what good is heat if people won't leave negatives?

C

ccotenj

Gawd
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Mar 11, 2005
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753
being a noobie to the [h] forum, i've spent quite a bit of time reading all the various forums...

something has caught my eye in the fs/ft tips/tricks & trolls threads...

not having been a big online trader, when i finally figured out what "heat" was (yea, i'm a little slow sometimes :) ), i thought to myself, "wow, what a great idea. people who have made trades with each other in an 'unstructured environment' (vs. ebay) giving assessments of their trading partners, sounds like something that would really be helpful" ...

however, after much reading, i've realized that heat isn't really as useful as it might be (or even as useful as it appears on the surface)... this is because it has become obvious to me that people do not leave negative heat when it is warranted... this would appear to be because they fear "retaliatory negative heat"...

two points...

a) something like heat doesn't work without people leaving honest assessments of their deals with people (my goodness, after what people went through with that spazzygirl character, how could they even consider leaving neutral heat? or other threads i've read where people have left POSITIVE heat after experiences almost as bad)... this makes no sense... if no one ever leaves negatives, how does heat benefit anyone? if you aren't willing to "take one for the team" (so to speak), heat doesn't work...

b) one would think it would be relatively easy if you get "retaliatory negatives" to post a short explanation linking to the negative that you left for the "bad trader" as to what your negative is. after all... say you've got a boatload of positives and one negative... anyone who is rational should be able to look at that and say "gee, what is wrong with this picture"... sure, some paranoid fool may refuse to deal with you ("wow, you've got 1 negative vs. 100 positives, you must be a really bad trader" :rolleyes: ), but i'd like to think that most people would be able to recognize "situations" for what they are...

just some comments from someone who is new to this world, and maybe has a bit of a different perception of how things work... feel free to tell me why i'm wrong, i can take a bit of a beating... :)
 
It is because of an elitist attitude that if you don't have 100% perfect heatware, then you are no longer a reliable trader, and can never be considered a "top trader".

I would bet that many traders would consider even one negative heat to be severely detrimental, and cause irreparable damage to their trading status, and be grounds for scrapping the account and starting a new one. That statement sounds ridiculous but I think it rings true in many traders minds.

If I see someone has a negative, I will try to find out the circumstances surrounding it. If the negative was retaliatory, and I can see how the person handled the situation, I may be MORE inclined to deal with that person than before. Seeing how a person deals with a difficult situation means more to me than 50 canned positive feedbacks.
 
my thoughts are pretty clear on this issue:

topcat989 said:
Heatware is better then Egay in the fact that on HEATWARE you CAN get a "retalitory" NEG removed. I used to do the same, until there was a discussion a couple of years ago on the [H] about how bad traders were still getting pos FB........heatware has made a policy of removing retalitory FB so that peeps would feel free to use the system honestly. Those who do not leave an accurate FB let the whole community down, and it weakens the FB system. At least leave NO FB rather then unaccurate FB...... :eek:
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Rupp said:
It is because of an elitist attitude that if you don't have 100% perfect heatware, then you are no longer a reliable trader, and can never be considered a "top trader".

I would bet that many traders would consider even one negative heat to be severely detrimental, and cause irreparable damage to their trading status, and be grounds for scrapping the account and starting a new one. That statement sounds ridiculous but I think it rings true in many traders minds.

If I see someone has a negative, I will try to find out the circumstances surrounding it. If the negative was retaliatory, and I can see how the person handled the situation, I may be MORE inclined to deal with that person than before. Seeing how a person deals with a difficult situation means more to me than 50 canned positive feedbacks.
Click to expand...


Exactly :cool:
 
I suppose I'm lucky, in a way, because in over 130 positive trades I've only been in a position twice when I felt I needed to leave a negative eval.
The first time was early on in my n00b days and I felt bad for the guy so I just didn't post an eval for him at all. I've always regretted it.

The second time is right now as we speak and I have to say, it really sucks. I don't want to leave the guy a Neg, but, he kinda leaves me no choice. What good is the system if you don't use it the way it was designed to be used? If the guy leaves me retaliatory Heat, then, so be it. I don't think he will, but, if he does, I'll just contact Heat23 and let him decide if it should stand. If it does, that's what the reply feature is for. If after I spell it all out, somebody doesn't want to trade with me because of it...their loss. If they can't tell the difference between an earned Neg and a retaliatory one I don't want to trade with them anyway.

I did a deal with BusaOrZX12 over on AT recently. Maybe some of you remember THIS THREAD? I just have to say that Busa is one of the straight up nicest d00ds I've ever dealt with...and I've dealt with ALOT. I'm talking about a top-notch, A1 trader with 42 positive evals under his belt. Then along comes this asshat who leaves him a retaliatory Neg just to be a dick. Now he feels like people won't want to trade with him because of it. I tried to tell him that he did everything right and not to worry about it too much, but he's really upset about it. He takes pride in his Heatware.

If a trader...if a person... as good as Busa decides to hang it up over this, the whole community has failed and will be that much worse for it.

Is Heatware a perfect system? Of course not. Close...but no.
However, if everyone would just keep that in mind and use common sense when reading these evals rather than jumping to conclusions, it works pretty damn well.

I say post 'em like you lived 'em and let the chips fall where they may.
 
actually topcat, its harder the you think to get a retaliation heat removed. There stance on it is, Its one persons word against another, deal with it. weather you have proof or not
 
You know I am guilty of this. Awhile back I bought a gamecube and it was shipped late and not in the condition the seller told me it would and I felt he jerked me around. He wouldnt remedy the situation and I wanted to and should have left a neautral feedback but I am pretty sure he would have left me a negative and ruined my feedback which was about 10 at the time even though I paid up front and fast. I let it slide and did not leave any feedback but that was awhile back. Now if you sell me shit or I will leave you the feedback you deserve.

Your right ccotenj, heat is worthless if we let things slide like I mentioned above.
 
Cold Dark Shadow said:
actually topcat, its harder the you think to get a retaliation heat removed. There stance on it is, Its one persons word against another, deal with it. weather you have proof or not
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then theve've changed- it used to be that it would take a few days, but if you presented eveidence (emails, etc) and if the "retalititory" aspect was pretty obvious, the neg got removed. Granted it took awhile, sometimes a couple of weeks, but it got done. It'd be a shame if that's not the case now.......
 
freakflag said:
I suppose I'm lucky, in a way, because in over 130 positive trades I've only been in a position twice when I felt I needed to leave a negative eval.
The first time was early on in my n00b days and I felt bad for the guy so I just didn't post an eval for him at all. I've always regretted it.

The second time is right now as we speak and I have to say, it really sucks. I don't want to leave the guy a Neg, but, he kinda leaves me no choice. What good is the system if you don't use it the way it was designed to be used? If the guy leaves me retaliatory Heat, then, so be it. I don't think he will, but, if he does, I'll just contact Heat23 and let him decide if it should stand. If it does, that's what the reply feature is for. If after I spell it all out, somebody doesn't want to trade with me because of it...their loss. If they can't tell the difference between an earned Neg and a retaliatory one I don't want to trade with them anyway.

I did a deal with BusaOrZX12 over on AT recently. Maybe some of you remember THIS THREAD? I just have to say that Busa is one of the straight up nicest d00ds I've ever dealt with...and I've dealt with ALOT. I'm talking about a top-notch, A1 trader with 42 positive evals under his belt. Then along comes this asshat who leaves him a retaliatory Neg just to be a dick. Now he feels like people won't want to trade with him because of it. I tried to tell him that he did everything right and not to worry about it too much, but he's really upset about it. He takes pride in his Heatware.

If a trader...if a person... as good as Busa decides to hang it up over this, the whole community has failed and will be that much worse for it.

Is Heatware a perfect system? Of course not. Close...but no.
However, if everyone would just keep that in mind and use common sense when reading these evals rather than jumping to conclusions, it works pretty damn well.

I say post 'em like you lived 'em and let the chips fall where they may.
Click to expand...

Man your so right about BusaOrZX12, he is a awsome trader !! I bought a Soltek board from him a few months, the deal went great and he shiped first as well .

Thats bullshit the guy left him a neg:(
 
topcat989 said:
then theve've changed- it used to be that it would take a few days, but if you presented eveidence (emails, etc) and if the "retalititory" aspect was pretty obvious, the neg got removed. Granted it took awhile, sometimes a couple of weeks, but it got done. It'd be a shame if that's not the case now.......
Click to expand...


Yea i know, there was just a post here in the TTT about a member that this happend to and Heat did nothing and told him pretty much to deal with it
 
which is why I really don't subscribe to the whole Heatware thing. If some jerkoff leaves a negative eval for me in retalliation for jerking me around, then it'll screw me over whenever I do need to sell something here (a rare occurrence to be sure, I mostly buy). So I'll let my sign-up date and postcount speak for itself. If you don't want to buy from me because I don't use heatware, that's fine nobody's forcing you to. If you won't take my perfectly good money because I don't use heatware, I might be put off a little by it, but I'll get over it.
 
Heat does accept free emails for registration right?

If it's true, it should change that to non free email sonly.. like here in [H]ardForums
 
People only care because of the retalitory measures that the other person will leave negative. Thats it, thats all.
 
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