Secret blacklist for shady customers

[deastman]

Thinking about it some more, a situation in which one company can unilaterally interfere with your ability to conduct business with many other unrelated companies sounds legally dubious to me. Your intentions are noble, but I could see something like this going very wrong.

[FabienTDR]

How about we put you guys on a secret blacklist for shady companies? We can share this list with other customers in order to prevent any trouble before it happens.

Amazon and ebay are deeply feedback/rating driven. A million other websites, too. It works quite well imho and is definitely a major reason for their success.

This is not really related to this topic, though. I am talking about extreme cases of payment fraud devs have to accept helplessly. Clear criminal activity. It primarily affects the "optimistic" licensing models, those offering no more than a garden fence copy protection. The alternative is the use of far more aggressive and privacy critical copy protection schemes, such as .. subscription? This isn't cool either!

In real life, when someone takes something out of your shop, and doesn't pay, you simply call the police and they'll fix the problem. In our biz, you can only sit down and watch, stay friendly and responsive and even have to pay the transaction fees!

Optimally, this would be handled Paypal. But they simply don't seem interested at all. In doubt, the seller is guilty. That's why I'm thinking about alternative methods to reduce the damage. Firewalls in the pure sense. One dev detects a fraud and informs the others ("take care, there's a weird guy in town"). Not more, not less.

[JCJR]

Maybe the following factor is not important to the "average customer". I may be less trustful than average.

I don't buy much regardless, but buying from someone I don't know-- The "satisfaction guaranteed" types of assurance from such as ebay and paypal a few times gave me confidence to buy items I'd otherwise have avoided out of caution about getting ripped off. Knowing the money wouldn't be gone like a cool breeze if the deal goes bad.

For instance a few weeks ago bought a couple of replacement LCD modules CHEAP direct from china. About $8 per module and $3 shipping "estimated up to 40 days delivery time". Stuff showed up good condition in about 3 weeks. Without paypal guarantee and also the credit card "cloaking" I probably wouldn't have risked such an anonymous long distance transaction. I mean it was only about $21 but I'm a cheapskate.

Because of the long turnaround time and basic distrust I spent hours trying to find that particular LCD module from mouser, newark, all the big established usa electronics distributors. It is a very common OEM part found in zillions of devices but nobody in USA had it and china had as many as you could ever want to buy. The lack of trust wasted near a day trying to find a local more expensive but "higher confidence" seller.

Just sayin, the same policy which perhaps invites abuse from some customers might provide "comfort level" allowing many transactions which would otherwise not happen without the purchase protection. Buying stuff from unknown small time dealers who may not have sufficient "rep" to make as many sales without the added transaction confidence.

I suppose if enough customers would abuse the system, it could lead to bigger hassles getting refunds on one hand, and causing over suspicious sellers on the other hand. Possibly reducing willingness of both buyers and sellers, reducing volume of trade by erosion of trust.

[Aloysius]

How about we put you guys on a secret blacklist for shady companies? We can share this list with other customers in order to prevent any trouble before it happens.

Amazon and ebay are deeply feedback/rating driven. A million other websites, too. It works quite well imho and is definitely a major reason for their success.

This is not really related to this topic, though. I am talking about extreme cases of payment fraud devs have to accept helplessly. Clear criminal activity. It primarily affects the "optimistic" licensing models, those offering no more than a garden fence copy protection. The alternative is the use of far more aggressive and privacy critical copy protection schemes, such as .. subscription? This isn't cool either!

In real life, when someone takes something out of your shop, and doesn't pay, you simply call the police and they'll fix the problem. In our biz, you can only sit down and watch, stay friendly and responsive and even have to pay the transaction fees!

Optimally, this would be handled Paypal. But they simply don't seem interested at all. In doubt, the seller is guilty. That's why I'm thinking about alternative methods to reduce the damage. Firewalls in the pure sense. One dev detects a fraud and informs the others ("take care, there's a weird guy in town"). Not more, not less.

I see where you're coming from but it's not that clear. If PayPal are not calling something fraud, then why are you? PayPal do not always support the Customer. That is a fact.

What information do you intend sharing on your secret list?

Full Name of Customer?
Address of Customer?
Telephone Number of Customer?
Partial Credit Card information of Customer?

I would avoid your Company and any other participating Companies like the plague if you start this sort of carry on.

[masterhiggins]

Many companies here in the US use a company called The Retail Equation to track fraudulent returns by customers and they all share the same database to help in loss prevention. I think they base it off your name/state ID. This includes Home Depot, Macy's, etc.

[murnau]

Well, there is always the potential for a legitimate customer, with a legitimate complaint to find themselves secretly blacklisted. There's a Judge but no Jury.

I think you didn't understand which kind of "customers" Fabien have in mind but keep up playing the drama queen.

[Aloysius]

Well, there is always the potential for a legitimate customer, with a legitimate complaint to find themselves secretly blacklisted. There's a Judge but no Jury.

I think you didn't understand which kind of "customers" Fabien have in mind but keep up playing the drama queen.

Did you manage to finish the thread yet or did you just impulsively react to the first comment that got you triggered? Tut-tut ...

[FabienTDR]

Well, there is always the potential for a legitimate customer, with a legitimate complaint to find themselves secretly blacklisted. There's a Judge but no Jury.

I think you didn't understand which kind of "customers" Fabien have in mind but keep up playing the drama queen.

TBH, I also wonder who these guys are. But when you have tens of thousands customers, even 0.1% is still quite a lot of work and expense, for nothing! If you don't run a shop, you'd certainly never even touch such issues.

The problem is the international nature, try to sue a Chinese customer, you have absolutely no chance. Paypal focusses on customers protection at all cost, this system is easy to abuse. You buy any digital product, wait 2 weeks and then fill a complain called "unauthorized transaction". The seller has absolutely no chance, he must refund or risk his own account. Even if he clearly stated upfront that all sales are final.

There's no drama in this, I just like to be prepared for whatever developments. Pragmatism, really. Again, the intention is to preserve easy, fair and optimistic CP schemes. This thread addresses small devs mostly, it's the DSP and Plugin dev forum after all!

[AnX]

Data protection act

[FabienTDR]

What information do you intend sharing on your secret list?

The paypal address of problematic accounts. Much like a spammer list, ad blocking lists and similar. These are also emails, and everybody's fine with it. No privacy issues.

"List" is maybe exaggerated, this is probably just about a half dozen accounts which created trouble in the past. This interchange between small devs would stop the fire from propagating. This also doesn't have to result in any obvious restrictions.

You simply cannot prove that the customer didn't have an "unauthorized transaction" (worth a google search).

[HoRNet]

Fabien I'm with you on this, I want to trust people as much as possible because I think trusting more each other in spite of al the shit that happens in the world is the only right thing to do that's why we don't have any copy protection in our plugins.
Until now this strategy has paid off and the rare times our plugins ended up on warez sites a couple of dmca complain cured the issue, but we have nothing to fight back this PayPal fraud complain thing.
Banks here in Italy have a common database of bad payers and before giving you a loan they always check if you are in it, so I don't think there's anything wrong in such list.

Saverio

[Aloysius]

Never heard of the "unauthorized transaction" scam before. I guess that's because I'm not a criminal. Thanks for following up on my concerns Fabien.

[Guillaume Piolat]

I'm interested too, having a very optimistic copy protection (aka nothing).
Pretty sure such sales have happened in the past.

[EvilDragon]

Another option is just not allowing Paypal as payment option and just use credit cards. Then the only way a scam could be done is by using a stolen CC... which seems less likely than Paypal customer protection abuse. Not that it doesn't happen at all...

[emcee]

semi related but I've been stung once or twice selling items on ebay, to be told "item doesn't work" then requesting a full refund. Just the other week sold an old iphone, customer said "doesn't have working sound" and then said I won't refund until I get the "defective" item back.. lo and behold, got it back and it worked perfectly. They got a refund - paypal just do that, but I of course had to pay sellers fees (non-refundable - what BS) and also $10 for them to return the item.. so all up about $28 out of pocket for them being shady as f...