>>if i were to post that i got screwed over by a particular individual it would be deleted and i don't see why, that is valuable information that may help someone else from falling victim to same seller.
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>>i think the rules should be revisited
here's just one reason why it might not be productive: you've seen how people on the forum periodically resort to less-than-desirable behavior; the same would happen with the reports on sellers/buyers.
An example: Last year i had a former customer threaten to write everyone he knew and tell them i was a cheat and liar and sold bad snakes and didn't stand behind them. Pretty hurtful, eh? Especially since i've spent more than 30 years breeding and selling animals and working hard to establish a reputation for just the opposite. His complaint: I sold him a snake that died months, maybe half a year, after i sold it to him. I had gotten periodic email corerspondence from him, including one email sent three or four months after he got the snakes from me, which expressed his happiness with them and said they were all "flourishing". I guarantee the snakes I sell for 30 days after they're received, so i figured i'd lived up to my obligations. When the snake stopped feeding (again, we're talking about after "flourishing" for months--I even helped him find a vet, because he complained about the vet he'd gone to before in his area.
Anyway, the snake eventually died. The customer's argument was that there must have been something wrong with it when it was sold, that a perfect snake should be bought with expectation not only of living for many years but for reproducing successfully, as well. My position was a snake could leave here healthy and encounter unfavorable conditions, pathogens, or improper care elsewhere--the seller who guarantees an animal for even a week after the animal is out of his hands, and in someone else's care, is really taking a chance, trusting in the buyer.
So we were at an impasse. I had to threaten to sue him for slander if anything he said was untrue and harmed my business. I encouraged him to be scrupulously honest in any complaints he circulated, and he eventually dropped the issue. I like to think (since i continued to support him as a customer--not selling to him any more, but answering questions about husbandry etc--i like to think that unpleasantness has even been put behind both of us now.
But had there been an easy way for him to vent his (I think unfounded) anger I'm confident he would have taken it. I would have been harmed. And that's too easy.
Evaluations such as those consumer reports compiles, or eBay customer evaluations, etc., are reduced to percentages, whereas the small number of transactions on this website would result in anecdotal accounts. I know a complaint is sometimes countered by the words of others who come to the defense with stories of their own successful transactions. But i do think it's still risky to create the forum where anyone--honest or not, reasonable or not--can make declarations about a person's integrity. For the operators to change the rules here and simply say, "we take no responsibility for what's said" is too easy, i think, like giving young people drinks and the keys to the car and disclaiming responsibility.
I DO know where you're coming from. No matter how experienced any of us are we still get taken occasionally, and there are times any of us wish we knew a little more about someone we were doing business with (here's a question, how many people besides me bought alleged "het for calico" hondos a couple years ago, and then learned there was no documentation available at all from the middleman to support that claim? Worse yet, as the months wore on, the numbers of "possible hets" doubled and then tripled, beyond all reasonable possibilities!) I think networking is probably the best compromise, between knowing nothing and knowing everything at the risk of the unethical being handed a great tool for harming the ethical.
imho.
peace
terry
