Corey: Requesting this be handled as a Scam Report

[SuF]

We aren't going to take your word on stuff. Provide proof.

 

[Grave]

We aren't going to take your word on stuff. Provide proof.

If that statement is directed toward the IPs and phone numbers, I can private message you to the details. Right now I'm still looking at my logs and trying to find evidence that Corey did not make the call and/or knew that he had to keep logs/evidence. I'll edit this post and include it if I do find anything substantial.

 

[SuF]

If that statement is directed toward the IPs and phone numbers, I can private message you to the details. Right now I'm still looking at my logs and trying to find evidence that Corey did not make the call and/or knew that he had to keep logs/evidence. I'll edit this post and include it if I do find anything substantial.

PM me the IP's and phone numbers. The same payment screen will be fine.

 

[SuF]

Richard: http://sythe.org/showthread.php?p=11445204#post11445204

That contains orders before and after Corey's to back up Grave's assertion that the IP changed from previous orders. I haven't looked at them all yet.

He also wants to know how he would be able to prove Corey didn't make the call. I just don't think it's possible.

Edit: I looked through the pictures and made a list of IPs and #s for future reference in the thread linked above.

 

@Grave:

I am not asking you to prove a negative. I am merely pointing out that the burden of proof is on you. You claim he did not make the calls. He claims he did make the calls. I have seen no evidence either way. However the burden of proof is on you to prove his guilt, not on him to prove his innocence.

Regarding the transactions. I have looked at them, 17 in total over the span of 11 days.

The customer uses two phone numbers interchangeablely, and two IPs. Both numbers and both IPs are from the same area (Oakland.) Again, other than the volume of transactions from the same customer and total amount spent I am not satisfied that the transactions were cause for alarm. I think that, considering that your backend imposed transaction limits, and considering that your agents were aware of these limits being automatically imposed, and considering that you have in place harsh penalties for your agents offending customers, it may be unreasonable to expect your agents to scrutinize closely the transaction volume and total transaction amount over the course of two weeks.

I believe we have arrived at a point where we are no longer debating whether or not Corey broke the agreement in some specific explicit manner. I have seen no evidence that he did. I think now you are arguing that he failed to take due care in processing these transactions;

So here is my question:

Throughout that time was Corey the only agent on your staff responsible for taking all these orders?

 

[Grave]

@Grave:

I am not asking you to prove a negative. I am merely pointing out that the burden of proof is on you. You claim he did not make the calls. He claims he did make the calls. I have seen no evidence either way. However the burden of proof is on you to prove his guilt, not on him to prove his innocence.

I would like to quickly point out that if Corey made the calls, even a screenshot of the call being made via Skype, which is the program he used, of an outgoing call to Mayberry would have helped been slightly sufficient. However, when I asked Corey for all this information, I was only provided screenshots of the trade.

I think that, considering that your backend imposed transaction limits, and considering that your agents were aware of these limits being automatically imposed, and considering that you have in place harsh penalties for your agents offending customers,

Again, this was a vague version of the further contract to come. Being rude to a customer, which essentially meant cussing them out (has happened before) was penalized usually with a few dollars, not $250. The strictest was reserved for severe cases of misconduct.

it may be unreasonable to expect your agents to scrutinize closely the transaction volume and total transaction amount over the course of two weeks.

They receive no penalties for denying to serve customers if the IPs change, phone numbers change, etc. Also understand that this was not the course of two weeks. Corey merely had to look at the past 2-3 transactions made in the previous few days, or four days, to be specific, to notice the issues.

So here is my question:

Throughout that time was Corey the only agent on your staff responsible for taking all these orders?

Corey was not the only person responsible. To be more specific, everyone was found to be guilty, and agreed to my plea bargain. After these chargebacks, I was broken, and so was our business, which explains why I discontinued advertising on Sythe.org. In that sense, I was in no emotional state to start making scam reports against all my workers, so I gave them an option: if they could pay me back the commission in a timely manner and avoided me having to create a scammer report against them, I would rid them of their obligations to cover the full amount. Corey originally outright refused, and then agreed that he was responsible for the orders and agreed to cooperate and pay me back in a timely manner The latter, however, was not done. Corey continuously dragged it out, continuously asked for evidence, and continuously began denying more and more of his obligations. Therefore, here we are.

So to clarify:

• Every worker assumed responsibility for their misactions, except Highkid, who was the one who followed procedures and caught everyone's misactions
• I did not further pursue those who accepted the plea bargain and paid back the commission on time (which, by the way, the pilosophy under this is that they were paid based on a percentage of the total value of the order, so when the value becomes $0 after a chargeback, the commission is $0)

If you check the previous report against Corey, you can also see Hahanerd's testimony that the procedures I talked about were indeed in place and Corey had to keep evidence of the calls. In addition, I spoke with Dorian, the person Corey said could verify his story, and Dorian stated that Corey never contacted me, but then said he did not remember it clear enough to make a testimony. However, Dorian can give a testimony that he did indeed assume responsibility for his own chargebacks and paid what I asked.

 

I would like to quickly point out that if Corey made the calls, even a screenshot of the call being made via Skype, which is the program he used, of an outgoing call to Mayberry would have helped been slightly sufficient. However, when I asked Corey for all this information, I was only provided screenshots of the trade.

But he was not obligated to according to your agreement. Further, a reasonable person would not record calls or take screenshots of skype in the course of doing their business.

Again, this was a vague version of the further contract to come. Being rude to a customer, which essentially meant cussing them out (has happened before) was penalized usually with a few dollars, not $250. The strictest was reserved for severe cases of misconduct.

Part 2, e of your agreement with Corey states that a penalty up to $250 applies if Corey is found to have been rude to a customer. You can see how your incentive structure was an issue here. The customer had only to claim that your agent was rude to them and your agent would receive a harsh penalty.

Corey was not the only person responsible. To be more specific, everyone was found to be guilty, and agreed to my plea bargain. After these chargebacks, I was broken, and so was our business, which explains why I discontinued advertising on Sythe.org. In that sense, I was in no emotional state to start making scam reports against all my workers, so I gave them an option: if they could pay me back the commission in a timely manner and avoided me having to create a scammer report against them, I would rid them of their obligations to cover the full amount. Corey originally outright refused, and then agreed that he was responsible for the orders and agreed to cooperate and pay me back in a timely manner The latter, however, was not done. Corey continuously dragged it out, continuously asked for evidence, and continuously began denying more and more of his obligations. Therefore, here we are.

So to clarify:

• Every worker assumed responsibility for their misactions, except Highkid, who was the one who followed procedures and caught everyone's misactions
• I did not further pursue those who accepted the plea bargain and paid back the commission on time (which, by the way, the pilosophy under this is that they were paid based on a percentage of the total value of the order, so when the value becomes $0 after a chargeback, the commission is $0)

If you check the previous report against Corey, you can also see Hahanerd's testimony that the procedures I talked about were indeed in place and Corey had to keep evidence of the calls. In addition, I spoke with Dorian, the person Corey said could verify his story, and Dorian stated that Corey never contacted me, but then said he did not remember it clear enough to make a testimony. However, Dorian can give a testimony that he did indeed assume responsibility for his own chargebacks and paid what I asked.

If you would like Hahanerd to testify to the effect that you had a second agreement with Corey that he was required to record phone calls, you can have him post in the dispute forum and it can be entered here. However I also would like to point out that recording phone calls may not be legal where Corey lives, and this may outrule any agreement that you had with him regarding the issue.

Again, I see no evidence that any of these terms were broken:

Part 3 a,b,c,d,f

Part 3 e is a debatable point, but considering that every single one of your other staff was also found 'guilty' of failing to exercise this 'common sense', I think the 'common sense' of the matter was in fact that these orders checked out.

I'd like to make an observation here:

You are in business. A risky business. Delivering virtual goods on credit *always* bears the risk of charge back. Your responsibility as business owner is to minimise this risk. -- This means putting in place measures such as a total cap per customer, and transaction pattern detection. -- It is not your worker's risk. It is your risk. You seem to be under the impression that your workers are required to bear this risk of chargeback on your behalf. However this cannot be so; You have a strict contract with your workers, which tells them exactly what they must and must not do. You specify penalties for failure to obey. In doing so you have transferred any responsibility to yourself. If the strict instructions you give you workers turn out to be inadequate or leads to loss of capital it is not their fault. It is yours.

Based on what I've seen so far it would not surprise me if your workers are entitled to their commissions returned.

This said, your case against Corey is still open if you wish to post any additional evidence. So far I've seen no evidence to suggest he broke your contract.

 

[Grave]

But he was not obligated to according to your agreement. Further, a reasonable person would not record calls or take screenshots of skype in the course of doing their business.

Again, I worded it badly, but it can also be assumed that "evidence of the trade" means full evidene of the entire trade, just as it can be argued the other way. On the second part of your statement, I'd like to add that recording calls and keeping evidence of everything is actually a severely important part of the RSGP selling business. Otherwise, you have no proof to fight the chargeback. The purpose of the phone call is to have the user confirm their information, so not recording it would be as good as never calling the person.

Part 2, e of your agreement with Corey states that a penalty up to $250 applies if Corey is found to have been rude to a customer. You can see how your incentive structure was an issue here. The customer had only to claim that your agent was rude to them and your agent would receive a harsh penalty.

It's a form of an elastic clause. This does not mean that I would penalize Corey $250 if a customer merely said he was rude. The Sythe rules have a similar clause which could be abused aswell, but the users who agree to them, just as Corey agreed, trust that it will not be abused. Even now, I am not asking for the additional $300 in penalties added to the amount Corey owes me. I am only asking for the direct damaged caused.

If you would like Hahanerd to testify to the effect that you had a second agreement with Corey that he was required to record phone calls, you can have him post in the dispute forum and it can be entered here. However I also would like to point out that recording phone calls may not be legal where Corey lives, and this may outrule any agreement that you had with him regarding the issue.

Here is Hahanerd's full testimony:
http://ww3.sythe.org/showpost.php?p=11234376&postcount=3

In addition, there are no laws against recording calls in Canada as long as you make the customer aware. In fact, I don't even think they have to be aware, as the law states that one party needs to know, or in translation, each party can record the call, but a third party who is not in the call cannot.

Part 3 e is a debatable point, but considering that every single one of your other staff was also found 'guilty' of failing to exercise this 'common sense', I think the 'common sense' of the matter was in fact that these orders checked out.

There were four total staff members caught up in this:

• Corey
• Hahanerd
• Dorian
• Highkid

As Hahanerd stated, workers were fully aware of all of these security procedures and they were fully aware that they could cause huge amounts of damage. Highkid, on the other hand, did follow the procedures and did use common sense, so he avoided causing us any damages, and actually saved other workers from causing further damages. Corey was a senior worker by the time all of this occured, so he should have very well known what he did wrong, and could have easily prevented it. Hahanerd was also at fault but he was more naive, and Dorian's behavior shows that Corey being grouped with other workers doesn't necessarily mean he had common sense: Dorian permitted Mayberry to do a Skype call instead of a phone call. Again, nobody ever called Mayberry's phone number.

You are in business. A risky business. Delivering virtual goods on credit *always* bears the risk of charge back. Your responsibility as business owner is to minimise this risk. -- This means putting in place measures such as a total cap per customer, and transaction pattern detection. --

All of these were infact implemented. The issue is, Corey didn't use this properly. In fact, he did the opposite: allowing Mayberry to bypass the total cap, and looking at the pattern. Yes, it would have been great if the workers were like pawns who had no responsibilities, but that's not true in any business.

It is not your worker's risk. It is your risk. You seem to be under the impression that your workers are required to bear this risk of chargeback on your behalf. However this cannot be so; You have a strict contract with your workers, which tells them exactly what they must and must not do. You specify penalties for failure to obey. In doing so you have transferred any responsibility to yourself. If the strict instructions you give you workers turn out to be inadequate or leads to loss of capital it is not their fault. It is yours.

While we have new systems to minimalize a worker paying back chargebacks, there are occasions where I fully cover the chargeback. In fact, I have done so recently, if the worker follows the procedures carefully and gives me all the evidene I need for the dispute, even if we lose. While we do have strict rules that the worker must follow, this doesn't necessarily mean I will take responsibility if the worker does something wrong. I try to be as understanding as possible, but I show no respect for a worker blatantly slacking off and causing damages by not looking at a few orders he should have checked.

Based on what I've seen so far it would not surprise me if your workers are entitled to their commissions returned.

As I said earlier, the commissions are based upon the percentage of the total sale, so if the total sale is $0 after a chargeback, the commission is returned. The old commission system gave workers a large chunk of the sale, while having them assume a large responsibility. This is the reason they are independent contractors for our website and not hourly workers. While I have fine-tuned this to where they are paid less with lower responsibility for chargebacks with our new system, this doesn't make Corey any less responsible on the old system.

This said, your case against Corey is still open if you wish to post any additional evidence. As I've already said repeatedly: so far I see no evidence to suggest he either broke your contract or acted negligently.

Well, unfortunately, the only other evidence I can provide is proving a negative, and unfortunately, while Corey never did the call and never showed any type of proof to show likewise, he can get away with it in this situation. All I can say is thank you for helping with the dispute, but I think this is as far as it will go. I do ask that if you're willing to, please take a look at these two documents and show me where they are flawed, so a similar situation to this doesn't happen if a worker is negligent:

Contract - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pw5UUjMkwsgo6387YzMX62wNhcenJC6H9H2J9aHdrNg/edit
Codes of Conduct - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MpWHrjnOdLargqfsG3e193qKecqUeaNpVnVUCuO8TL0/edit

(edit) Might I add that the goal is to be as fair as possible to workers while I protect myself from possible abuse and excessive negligence. I think there are portions of it that are overprotective of me and parts that I could abuse, but again, we're assuming that I can be trusted enough as a person not to do that. I just can't afford to have them steal stock, or completely disregard our security steps and receive no repercussions for it. I also cannot give them the opportunity to damage the business by sporadically leaving or getting paid and then scamming the stock, which is why we have roll-overs and holds.

 

Judgement:

You have failed to show to my satisfaction that Corey broke your agreement resulting in the alleged damages. Claim for damages is dismissed.

As you had given permission to your workers (be they contractors or employees) to use your business's Google Checkout account and to transact with your customers in your business name, it is clear they were acting as agents of your business. You must assume responsibility for the actions of the agents of your business in so far as they act within the terms of their contract with you. (See: law of agency.)

I am not obligated to review your future contract, but I can give you this advice:

1. If you wish specific performance from your employees or contractors then you must explicitly state the performance required in writing. -- For example: "Record all messages and interactions with the customer using video and audio."

2. If you wish for your contractors to take on business risk that is separate from your own risk, then you should have them to set-up a franchise in their own name and assume these risks in their own name. People acting as agents of your business can only, in the course of their agency, assume risks in the name of your business.

3. Your contract's penalty provisions are largely unlawful / or would not be upheld at equity law. Penalties and fines are restricted (even in contracts) to actual damages done as a result of actual legal injury. You cannot simply fine your workers arbitrary amounts for inconsequential acts.

As this matter has now been heard several times, it will not be heard again. The defendant is found not guilty, and cannot be charged twice in the same matter.