One thing some folks may be wondering is "Why lock things down to contributing members?" At the face of it could sound like a money-grab, and while we would definitely appreciate the support, it also offers another very important feature - identity. By sending a payment through Paypal we are getting proof of merit that it's a real person with a real financial account, and the added security of knowing that they were willing to put real dollars on the line for their reputation. It's a fast, easy way to confirm someone is the real deal, in addition to helping support FurBuy and keep the system running for everyone for years to come.

thats not a resolution for this problem to do that with paid accounts. that would kill the page. trust me. look on ebay. how is ebay working on secure? thats maybe the right idea. the main problem is that everybody can register while knowing he dont need to pay if he will never answer again. we need a profe that the bidder MUST pay.

Is English not your main language? Because I honestly didn't understand what you said. =/

no english is not my main language.
i just said that the idea with paid accounts for more secure is not a good idea
furbuy would loose a lot of seller cause a lot lesser people would bid on there auctions

if you register at ebay you get a letter to your address with a code to prove that that is really your address... i know that that is not a good idea for furbuy - but the only thing what to do is to find a way that the fresh registered user HAVE to pay if they bid. that there is no chance for trolls to bid, wait and make fun of the people. and than just register a new account and do it again. we must make sure that the USERs are REAL users.

and i know i'm not the best english speaker but that can be understood.

Yeah, we ALREADY send an e-mail confirmation code that MUST BE CLICKED in order to post auctions or place bids! And we STILL have fraud all the time. =P

Yes, I know we have to verify people, and I'd LOVE to, but how do YOU propose we do it? I hate "advice" that comes with absolutely ZERO constructive feedback!!! The whole point of locking things to contributing members for Secure Auctions (which would require a seller to be a contributing member themselves to use, not EVERY auction would be a Secure Auction) is for more PROOF that someone is not a fraud!

Now, how about some constructive, useful feedback? lol

i would give you constructive feedback but i dont know what you can do. or what technic can do.
maybe the people need to verify the FA account like they want it on fchan - they want proof that you are the same on FA - they ask you to edit your page so they can see that you are really the one who edited it.

than is there a way to prove a paypal account? like they send 1usd to proove that they own one?
i dont know maybe sending the usd back than so it is still free.
but the best would be to get a proove of bank account and home address but i really dont know how to do this with your amount of money you can put in this project since i guess your team is not able to do the same like ebay do.

and please i see you are lil bit angry with me. i'm really not bad with you or want to make fun, stay normal that would be nice. i can only use limited words in english and it is hard to describe or say something difficult without sound like an ass sometimes.

Ebay OWNS Paypal, which is why they can send little bits of money to people (and better verify your account) without any trouble. Further they sell your information to 3rd parties for advertisements and make that money they send you for verification back within a month or two. Huge companies with millions of users can work out big marketing deals with advertisers like that. We're barely even able to get folks to buy ad banners on FurBuy let alone get the site to pay for itself. We're honestly not interested in keeping the site entirely free anymore - we just have a commitment to keeping the parts free that we've said all along will remain free. Any new features or parts of the site we open up will be subject to review for how we can improve the experience for contributing members. Membership is only US$18/year, which boils down to $1.50 per month - that's cheaper than a latte every month.

i got some ideas ask dragoneer if he want to work with furbuy together
maybe he can create a field in user informations or somewhere else where FurBuy can script that they are trusted FA user if the same Furbuy name is in this field on FA.

also that the seller can delete bids for it self (for pay seller)

and important:
only the seller should pay kinda % of the winning bid
as a only bidder i would not w ant to pay 18 per year to just bid and never win anything.
but on the same side as a seller if i only do 1 auction per year why should it be worth 18?
you should do kinda taxes what is about the amount of selling auctions the user do.

for this stuff i think not what i would do - i think about what the most of the other people would think.

or how about a function that every bid from a user with 0 plus points can be deleted from the seller.

I have spoken with Dragoneer at length about working with FurBuy, and in some regards he's been open to the idea and other times he wants nothing to do with us. There's a lot of colorful history there already, but until FA gets a major overhaul and a new software platform, integration with FurBuy is not on the table for him. Also, anyone can get an FA account and put anything in it, there's ZERO proof of anything in having an FA account, so it's a poor metric for identity confirmation.

Allowing sellers to remove bids at their whim is just a bad idea all-around. It lends itself far too readily for abuse or hacking or favoritism or the ability to violate contracts. If bidding is going to be affected, it must be done BEFORE bids occur, not after. Once a bid is placed, it is a legally binding contract under USFTC rules governing both online and offline auctions.

As for taking a commission fee from successful auctions - Furbid has been doing that for years and it SUCKS. They are completely fail and nobody ever wants to pay the fees after the fact. The idea for contributing memberships honestly came from Dragoneer, and all of us at FurBuy honestly feel it's the better way to go. You pay one fast, simple time per year for additional bonus features and never have to fuss with micro-managing little payments here and there. Plus it's a contribution to supporting the system, NOT a business fee. Charging a commission fee completely violates the trust and freedom of our users who just want the free basic services that our site offers, and we'll never do that.

As for payments from bidders for membership, why shouldn't they also pay? The fee isn't because we want a part of the action, the fee is a contribution to keeping the site running, nothing more. We don't even honestly WANT to be taking money from users, we'd prefer to keep it free. However, it's costing -us- $400+ per month to run, and we'd at least like it to pay for itself, ya know? We already invest countless hours of hard work on graphics, design, programming, server hardware, maintenance and adding new features. But on top of those investments, we also continue to float the monthly rent for hosting the system, and we'd like a little break on that and who knows - maybe someday even make a little scratch for our hard work and time. For now though, we'd just like to see FurBuy pay for itself. It's not hard. 300 memberships per year would do it.

FA:
to add a field like yahoo: aim: furbuy: would really not a problem.
what if i take a name of example my mate and put it in a fresh registered furbuy acution
i win 20 auctions with it and than i go away. now my mate get 20 hate mails why he dont answer. and maybe get forced to pay or something like this. - with that field it is a secure for the FA user and that is what dragoneer want. more secure for the single users.

remove bids:
ok i understand this. but its so easy to register a new mail to register a fake furbuy account.
i know you want ideas and stuff but what can we do against it? the lulz user can bring the page down in one day if they would want.

fees/membership:
what kind of features? to allow 1000px instead of 800? thats not a good feature.
maybe highlight or bolt links in the brows would be a good feature (well i dont know all features maybe you allready got)

and i know that it is about to keep the page running. i'm just afraid that you can close the page cause nobody want to pay for stuff they only use maybe once in a year.
if i tell someone "hey you wanted a commission from me? drop by in furbuy at link xxx there you can bid" - and the anser is often this: "oh no i dont want to register and pay fees. i dont like auctions."

but i'm really just scared that the page will go down soon cause people dont register anymore.
i wish you good luck with finding ways to fix that all and so one. i'm not a genius who can solve any problem. i would pay 18 per year - but i really think that just seller will buy this membership. but we need this membership for the bidders to be secure... like your thoughts about a membership only secure auction. thats just too less budders.

sorry i think i dont help you.
and you know more about this stuff.


but i still think that it is a good idea to be able to delete the highest bid of a ZERO points user. cause a plus point is the highest secure that the user is REAL and PAYING.

i mean account not auction on the first auction in the text

I just ran a little report, and out of around 900 sellers over the last year, more than 650 of them have posted 3 auctions or more in that time. In fact more than 300 of them posted 10 auctions or more. So it's not usually a "pay and use only once per year" thing. Also, we still allow free users to post up to 5 auctions at once, which is potentially around 250 auctions per year. So it's not like we're really restricting people much without a membership. We just wanted to enhance the experience as much as possible for folks who DO have a membership. People have been asking for added features (1000x1000 pixel images was one we got a lot actually!) and so as we add them we are typically making them members-only things which enhance the system for folks who are actually helping support us and keep us up and running. The core features of the system are still 100% free and will remain so as long as I'm in charge of the company - I've promised that to the community. We don't want to make a dollar off everyone, we understand many users are only coming to our site to make a little extra scratch, but we also want to give folks a reason to help support us when they can.

Personally for me, I never had a fraudulent bidding on my auctions. How common is this? This might just be a turnoff in the end. But might give peace of mind to those who have had their auctions tampered with. If anything, you can provide Secured Auction option and for those who have experienced this can use this to give themselves a peace of mind. I wouldn't use it (yet lol knock on wood), unless something like that has happened to me.

On the other hand, the limit on how many auctions seems like a better option. Thanks again you and the Furbuy team for providing such a great service to our community.

It happens about 2-3 times a month. Usually effecting about 5-10 auctions. And they are usually targeting specific sellers whom are either not well-known or not well-liked within the furry community. We've traced a lot of the fraud bid traffic back to sites like lulz.net and fchan, etc.

In most of the fraud cases we've had in the last couple years, the bid limiter wouldn't have had much effect, if any. When users commit fraud on FurBuy it's usually targeted at one or two specific sellers. =/ There's always the potential for a blanket bid-bombing though, and we HAVE had a couple of those in the last year. We can deal with them fairly effectively, but they are still alarming to users until they get sorted out.

It really is a shame. Maybe it's something they did to get themselves dislike, might've done something in the past to make buyers not happy. Trolling and revenge.. The secured auction can be just an option, if it's only a few. The sellers can choose to use it, but it might backfire on them. 90% of us probably won't implement the feature, unless need be. I've had nothing but great experiences with Furbuy and the users.

Who's to say? Sometimes it's less about who the seller is and more about what they're selling. Anytime an auction comes under the attention of trolls and /b/tards, it comes under risk of being bid-bombed by fraudulent "prank" accounts which are illegal but the bidders often hide behind an open proxy or place bids under the legal limit for the FTC to pursue. =/ Ebay has similar issues and honestly they're having HUGE problems with this kind of activity right now - however they also have more employees and security systems in place to track and manage the threats. They are also making incredible amounts of money. =/

Just an idea but maybe you could sort of only allow users to Bid what they have in some sort of FurBid Credit, which could be transferred from a bank when they place their bid? When they bid, it is removed from their credit, and if they lose the bid, it is returned, but in the meanwhile they are literally preemptively paying for anything they buy. You would probably also want to be able to make it easy to return 'credit' back to the banks, too, but it's an idea.