yearnin to Fly

My Feedback: (52)

I really would like to know, The lowball shield, Why does rcu not inforce the use of it? When you list things for sale, you have a price in mind, and you also know if you want to trade for anything.
Or does anyone care about the rules on rcu????????? is it just cert
an ones who must obey them and others do not have too???

So without flaming, cussing, or causing a fight, Would the faithfull RCU users and family please state what they believe would be an answer to the questions above.

Does respect still exist for each other as rcu users? If I find an item on rcu I want to buy I read the listing and than go by what is stated in the listing as to what the seller has put in the description, ( like they do not want to trade, and their asking price ) I then use the make an offer part of the listing, if the offer is not high enough it tells me. I then decide what to do. I do not HARRASS the seller or TRY TO BEAT THEM UP to get them to lower the price.

Why DOES RCU ALLOW users to do the things like harrassing sellers, trying to beat them up on their price or shipping, or trading when they put in their listing the price and willingness to trade.

Does ANYONE care AT ALL that this is going on????????????

JWN

My Feedback: (42)

Harassment is not tolerated. If harassment is proven to be going on, then we take the appropriate action with the responsible party.

A buyer who posts a question using the Ask Seller a Question tool inquiring if the seller would consider a price other than the posted Asking Price is neither harassment, nor in violation of the rules. It is simply a question. If the buyer is willing to consider the price presented, then the buyer should state so and request the buyer use the Make Offer tool. If they are not interested in selling for that amount, then a simple "No" or "No thank you" is in order. If the buyer persists, the seller can always add that buyers username to the Blocked Buyers listed located at the bottom of the My Ads page in the marketplace.

yearnin to Fly

My Feedback: (52)

Good morning John, I am glad to hear from you.

Why is there a lowball sheild if people are allowed to go around it??? If the seller has already had a set price in mind, put it in the listing, Than used the lowbasll shield to try to stop the LOW ball offers, why is the rcu user allowed to go aroung the so called LOWBALL shield????

Please help me to understand why there is a set of rules and standards of usage on rcu and some have to follow the rules and others do not.

Another question, When you reply to a persons offer on rcu, they now have your personal email address as did the person who got mad at me, They then can harrass you and send you any kind of email they want. Than it just gets worse from there, I have personally already had this experience. That is why I got upset.

Is there some way, or would you even consider a way to keep our personal email addresses private until we accept an offer from someone, Than make it so all the contact is exchanged then?

yearnin to Fly

My Feedback: (52)

John I want to say thank you for your time and your help. And a thanks to all the rcu moderators out there who work hard to keep this site up and going.

JWN

My Feedback: (42)

Thank you for your kind words. We do our best to keep the site running smoothly.

When someone posts a question in an ad, the sellers email address is not exposed to that person. Even if they select the option to send a copy of their question to themselves, the sellers email address is not exposed.

When a seller receives a question through one of their ads, the seller will see their email address of the person who posted the question. If the seller responds to the email, then that seller has provided their email address to the other person. If the seller does not wish for the other person to have their email address, then they should respond to the question through the ad instead of replying to the email.

There are no rules which state a member cannot ask a question about price using the Ask Seller a Question tool. There are also no rules that state offers cannot be posted through the Ask Seller a Question tool. But, we do warn both buyers and sellers that by not using the Make Offer tool they will not be able to post feedback or file a complaint in the unfortunate event the transaction does not execute as expected.

The rules are very clear about harassment and the misuse of contact information obtained through a marketplace transaction. If harassment or other misuse is proven to have occurred, our staff will take whatever action is deemed appropriate for that specific situation.

yearnin to Fly

My Feedback: (52)

Thanks John, I understand more now than I ever have. You have been very helpfull. God Bless!!!!!!!

yearnin to Fly

My Feedback: (52)

What is the lowball shield for any way?? What the exact reason it was put on the site? Thanks

JWN

My Feedback: (42)

The lowball shield prevents prospective buyers from posting an official offer for an amount below what you are willing to sell your item for.

yearnin to Fly

My Feedback: (52)

Ok so it sounds like the lowball sheild is meant to stop lowball offers, Is that correct?

I mean when you place an add you put a price you want as a seller, in the lowball shield, to STOP LOWBALL OFFERS, is that correct?????

JWN

My Feedback: (42)

Yes, that is correct.

yearnin to Fly

My Feedback: (52)

Ok if the lowball sheild is their STOP people from making LOWBALL offers why doesn't RCU inforce the use of it????

yearnin to Fly

My Feedback: (52)

John I had a freing send me an email message through rcu on one of my adds, Sadly rcu sent me his email address and ALSO SENT me his.

This is through the email the buyer section. So the privacy of the seller IS NOT protected. If I reply to a question on one of my adds RCU sends the answer and my email address to the person asking the question through RCU. So that makes it so the they then have My persomal email address to sell to others and also harrass me about the lowball offers that I refused to accept.

Are you and RCU aware of this??

mvigod

Lowball shield only works if they make an OFFICIAL offer using the offer form. We can only check offers when they use this. If they just use the ask a question form they can basically offer whatever they want since it is a freeform question field to communicate with the seller. Also that form does have FROM: [email protected] right on the form showing you that it will be coming from you. It is our position that if you want to do business with others that you should not have 100% anonymity. 100% Anonymity promotes fraud.

yearnin to Fly

My Feedback: (52)

I agree with you on the Anonymity part you stated above. But the problem is users abuse the ask questions section in order to email the seller LOWBALL prices, then when the seller answers the question in the rcu forum the abuser than has the sellers personal email to then harras them off of RCU, and also sell there personal email address to other compainies who buy them.

When someone emails you an offer or question, The seller should be able to BLOCK or be able to answer the question in a way that unless the sale is made the seller should not have his or her private email address given out to people they do not want to have it.

Do you agree that if the buyer and seller come to an agreement on something, ONLY then the emails and such would be exchanged I.E. ( contact information ). This way the LOWBALLERS causing trouble, do not have a way to harrass sellers and more???

Or does RCU believe in protecting the sellers?

mvigod

For some background...we have been running the rcu marketplace for over 6 years and this has never come up as a problem. Here is my take on it. We have to have the official offer tool in place which we do now. This is the only way we can enforce the lowball shield. If the prospective buyer is bypassing that and using the question form they can lowball all day long. As a seller you can block their question from appearing in your ad by using the HIDE link.

The reason we show the email as coming from you (the seller) is because WAY too often the prospect would click reply to the email notice and it would come to us. It would get dropped into our trash because reply-to's we do not respond to for these types of notifications. So the sellers would get no notices or if the buyers got notices they would reply to nobody instead of to the seller. The issue here is that people don't ever look to see who the emails are from and just hit reply and it goes to the black hole so to speak.

We "could" block emails and just not send them out to the buyer when the seller replies but that will lower your chances of selling as buyers forgot who they asked questions of and if there was ever a reply. I do not think this is a good solution and your one complaint in 6 plus years will be outnumbered by 1000's of complaints if we change this I am certain.

As far as harrassing of members just report them to us using our help/ticket system. Our market admins will handle the situation and ban or block the user from RCU and potentially block their ip address as well.

Also nobody is selling emails to other mailing lists. You get .00001 per name and unless you are selling millions of names bulk mailers do not want your list because cutting a check for .001 is not feasible to buy 100 emails from an average user. This is not a real world concern.

yearnin to Fly

My Feedback: (52)

Ok thanks for your time, I can plainly see that there is NO protection in place for the seller. The lowball sheild is really just for honest people like me, who choose to follow the rules (I thought were there to protect the sellers from being harrased or by lowballers ), about not making any offers other than going through the lowball sheild. It would be nice if there was, But ooohh well.

I wish I had the time to sit down long enough and forward to you all the nasty emails I have gotten from rcu users, who were pissed off, and being abusive because I chose not to accept their LOWBALL offers.

The thing is I am just now realizing that respect for each other is becoming a thing of the past. But at least I can see you at RCU do care. THANKS

I still believe that RCU is one of the best market places on the earth today. I wish you and all who work so hard on RCU the best in every way.

JWN

My Feedback: (42)

I am sorry, but this is not accurate. If the seller responds to the question THROUGH the ad, instead of by REPLYING TO THE EMAIL, then the sellers email is NEVER disclosed to the other party. The seller does in fact see the other parties email address. But the person who asked the original question does not see the sellers email address. I have verified this on several occasions, including within the past 5 days just to be sure the system has not been changed.

Any post made through the Ask Seller a Question tool is just that, a question. It is not an offer as the seller cannot accept it through the site, create an invoice, and exchange ratings with the buyer. If you keep the mind set that anything you receive through the Ask Seller a Question tool is a question, and not an offer, then you will be fine. It is only when the seller begins to consider questions as offers that the whole process becomes blurred.

If some posts "Will you accept $10.00 shipped?". You should respond only with a yes or no answer. Respond through the ad, and hide your response so that no one else can see it. You have answered their question. If you answer Yes and they say "great, send me an invoice", you would then respond "I need for you to use the Make Offer tool".

The bottom line for sellers to protect their email address is to ONLY respond to a question through the ad. DO NOT respond to the email and your email address will not be exposed to the prospective buyer.

yearnin to Fly

My Feedback: (52)

I had a freind sit down on my computer, log into RCU, send me a simple question, asking about shipping. He looged out, I went to rcu and logged in. I answered the question with a simple reply. He got an email from rcu seconds later with my email address included in the heading.

So the bottom line is, when you answer a question through the add ( not through your email ) that someone has posed to you, on your add when you answer them back through the reply button in the add they get your email address. Maybe you are not aware of this. The trueth is we just tried it.

But all is well, as with any site where there are this many buyers and sellers involved there is bound to be a little bit of ruffled feathers here and there.

When I get time I want to send you some of the NASTY emails I have gotten from buyers who got upset when I emailed them back with a simple yes or no, they got my email address and then began to email me directly.

One thing about it all, is it is teaching me to be a more patient person, and also helping to learn how to just forgive and forget.

Thanks for your time, I wish you the best. I am looking forward to many years of working with RCU.

JWN

My Feedback: (42)

You are right. I stand corrected and apologize for giving you incorrect information. The sellers email address is provided to the other member when you respond to a question through your ad. I went back through some old notes I have and found that this was done to provide the seller and interested buyer a means to directly work out the details of a transaction prior to the buyer making a formal and binding offer.

However, this does not, I feel, address your original concern which is the abusive behavior of some members towards a seller if the seller does not accept an offer or respond in the affirmative of their question. The Member Agreement is very clear on the matter of harassment noted within the following section:

_______________________________________
Use of Your Information by Other Members - Risk & Punishment

In the ordinary course of business in our marketplace, you will be given communication access to other members. In addition, with respect to classified ads and closed auctions, you will be privy to other members' Personal Information to a limited extent. By registering with us, you understand that there are risks in providing your Personal Information to any individual with whom you have had limited or even extensive dealings. You also understand and agree that neither Kaango, LLC dba RC Universe nor its marketplace network partners have any liability whatsoever for the acts of other members in connection with their use of your Personal Information. If you are wary of other members having access to your information upon conclusion of an auction or during the course of negotiating a sale in the classifieds section or in the auction, you should not use this service. Kaango, LLC dba RC Universe and its partners offer this service as a mechanism and marketplace through which legally consenting adults may conduct business at their own risk.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, Kaango, LLC dba RC Universe has developed and will continue to develop and provide safeguards for its members. Kaango, LLC dba RC Universe encourages use of a reputable escrow agent in connection with high-dollar sales. We also encourage use of our email-invisible forms in lieu of disclosing your email address in the content of your listings. For additional information about ways to safeguard your Personal Information and transactions, click here.

By registering with this site, you agree to use other members' Personal Information solely for the purpose of conducting transactions related to merchandise offered in our marketplace unless otherwise authorized by the member whose information you are using. Under no circumstances are you permitted to utilize member information or contact links to solicit or otherwise harass fellow members. Under no circumstances may any member "spam" any other member. Failure to abide by this provision may result in a suspension or permanent revocation of your account.
____________________________________________


With this understanding, if it is proven that a member is harassing or abusing another member, we will address the situation. However, it must be clear that in the 4+ years I have been a moderator for RCUniverse.com, I have seen only 2 instances where the person who reported the problem, did not instigate the offending party to respond in an abusive manner by first responding in an abusive manner themselves. I cannot say that is what has happened in this case as I have not seen the emails, but it is something to keep in mind. The old adage of treating others as you would like for them to treat you goes a long way with communications over the internet. Many times people will respond in a manner they would never consider if they were not sitting behind a keyboard and monitor. They then do not understand when they themselves receive an equally offensive response.

If you received an abusive email from another member and did not in any way respond in a like manner first, I would like to see it.

yearnin to Fly

My Feedback: (52)

Thank you John for all your help and patience. You must be a saint of some kind, I thank you all, Have an awsome day!!

mvigod

John is indeed a saint...I've seen him in action with some members that were, shall we say, "less than cordial".

machnone

My Feedback: (31)

I have read through this thread and don't see anything that answers my problem

I have received 2 official RCU offers on 2 motors I have listed. Great! problem is both are for amounts LOWER than my "low ball" shield minimums.

How can this happen? I accepted one offer not even thinking I hade to check the dollar amount. Am I "required" to honor an illegal offer?

I will be happy to email both of these "offers" for you review.

THanks for your help.

yearnin to Fly

My Feedback: (52)

Good morning machnone,
I hope that one of the rcuniverse moderators will help you with the problem you have had.

I too have had problems also with the Lowball shield. none of which were ever solved. But becouse I think rcuniverse is an awsome place to sell and learn alot of really usefull information, I just let the whole thing go.

The moderators of rcuniverse helped me in several ways, and did what they could. They are very helpfull, but can only do so much. But I assure you they will help you to the best of their ability.

I have studied how to properly set up adds on rcuniverse, and I am willing to help you in any way I can. I am one of the weird sellers who have a deep desire to obey the rules set forth, and help others, while I am doing it.

I have learned alot about the way things work, and I hope someday to help others.

One of the things I learned was, someone can LOWBALL you through the ask a question center here on rcuniverse, and than when you answer them back, with a reply telling them you are not willing to accept their next to nothing offer, They now have your email address and can flame you and attack you as much as they want. Then when you reply to the LOWBALLER in a way they do not like they work to get you kicked off of rcuniverse. It happened to me, I KNOW. Understand they will not tell rc what they did to you.

The good part is, the moderators of rcuniverse will do everything they can to help you when this happens, BUT you have to email them and let them know it is going on and then forward the emails you have been getting so they can see for themselves what is going on. DO NOT EVER respond to the LOWBALLERS.

If I can ever be of any help you can call me or email me. I am willing to help in any way I can.

JWN

My Feedback: (42)

machnone,
Please send me a PM with the ad #'s in question so I can review the ad details and offer history.

If you accept an offer, then yes, you are obligated to sell to that buyer. Remember, you as the seller have the last word on whether or not to accept an offer. If you don't like the offer, don't accept it.

mvigod

also if we can duplicate any bug in the lowball shield (for official offers...not questions made from the market) then we can fix it.  john will try to duplicate this with your help.  If duplicated we will leave the items in place for the programmers to look at and find the issue with the code should it exist