Sythe.org Player-Auctions Donation Center

PM the idea to me Prod. I'll pass it on to Matthew if it's worth looking into further.


Another thing to consider for those who end up donating through this method (If Matthew approves it, and I end up running it) Is that you will NOT get your rank until after the PA payment has successfully cleared and I've passed your name up to Matthew. This will end up being around a 1-2+ week turn around period for people actually receiving their ranks.

 

I thought this idea had already been presented, as well as the proposed eBay idea.

Nevertheless, 100% support. Considering Player Auctions is now widely used to prevent the 'big sellers' from being charge backed, I haven't heard ANY negative feedback about it other than it's fees.

It would be a great way to reintroduce PayPal, without the hassle of chargebacks.
THE ONLY minuscule downside I could possible see in the future is that people may leave negative feedback, as n4n0 said for the length of time required for the rank to be received. Some people are just not patient, and expect things now rather than later. That being said, the problem is small, and easily overcome, so it's virtually redundant.

 

Hmm... would require someone trusted, but paypal would be very convienent....

c'mon someone! think of a genious idea.

 

@Matthew it seems to work for all bulk sellers against chargebacks

why would it stop sythe?

 

That makes sense, but there is always a chance someone could claim it was unauthorized, and get there money back regardless... and people usually take that risk?

 

I am really glad you suggested this RsProd! I was thinking of something along the same lines just a couple of days ago, however I felt like if I were to suggest it that the idea would get shot down. However it appears that you are getting a bunch of support on this. I would someone to do these sort of donations, because as long as both parties on player auctions confirm that they recieve and sent gold then there is no way for Sythe to lose the money (to my knowledge).

I hope to see this implemented because for the past week I've been looking for someone that I could donate $55-60 to through paypal or RSGP and they could donate through WU for the donation to go towards my account. But this way if approved I don't need to.

Full support.

 

sad matthew didnt like this, PA pays for all the chargebacks..not you

 

I support this. It's just a better overall improvement for the website and would bring more people to this website.

 

I completely disagree. Once an order has been completed, and you have proof of the trade, there is no way the buyer can successfully charge-back which effects you. Player Auctions is there to 3rd party the trade, to make sure it is completely safe for both parties. Any chargebacks that happen with PA, DO NOT effect the seller. Player Auctions takes the hit. So in the minimal cases where people are actually going to charge-back their donations, it will not effect the sythe user who is maintaining the shop.

It's worth putting a little more effort into something which will no doubt, benefit the site.

As quoted from my OP:

 

I have to support this on Matthew. PA won't ever chargeback you, if they get chargedback, they lose money, not Sythe. Also, PA doesn't do fraud. So there's no way Sythe's donations account get limited for any reason.

It's a very good idea in which Sythe is safe.

100% Support. Nice idea RsProd

 

Thanks Black Tux.

 

I really liked the needle suggestion too. That is a smart way to stay within the rules of PlayerAuctions. Although Matthew is not willing to make it official mabey a very trusted mod or member would be willing to start a service. I think that it would be very successful.

However the one thing I can see being a possible problem is that if PlayerAuctions were to find out somehow and a chargeback were to occur they would think that Sythe / the Sythe community is trying to commit fraud through player auctions. And possibly resulting in them losing more and more money which could eventually anger their company. If people are donating by buying an item highly overpriced it would raise some suspicion. If a chargeback were to occur they would find it really fish that someone decided to pay 115$ for 4 needles and then chargeback, resulting in the person PA believes to be selling needles keeping the $115 / donation money and resulting in PlayerAuctions losing $115. I could see how PlayerAuctions could think that people are trying to basically steal money from them even if that was not the case. If it were to continue to occur it could even make legal issues rise up.

If there was some way to prevent this then I still think it is a good idea, and I still want to donate and as of this moment it seems like the most practical way.

 

The only concerns are not chargebacks and I'm sure that's not even the main concern as you can just ban the user if he chargebacks. I think the main concern is having money go through PayPal, which with playerauctions money will still have to go through PayPal. I read somewhere that some one set up an account to collect donations for hurricane Katrina victims through PayPal and their account got frozen, I'm sure that this is the main concern with Matthew as well.

 

Here's proof for Matthew about the chargeback issue:

 

I guess you proved me wrong. This has my full support now, I assumed that regardless that they would have some flags raised and think that something suspicious is going on. Although he said they cannot question it if you have the screenshot proof so I see no reason now why it will not work. The only slight skepticism I have now is that the answer was given by a chat room support person, I hope they he knows what he is talking about and understood you correctly; because if not there is a possibility of problems down the road if PlayerAuctions starts to lose money because of chargebacks to the same seller.

 

Thanks for the support. I will ask another one of their live chat people the exact same questions, and we'll see how / if the answers differ.

 

That screenshot makes this seem like it can make headway, but there are a few things wrong with it. I'll try and address them here, and maybe you can provide solutions.

Primarily, donations are handled very specifically because of tax reasons. That is the biggest reason why you can presently only mail or WU a donation to Matthew. To overcome this issue, we have had proctors who first donated a large sum to Matthew (setting up a "bond") and then reimbursing themselves using the method of their choice. Matthew doesn't let just anyone be a proctor, though. From what I saw from Spyike and Nate, you typically do a vader check to see that you are not granting a ban evader a source of trust (donor rank = trust on this site, regardless of if the trust is warranted) as well as a little more background checking. This means that a moderator will almost certainly have to do it. Also, the person will have to possess nearly undeniable and perfect trust, obviously.

The "method of their choice" is the biggest issue here. PayPal directly is obviously an issue for anyone who wants to be a proctor because Matthew does not return funds if the proctor gets charged back. Other payments are an issue because of their fees (i.e., a person has to donate $30 just to get a $25 donor rank OR the proctor slowly uses his own money to cover the fees and goes broke IRL). PA is good for the first issue, but the fees are huge. You'll almost certainly have to make people donate a lot extra for their rank. One particular issue with PA is that it takes a week to receive the funds, so unless a person is sitting on a fat wad of cash IRL, their bond-donation cycle will be very slow.

Finally, the last issue is the proctor's tax liability. Because of the tax issues, setting up a "donations" account has to be done by Sythe himself. Based on past experience, this won't happen. So, proctors have been basically making themselves a huge target with the IRS by taking in thousands of dollars that are technically a source of income. (Paypal was great for this, because you can set up a donations service on Paypal without the information that only Sythe can legally provide.) I, myself, was planning on making a Google account for accepting donations, but the only way I could legally spin it was by selling (as you suggested) a junk item for $5, $25, $50, and so on. Legitimate donations with Google require you to be basically in a financial position with the company, which I obviousl am not. As far as I know, the only person who is legally considered the financial officer of Sythe is Sythe, himself. The problem with this is that the IRS will see this system as a form of goods selling, not just middle-manning donations. If the proctor was to to get audited in my taxes, they would see the thousands of dollars being transferred to the proctor's bank for, in their eyes, the sale of goods. They would, as such, charge 20-30% off of that as income.

 

I'm only going to answer the top section because I have no experience with the IRS, or taxation, so my views and input would have no actual evidence or experience behind them.

It would definitely be a Moderators, or Admins job, and as I said in the OP, you'd preferably be looking to a Global+ so they could maintain IP checks, and have gone through the rigorous selection process already. The person who is being the 'proctor' would send the payment to Matthew via WU / Mail for the reason that it can be a form of untraceable payment.

I'm not going to post here acting like I can come up with the final solution, because I really don't know too much on the matter. My suggestion was originally to try and gain some support, and let the people who know what they're talking about talk about it. We have a lot of smart cookies here on sythe, whom I assume deal with this kid of stuff for a living. Their opinion on this matter is, and will be much better than mine.

 

The IRS cannot ever touch you unless you hit $20,000 or more, thats why I was going to stop donations if I could have reached $15,000 - 18,000 mark.

If I get my paypal account unlocked I'm not sure I'd do them again as I will be selling gold and paying federal income tax on all $ received...and I don't want to take a 20%+ hit for the donations I take through paypal as well.