PlayerAuctions fining

I was banned for offsite trading for linking pictures on photobucket...

 

Your refund fining policy is also shit.

I just paid you $3.10 for a $31 order some guy cancelled after 21 minutes having never attempted to receive the gold. You most likely incurred no fees for refunding a credit card purchase and just profited $3.10.

 

I think the $3.10 is the fees PlayerAuction charges. And the processing fees for refunding a CC charge is minimal, but you technically agree that PA always gets their cut if you screw up an order.

All in all, it's still stupid.

 

Refund fee is 30 cents for PayPal and I believe PA uses authorization so it cost them nothing to void a transaction.

Also I got charged $34 for refund fee which is just ridiculous. I'm honestly thinking about stop selling on Playerauctions and request my $300 deposit.
http://puu.sh/4Q0zR.png

 

Yup thats pretty much why I stopped using them. No matter what, once a transaction is verified, they will get their 10% fee one way or another. I've had to pay $60+ negligence fees many times for orders that would make me like $20-$30 profit total, its just not worth it anymore lol.

 

Greetings!

First, allow me to introduce myself- my name is Sarah, I am the new Business and Legal Affairs Deputy at PlayerAuctions.com I come from a legal and business background in the U.S., and have joined the PlayerAuctions team to help modify its policies to make them more transparent and accessible to its Users. As we are now under new management, we are in the process of transitioning the company from a mere technology platform to a customer-centric business. I would really appreciate any community feedback from you guys during this process regarding how we can become a better business.

My friend and colleague, Jacob (PlayerAuctionsPR), has listened to your comments and has escalated the matter to me. I will be helping to address all of your concerns, which will ultimately be used to draft and implement new User-friendly policies for our customers (i.e. you guys) over the coming months. I’ve read through the thread, and would like to individually address as many of your questions that I can at this point in time- both to explain the policies we currently have in place and to describe upcoming changes to them.

1. Fees for reinstating suspended accounts

First, as Sythe Administrator kindly pointed out, there are major issues with the fee scheme currently in place for reinstating certain suspended accounts. Like 80kalle80 and DivicaSales brought up, a fee of $150 and a deposit of $300 are often requested. I’m going to use a Q&A format to organize my thoughts in addressing this issue.

Q: “What if I dont pay them….” (80kalle80)

A: PlayerAuctions will do nothing if a User whose account is suspended does not pay the $150 fee and $300 deposit. Kmjt, Busta305, and Xier0 were correct when they said that PlayerAuctions cannot impose a fine against a User who has not agreed in advance to pay it. Worst case scenario under the current scheme is that the User’s account will remain suspended.

Q: Will the aforementioned policy be remaining in place?

A: No. As Jacob mentioned, the fee is exorbitant and should not be a blanket policy imposed on all suspended Users. Going forward, we will specifically target certain Buyers/Sellers who abuse the platform (i.e. high volume sellers who consistently cancel orders thereby lowering the quality of our reputation…or Users who solicit private information or off-site trading via messages on PlayerAuctions for malicious reasons). As DivicaSales pointed out, the intended targets of this policy are Buyers/Sellers who pm other Users with the intention of luring them away from our protected trading platform (the concept our ENTIRE business is based on). To alleviate some concerns, I should mention that we only monitor and/or care about communications that occur WITHIN the PlayerAuctions system. As long as there is no on-site solicitation or sharing of private information on our site, what Users do outside of our site is not our concern and there will be no “penalty” (i.e. account suspension and request for deposit/fee). That being said, if someone approaches you on our platform and solicits you for outside communication and then proceeds to scam you…. Well, you took your chances. This is precisely why we forbid the exchange of personal contact info on PA. We’ve had numerous situations where users are lured into providing a skype ID, or an email, and ultimately get served with Phishing emails and get tricked into delivering for fake orders, or downloading Trojans/keyloggers. PlayerAuctions aims to protect you. So help us help you stay safe by obeying the policies.

Q: How are Users supposed to know when/how fees will be levied against them? (fezzbamf and R2Pleasent’s concern, in a nutshell).

A: Once the fee policy is revised, it will be clearly and conspicuously stated on our updated User Agreement and/or its corresponding policies. The goal is to be as transparent as possible so that all parties know exactly what they’re getting into. Our refund policy is up in our FAQ, but we will be revising that as well so that it functions more as intended (to discourage bad seller behavior).


2. Commission fees charged on cancelled orders

As Richard (Sythe) pointed out, when a contract is breached, the relief sought by the non-breaching party should be reasonably equivalent to the actual damages/loss incurred. This is essentially the reasoning behind the ~10% commission fee levied on Sellers/Buyers who fail to fulfill their contractual obligations with us: any unreasonable breach of our agreement with a given Seller/Buyer results in a loss to us of our commission fee (our actual loss).

An issue arises however when this fee is imposed on a User who is not at fault (i.e. who does not breach his/her contract with us). For instance, TradeFortress said that he was fined for cancelling too many orders even though it was the other trader who had requested the cancellation. This would be an example of where the charge should not and will not be imposed in the future. As with any business, sometimes people get misjudged, and for this reason if you feel you’ve had a fee unfairly levied against you, please PM me directly and I’ll help you out. We are presently working on improving our system to ensure that only Users who have plainly breached their contract with us (i.e. failed to perform their obligations) are charged the commission fee. There is sound legal reasoning behind this policy, however it might be easier to understand from a business standpoint, so I’ll explain thusly:

- Most people who engage in real money trading are accustomed to b2c companies. Not many are familiar with our advanced player to player trading model.
- Due to the aforementioned, when an honest buyer comes to the website, picks an order and successfully pays for it, but the seller returns a “no inventory” response, that buyer might not feel too happy. It’s even worse when the seller delivery guarantee time is 20 minutes, but they ping you asking you to wait for 2 hours. Jacob has told me that being in that situation “sucks” and that he imagines other buyers don’t like that also. What ultimately happens, is the buyer may end up getting fed up with our platform and decide not to purchase. This results in a loss of business to us. Worse yet, this type of seller behavior affects other sellers as well. Is it fair to honest sellers to have to share listing space with dishonest sellers making for sale postings but not actually having any inventory? This results in a loss of sales for honest sellers as well. Therefore, I hope you guys understand that this type of “control” method we are employing is to:

A) help preserve the good performance of the platform,
B) to provide a positive trading experience for buyers and
C) to help reduce customer sales loss to other, honest sellers.

I hope that that was somewhat informative. As we work on these problems, I will likely have updates. Please feel free to contact me here (PlayerAuctionsBD), or email ([email protected]), and feel free to connect with me as well on linkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/sarah-styslinger/7b/987/125).

Cheers,

Sarah

 

These fees are ridiculous. Thank you so much for this thread.

I've never used Playerauctions for selling because I've heard of these nightmares before and had my own nightmare with buying before.

__

Thank god for Sythe.

Appreciate the reassurance for me against ever using PA for selling. Lol
__

Like your trying to control your sellers to only using PA. Pfft. Yeah right.

 

Hey TJOC,
I've replied to you twice in two separate threads, but seems you're not replying. I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt, that you aren't a competitor and just actively flaming. So if you're not, please get in touch, and let me help you resolve the issue you had brought up previously.

Also, judging from your response, it looks like you didn't bother to read the whole thread and see the explanation for the fees

 

I have a great example that I would like either of you two guys to sort out for me.

Order ID: 1065701

I bought 200,000K 07 Gold off a seller who had it priced very cheaply, the seller didn't deliver within his 24 hour guaranteed period. After 21 hours (with 3 hours remaining in his guarantee period), he confirmed full delivery which he had not completed. I immediately disputed the payment (again, still within the 24 hour guarantee period).

He then went ahead and confirmed that he had not delivered the money (allowing me to receive my refund).

The total cost of the order was about $207.79, which I only received back $203.52 when it was entirely the sellers fault in this transaction. I don't normally buy gold but I did this time because the gold was very cheap and I assumed I had nothing to lose, apparently you guys decided to charge me $4.27 however this clearly shows that your system is flawed in that the seller's mistake in this transaction costed ME $4.27.


Additionally: You guys have closed my offers for putting "personal information" in my offers, which has caused my offers to be suspended automatically for like 3 days until someone in your "higher team" realizes no mistake was made. Seems like your automated system flags words like "message" which I put in my seller delivery note saying that I will message you on playerauctions to deliver and automatically suspends my offers once in awhile, and your support team, again, are unable to fix this quickly.

 

@PlayerauctionsPR, PlayerauctionsPD

I'm impressed with what I've seen of the so called new management efforts so far, especially with both of your responses about disputes on other 'black market' sites such as Sythe. I'll make a new thread concerning account sales that I would like some of your response on, I'll edit it in here.

 

Hi Isidar, regarding suspensions to your for sale offers, I've touched base with you separately on the matter.

As for your refund amount, I'd like to know where you got the $203.52 amount from? I've checked in our backend, and it registered a refund in the amount of $207.79. I've double checked with our Finance Controller and she confirmed that no adjustment was made to your refund amount. There is no notation for this order that either party would be receiving a refund penalty.

If you could clarify, that'd be great. Otherwise, you can wait a few hours for your refund to be disbursed and confirm with me if there indeed was a discrepancy in the amount.

Cheers,
j

 

Again, another example of problems with your system but you deny your at any wrong. I can't personally see myself using PA ever again for these reasons.

 

It looks like it was just corrected now as I just received my refund now for the $207~~ so thanks.

 

That's fine mate, not sure you'd be welcome anyway, seeing as I've responded to your other posts in other threads and you've not really provided details on your issue or responded in general.

I said I would help, but given your responses, I'd say you're either a Grade A flamer (combining that sentiment with your display pic makes me think of bacon, and I haven't yet had lunch), or a competitor with no scruples

Either way, peace!

Well I didn't really do anything other than check the status of your refund. I am pretty curious where you had seen that adjusted amount however...

 

Hi, I have a question I'd like to be answered if possible.

My PA account has over $2k+ worth of orders (all purchases, no selling), why do little orders such as $5 still get flagged? It's really annoying. My account is also 2+ years old. I don't use PA as much as I used to, actually I haven't used it in 3 months, so I don't know if the policy has changed, even if I would pay by PayPal balance, or credit card, it would get flagged.

 

Glad to see PA PR making an assiduous effort rectifying mistakes on their end here at Sythe.org.

 

Again, another example of your terrible customer support. Your about as bad as your non-english speaking counterparts on the live chat.

I don't need your "help" nor want your help with my other issues, you CAN NOT HELP ME NOW. I actually refuse to tell you my order number; want to know why? Because I had to go to my BANK and file THEFT against your company for what you did. I HAVE my money now, so why insist that you want to "help" me?

Ah I see, so you can try to charge me for more things, LOL. I'm good man.

 

Then may i ask you why you're still on this thread, just to flame and flamebait? Please get over it. If you have your money what's the problem now? Please, pm me if you decide to respond to this because i have no interest in flooding this thread.