Contact Seller button and its importance with Ads/Classifieds

StereoNET · June 13, 2024

Recently we introduced the Contact Seller button as part of the Classifieds, shown on every ad.

This opens up an interface to be able to send the Seller a message directly and also let's them know which product you are enquiring about (seller's often have multiple items for sale).

Why did we do this and why is it important?

This morning a member who had been lurking within our memberbase since last year, placed a fraudulent advertisement.

We have so many checks in place to detect fraudulent activity or suspicious actions and 99% of them are flagged before they even get into our community. Beyond that, every single advertisement is checked by volunteer moderators before approval. Scammers make their living from discovering workarounds and looking for ways to beat systems like this. StereoNET, in my opinion, is one of the very platforms for keeping its members safe and protected against this sort of activity which is rife across other platforms.

This morning, one slipped through. It was human error, and it can happen.

Thanks to the eagle-eyed nature of a member I won't mention here (but they have our sincere thanks), it was spotted that the offer was too good to be true (another tell-tale of a scammer), and we were alerted to the ad within hours of it going live. Upon further investigation, it was blindingly clear the ad was a scam.

Thanks to the Contact Seller button, which shows Admin/Mods the usernames of those members who have contacted the Seller, I was able to immediately alert those users to the scam, and in this case, before any money had changed hands. Under the old Classifieds, we could not have done this. We would have had no idea who had already contacted the scammer. By the time we discover the scammer, it could be too late.

So while we realise there are other ways to contact a member on this site, we implore you to use the Contact Seller button not only for convenience, but also for your protection.