Yesterday I read of a brand new scam going on. Scam buyers are making good on their threats: Pay them money or they will trash the sellers' stores/sites. They buy, then leave bad feedbacks/reviews and of course not pay. One seller ignored the message and sure enough, they went through with the threat.
Are the Bots ready? Are WE ready? Are they here yet? How long? Are there sellers dealing with it and just not on these boards yet?
I was reading something about that the other day in the trade press but I can't find it now and can't remember the source - it's not anything really new, more a new wrinkle in the old 'bad reviews' scam - but goes beyond bad feedback to actual sabotage by interference with trade. Ugh - I've got CRS but maybe I'll stumble across the source again.
ETA: It's not 'non-payment = bad feedback' - that's as old as this site.
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” — Alice Walker
So far the site stops the scam but is leaving the feedback(s) intact. They might change that in time, but so far, no. Will stay on it and if I hear anything new, I'll post it. I hope it fails quickly!
Easy - cite your sources. You posted about this in at least two threads including this one and it took a bunch of questions from others before we could even learn that the unnamed site was Etsy. Someone else eventually came up with an Ecommercebytes article about it.
If you are going to sound an alarm then at least please document it enough so that others can read about it right away.
albertabrightalberta
