folks, we need to do something about this...

Dave, Yeah. And there is. The little red triangle we affectionately call the "Report Post" button.

It does wonders if you give the mods specifics.

In this instance there's clearly something wrong. The seller's last response in the thread was 10/22/2013. The last log-in to the forum for that account was 1/6/2014.

If he hasn't contacted you by close of business Tuesday, please let me know.

We cannot allow people to make posts like this publicly accusing people of ripping others off. They are far too often simply wrong, even when the poster has the best intentions. (Of course, some are right, too, and we want to know about those. That's what the report post button is for.)

Example: Early Saturday evening, we got a report about a "review" that seemed a bit over the top in its nastiness. Among other things, the guy ranted that it was unethical. I looked at it and the comment seemed familiar. Looked at the one after it, which quoted the first "reviewer," and noted that it came from the same IP address.

Checked the poster's profile and it turned out to be someone who has a long history of trolling WSO threads, and has been accused several times of pirating products he obtained here and demanding refunds afterward.

Nuked both accounts. (Want to bet this one runs around claiming we're the ones doing something fraudulent?)

Anyone who saw those "reviews" may well have believed the seller was doing something wrong. There would be no basis for that which I'm aware of, other than that a chronic liar said so.

Here's another example: Earlier this week, a dude bought a product and discovered he already knew one of the main things in it. He asked for a refund, posted in the sales thread 15 or 16 times, reported the seller to the mods 5 or 6 times, filed a Paypal dispute, sent me 3 PMs without waiting for a reply to the first, and called the seller everything but cheery in the process.

Repeatedly accused the seller of refusing to honor his posted refund policy, which is a very serious accusation here.

What actually happened: At 2 AM Monday, the seller's time, the customer asked for a refund. At approximately 2 PM that same Monday, he filed a Paypal dispute. Sometime Tuesday afternoon, the guy got his refund.

Less than 2 business days after asking for it. It would have been sooner if the seller hadn't been under a wrong impression of what you can do when a sale has been disputed.

This ... "customer" ... ranted and raved and did everything he could to destroy the seller and get him banned because he didn't get a response within 5 business hours in the seller's time zone.

More to the point, he contacted other people who had bought, trying to create a cascade in the thread. That would likely have happened from the multiple irrational and outrageous posts he'd made in the thread anyway, but he wasn't content to show any patience at all.

He got his refund. He also got a 6 month ban for his abuse of the system. You have to be seriously over the top for that to happen as a customer.

There have been times in situations like yours, Dave, when the only thing necessary to resolve the situation was to ask the customer: "What kind of spam filtering do you use?"

That probably doesn't apply here, but it's yet another example of why we don't allow these kinds of "name and shame" posts.


Paul