,

I wanted to drop a special note to the Sythe community just to let everyone know there has been a change at PlayerAuctions recently. It's actually quite a lot to explain now that I think about it, but if I keep it simple, I'll start with a very very very short introduction. A lot of you may know me already, I'm Jacob (don't be fooled, I'm not as young as I look^_^ ) and I've been at PA for ... over 5 years now ! I think that's all I'll say for now bout myself (I love dogs, Star Trek, BSG, & my favorite color is green), because there are more important things that I believe pertain directly to Sythe and other trading communities. One thing to specifically note, is that as of October of this year, I have officially stepped into the Product Manager Role for PA Marketplace. For whatever reason, you guys are hearing it first:


1) PlayerAuctions is actually a pretty sweet platform:
The last data pool we completed, 97% of new orders resulted in successfully completed transactions with both parties leaving positive feedback.

2) Using PlayerAuctions as a Payment Method is not a Bad Idea:
I'm not really sure ANYONE else in the industry could claim this, but our fraud loss rates are at about 0.2% - 0.4% on a monthly basis. Bear in mind, we have been in operation since 1999, so it took quite a lot of development on our part to get to this point. We've steadily decreased our fraud rates, and have reached a pretty good stability point in reduced fraud since about April of this year (after we made some very good hires in December).

3) We've got a pretty good team in place:
As time goes by, you will begin to get to know the team as they poke their heads in here and other places around the web.

That being said, I want to acknowledge that in this new role, and the marketplace that I am inheriting from previous management, I do know that there are areas we need to improve & change. Here are my thoughts:

A) Becoming a Customer Focused Business:
I feel like previously, we focused too much on platform and technology, and not enough on the "community" or "customer" itself. Not to say we've done done poorly in this, but I wouldn't say we've done great either. And one of my goals moving forward is to turn PlayerAuctions into a business which regularly engages its supporting members. (such as a post/intro here). This might be from personal experience, 5 years ago I was hired on as a Quality Monitoring Officer where I would regularly interact with members. I loved it then, and I love it now, and I'd like this user engagement element to be part of our core business as we move into 2014.

B) Good customer support is not good enough:
I think it is safe to safe that our Customer Support is a lot better than some of the other RMT companies around the web. But that doesn't mean it is satisfactory. 5 years working at Starbucks while at University taught me, that good, or even great customer service is not enough. It's got to be legendary. I will detail in a post on our blog how I aim to achieve this.

C) PlayerAuctions is Safe, but it's strict:
True that. I suppose in our bid to become a SAFE place to conduct trades, somewhere along the lines we may have become too strict. I'm pleased to say that these past two months, we've been developing some pretty rad risk management technology which should help to smooth out the process and may transactions happen quicker while still maintaining the same level of security. But I'll speak more detail about this closer to launch.


I don't want this to turn into a mega-novella, but there are quite a few more things on my mind about how PlayerAuctions will be shaped in the future. For those of you with individual problems that may have occurred in the past, please direct message me (you'll get a response faster), but if you have general feedback, post here. You're ideas on how we can better support Sythe and Runescape, other markets that we haven't opened yet but might be good to support, or just a general touch base, go for it. I'll check back here every few days.

Oh and questions, feel free. I'd like to be as transparent as reasonably possible.

Cheers,
Jacob A.
Marketplace Product Manager

 

I've used PlayerAuctions once. It resulted in a %10 compensation of a $100 purchase where the account value was completely tarnished. It was blatantly obvious and an abundance of proof was provided, yet the support gave the buyer %90 of his money back.

During this lengthy process, I spent weeks trying to contact support. I was constantly put into touch with a foreigner who coule hardly structure an English sentence.

How have you improved your customer support since the changes?

 

Player Auctions has a history of atrociously poor customer support who have communication issues. Consider investing in English lessons for your average customer support representatives considering your customer base is largely American. I'll admit I haven't checked up on the site in awhile, but new management means little when it's issues with the front line reps as well. I used to be a merchant there with a few hundred sales but dealing with your support was annoying.

 

I will never use PA again.

In 2011 I purchased over $600 worth of gold through a period of 10 months.
In 2012 (Well over 6 months from my last purchase.) I had 7 withdraws from my bank account equaling the $600 purchased in 2011.

I almost lost my truck because I couldn't pay the note until I filed a dispute with my bank for THEFT and they luckily gave me my money back.

__

Trade with extreme caution if you do decide to ever use PA. (For reasons I can not fathom. )

__

Also, agreed with Nick- You deffidently need to invest in some English speaking customer support. Just a little conversation from a week ago:

 

Hey Cruel, so my first two months (Oct & Nov) was spent largely un-doing and fixing a lot of other issues (such as restructuring, hiring pretty amazing staff, business plans and budgeting for 2014, and in generally bringing better internal communication changes to our offices to help improve information flow). Suffice it to say, improvements to our customer support are NOT going to happen overnight. It's going to be a gradual process of improvement, one that starts with training and better organization on ticket handling.

Our "customer support" actually consists of two moving parts. One team is labelled aptly as "Customer Support" and they handle basic, tier one items. The other team was previously called "Trust & Safety" or "TS" for short, however they are in the process of being absorbed into our Risk Management department which has the basic aim of protecting buyers, sellers, and PA during the transaction process. Within this new department, they are going to be receiving professional training from our Risk Engineers as actual corpsec specialists. These are the guys(and gals) that usually will call you directly if there is a problem with an order.

I have to disagree Nick. I think that a change in management spells out a lot of potential for future improvements. Especially if said management is willing (and wanting) to work together with the community to ensure that it happens. Basically, as mentioned above, you now have a voice and can be part of the change.

But I do agree however with your suggestion, and that is something I am going to implement. Following additionally with Cruel's comment, our head office is going to be taking a more active role in the hiring process of our agents as well to ensure a certain level of communication ability.

~jake

 

Might as well join in on this angry mob forming:



Unless you actually plan to let people buy/sell bitcoins, get rid of this!

 

Hi Zach. I just got done replying to your message in another thread on this exact same topic But for visibility, I will reply here too: I find this occurrence highly unlikely, but if it did actually happen, please get in touch with me so I can look into it. You can contact me directly, or post here in the thread, either is fine. Regardless, in all our processes, a buyer should be charged once for a successful transaction. Double payments are not possible without the authorization of your payment gateway, so you may also want to double confirm that no one else has access to your payment source (our ability to capture payment from an individual's payment source expires within 24-48hours of your authorization on any given payment gateway).

As for the chat you posted:

.

I'm aware mate , as I've posted. If you have additional chat transcripts I can look at send them over: [email protected].

 

Hey Win,

Bitcoin is... something we are exploring at the moment actually. As some of you may know, we hosted BTC on our platform some time ago, but we took it down once Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) posted their Guidance change on Virtual Currencies back in March <--- (An interesting read for those of you interested in emerging digital trends)

We are in the process of exploring how we can make sure we are compliant with the guidance, as well as other items for licensure. BTC may be back up and running within a week or two actually depending on some items we are investigating currently. We are also going to be working with our Payment processors on this as well to provide expanded payment options for the BTC community. But this is very very very much on the down low. When we re-open BTC, it will be quietly just to test the waters and to ensure we have all our ducks in a row.

 

Coming directly from a friend of mine:

 

It seems your goals are in the right place. I'm quite interested in seeing how the claims you make are incorporated within your systems. I'm sure, like others, that if I see and experience these changes first-hand I would be more than willing to turn to PA for transactions in the future.

 

Good to hear that you're still considering it. None of the existing bitcoin exchanges offer the convenience/payment options playerauctions would. I think this would be a great addition to your site, especially now with all the hype the currency's receiving.

 

Thanks Cruel.

I do want to say to everyone to bear with me. Change isn't going to happen over night, and I have to take on the keen responsibility to make sure that we do not "bite off more than we can chew". My strategy is "one step at a time", small iterative changes that impact the whole picture, but that can be done in accomplishable increments.

That was one of our biggest problems last year. We had started this very large project which was seen as the "big momma to solve everything" (well intended of course, but not strategically sound) but it resulted in an entire year of PA being silent while we worked on it. Due to never seeing results, I've scrapped that project, and am taking the approach I mentioned.

I don't know why other businesses aren't as candid with their user base, but being "an average guy who buys things too", I have to say that I always appreciate transparency and engagement from businesses. I've got a lot on my plate, and I honestly may be slow to respond to some things while I juggle everything on my "to-do" list. But this is where you guys will likely begin meeting other team members as they help me out. I think Sarah actually has already made a post somewhere here on Sythe already. Go say hi to her gentleman.

Hey Darkest,

This might be a little embarrassing for your friend, but why he would keep creating multiple accounts when he kept getting banned is beyond me. (Can I register multiple accounts on PlayerAuctions). This likely reduced the reputation of his IP further and further until he ended up on our warm lists (different from negative & black lists). But we can fix this.

And I'd grant the benefit of the doubt incase you're friend may have been a new user and may not have been aware of our policies.

But if you take it from our end as a business which handles tons of orders each day, wouldn't it look a little suspicious if someone kept trying to make purchases with multiple accounts? Regardless, he should have received a response.

I'd like to re-iterate guys, anyone requiring individual support, please direct message me. I'm dedicating today to communicate with communities, but from tomorrow on, I'll only be checking this periodically. So for the fastest help: [email protected].

 

Absolutely did happen, because it happened to me. There's other horror stories out there as well. I've heard PA being glitchy last year and I wasn't the only one this happened to.

I'm also not sure why I would need to get into contact with you either. This happened over a year ago, everything is good with it. The theft report was completed successful, luckily, and I received my money back.

I'd rather not get in touch with you and owe you a fine for off site trading. >.>
Pfft.

 

Well "saying" that it happened doesn't actually mean that it did. I think most of us have been on the internet long enough to know what "screenshot or it didn't happen" means mate.

As I mentioned before, our ability to capture payment from anyone's payment source expires 24 - 48 hours after the initial order placement. This isn't a restriction on our end, this is a restriction on all payment gateways. Meaning that PayPal (et al) wouldn't allow another charge to your account, unless it was authorized (i.e. someone knew your password).

You very well could be the victim of a cybercrime of some sort (being key logged, etc etc.) And the fact that you'd refuse to allow me to look into this situation to do due diligence to make sure this isn't something that is continually occurring speaks volumes of your credibility mate.

I think it'd be far easier to say "yea, here are the transaction ID's, and the date it occurred, please look into it and maybe this will help you keep others protected".

We're trying to be above reproach in all matters, but if you'd like to be like that... meh... you're choice mate, just not sure anyone else would take you seriously. //shrug. 'least I made the effort ^_^

 

I don't mean to sound paranoid or anything and maybe I may have missed something. Could you prove that you're who you claim you claim to be.

 

Ya, How do we know you are who you say you are.

and PA is pretty bad imo

 

Well, the both of you are welcome to send me an email, and I'd be happy to respond with my direct PA email address.

Alternatively, I'll go ahead and ask a few of our regular Sythe users to post here and give a vouch.

@Shadow, we find all opinions valuable, and that's precisely why we're here. Not too sure how many other RMT trading platforms out there would extend themselves out to make this kind of effort, so... given our metrics in the OP, I'd say that we're still a pretty good place to trade on... and will be even better with the improvements we aim to make this coming year, ryt?

P.S. I'm not really sure what the point would be in me pretending?

 

You and your employees have been plastering your LinkedIn profile link everywhere for a very long time, but they've never been publicly accessible by anyone.






Secondly, I spent several hundred dollars on quite a few accounts over the years, of which almost all of them have been recovered by the previous owner. I filled out forms, and your staff ultimately told me since there was no insurance purchased (often it was never an option to buy), I was entitled to nothing. Your policy definitely needs to change regarding accounts. A simple insurance ponzi money pool isn't enough of a solution to many accounts being stolen back.


.

 

Hey Belbn, looks like you added a character by accident with that extra ")" at the end of the URL. If you removed that, you'd likely be able to check out Sarah's profile, or alternatively check her public profile here: cn.linkedin.com/pub/sarah-styslinger/7b/987/125

Mine should also be pretty easily accessible: cn.linkedin.com/pub/jacob-aldaco/13/b46/a42/

As for your mention on the game account front. We've already made changes to the process as of last week. Individuals who do not purchase insurance will not have to go through the standard investigative procedure, and what our next step would be is to work with the seller to restore access of the account over to you. If that doesn't work, then we would attempt to recover the funds on your behalf, we would also seek to have the game account permanently banned by the publisher, as we believe no one should benefit from fraud.

Insurance generally works out pretty well for people who do end up purchasing a package. It is optional of course, and those who do not are making the choice themselves to assume the risk of a lost account. That being said however, out of the total game account trades which have gone through PlayerAuctions, only 3% of them have resulted in game account reclamations. :nuts:

 

I think I'm the only person that's never had a problem with PA, the service has always been fine for me, the only annoying bit is when I was changing my disbursement email the person's english was that bad that I couldn't communicate properly. Good overall service though!