How do DGers handle this problem?

I have only been on Dave's since last January (as far as posting goes). There seems to be a lot of problems with trades being completed. No one wants to 'bad mouth' anyone else so they don't put any negative feedback.

I know from my DG friends that this is an ongoing problem for them. Now we are all warning each other of being very disappointed in a trade we can see going on in the posts.

What does administration say about this and how to handle it in a straighforward way without being known as a 'tattle tale'?

After I send out my packages tomorrow with joy........i want to and I have already received their great trades...........I just hate that I am going to be very selective in who I trade with..........that is sad..........my last few trades have been great but if I look back over the last 8 months, I certainly got burned as many times as my friends have....

This is exactly what the purpose of the trading feedback system is for. If we don't use it, however, then there is no solution.

Leave feedback often to help others know that the person is trustworthy (or not). Don't hesitate to post a negative feedback; if someone rips you off you shouldn't feel bad about warning others.

Dave

thanks............I am going back to my friends and dmail them to get up the courage when they send lots of plants and the other person doesn't just send them bad plants............but NO plants at all with no explanation. It is happening a lot................

I am just glad to know that we can and will leave negative feedback........
Thanks again............

gessie....sorry you have had some problems....you are such a sweet one and i can't image others taking advantage of that.....; i have traded very little but thanks for the heads up and warning...sad that we have some bad ones here:)

Oh........it has happened to a lot of people more than it has happened to me...........they just don't want to complain.............

If they don't leave feedback then people will keep trading with those unreliable people, but if they speak up then they can potentially save others from having the same bad experience. I would recommend trying to contact the trader via dmail and resolve things that way first, but if the person doesn't come through with what they promised then feedback is definitely the way to go. Maybe the bad feedback will bother the person enough that they'll either stop offering trades, or realize that they need to make good on their commitments

Out of approximately 35 actual plant trades I have been burned 7 times. Each time I just let it go and didn't say anything. Five of the bad trades were either inferior, almost dead, or totally dead plants. The other two, I got no plants at all, but I never pursued d-mailing these people. I just didn't take the time, chalked it up to the chance we take when trading with strangers. I just made notes in my Trade Tracker on these particular people and will not make trades with them again.

From now on, I will leave feedback, even if it is bad! Maybe if enough of us do that, the culprits who constantly take advantage will be known by everyone and eventually no one will trade with them anymore .... I think the proper way will be to d-mail the perosn involved first and if the situation isn't rectified to my satisfaction then the next step would be to leave the bad feedback.

Thank you Gessiegail for bringing this subject up.

plantladylin...7 out of 35....say it aint so?? wow....i hope that i can steer clear of those people....

i sorta wish that they could do the visable little feedback thing behind our names like at ebay....that way it is more visable; but i just looked at someone that i just sent plants out to on friday and they dont have good feedback....i never thought to look at their feedback:(

Sticks: I've not looked at e-bay much .... I've never bought anything on e-bay. Do you mean the feedback in on the page with the seller's name?

I think I would remember to check feedback and leave feedback on DG if there were a link below each of our names each time we post. Maybe just something like this:

plantladylin
Daytona Beach, Fl
(zone 9a)

Feedback

September 16, 2007
9:30 p.m.


If it were right there at every post and visible I would remember. LOL. I am getting old and forgetful so most of the time I don't think to check it.

Sometimes the shipping part is hard, unless the person runs a mail order nursery for a living, they could ship plants or cuttings and even if they do things mostly right on the packing/shipping they won't arrive in great shape. The thing to do is let the person know that things arrived in bad shape, chances are a lot of people would have been willing to send you another plant or cutting if they knew the ones they sent were dead or in bad shape when they arrived. But since they never heard anything, they probably assumed things arrived fine. And the ones who never sent anything might have got busy and forgot, or they sent it and it got lost in the mail, etc (believe, me, I've had the post office lose a number of things!) It shouldn't really count as a bad trade unless you contact the person to see if they can make it right. But if things go wrong and you contact them and they won't make it right, then definitely leave the negative feedback.

I agree. I should have pursued the trades and followed up. I know how hectic life can be with jobs, kids, family stuff .... and I know how forgetful I am myself if I don't write things down, so I know how easy it is to not remember trades. I love the Trade Tracker feature of DG and use it all the time ... but I still have to make myself a note or else print out the trade to remember what I am supposed to send.

I don't get bothered by bad trades or not receiving the end of the trade that was supposed to come my way. If it was always one sided I could see myself getting angry and upset by it, but I try to remind myself that Life is short and it doesn't do any good to get stressed over some things. In the grand scheme of things I don't need more plants, I just love to share what I have. I guess since we have the feedback option we should all use it if possible, to help those who do want to trade fairly.

plantladylin on ebay your have your id name....you have a # behind it as below; the number behind is the number of positive
transactions you have done....; underneath the name is something like 99.9% positive
meaning that the person has had alot of positive transactions

sticksnstones 24
99.9% positive

the one below sets off alarm bells in my brain when i am looking at an
item by that seller....it shows 4201 positive transctions....but has a 72.1%
positive which means that this seller/buyer has alotta negs....so i go and
look to see what is going on

badebayseller 4201
72.1% positive

on amazon we have our name and below we have
the # positive; then you can go look at specific
transactions that the seller has done

sticksnstones
99% positive


i wish we could at least have our name and a number beside it
or the percent good we have done behind our name or something

This message was edited Sep 16, 2007 9:05 PM

How did ebay get in on this discussion? (LOL)................i can't even go near ebay because I tried to use it back in 2005 and didn't know what I was doing. I won the bids on some nightgowns and never paid...................so i have a minus2 rating and that is why i don't use ebay. I don't think someone should have to pay for the rest of their life because of one bad day..................i am talking about people who consistently don't follow through on DG. We are not ebay and hope we never are part of that.
This is getting to be comical since I brought the subject up.......and I am the one who is scared to death of ebay ........want to look up my name????????? I can't remember my user name.

gessie...i was just referring to some type of system here on daves that we could have a way to show positive trades:)

And I am teasing you....................because I know that i can't go to ebay for one foolish day in my life...............i wasn't about to go to the post office and get a money order........I just assumed they took mastercard (LOL)

well you can tell my brain isn't working:)

If Dave does do something showing people's feedback by their username, I'd rather see it show up just on the trading lists or in the plant & seed trading forums rather than everywhere. I could see how someone's advice and opinions might be discounted more readily if they've got poor feedback, when in reality the feedback only relates to their trading and they might be a perfectly good contributor in other areas.

Oh, those words are music to my ear...........ecrane......I will have to live with my minus 2 rating on ebay the rest of my life as I don't know how to change it anyway..........I certainly try to uphold my trading on DG (LOL)

e i agree that would be more beneficial
gg you are a hooooot:)

I have heard that word before but 'trouble' may be my middle name ............laughing with you!!!!!!!!

Ratings have good and bad points. I have done a few trades through DG without much trouble, but only with people who I have talked to a lot on the forums. What would, I think, be a good idea, would be to make the feedback process more integral to the trade tracker - something like when you send your "I have Recieved your Trade" email, the systerm should then say "would you like to leave feedback for this trade" and take you there. Most of the people I have traded with, have been, newbies and I have had to explain the feedback system to them.

A quick note for Gessiegail, you can get your negative eBay ratings rescinded by contacting the person you were trying to trade with - only they (as the aggrieved party) can fix them. If you contact them directly and explain,you should be able to come to an agreement. I had a similar problem early in my eBay days but it's all fixed now. KK.

i really tried over a year ago............was told they don't keep information that long..........it is ok........but thank you...............there are so many good vendors anyway....................some nice person dmailed me to say i could get another email address and start all over..........someday I might but i doubt it...............thanks

dmail with a reminder to give the old folks a chance to remember....I have been guilty of forgetting but never deliberately ignoreing. I think negative feed back should be given when it's deserved. I would check with the trader first because serious life sometimes gets in the way of our play.
I leave negative feedback and I also try to remember to leave positive for our good friends

I received an offer to trade the other day which just struck me as odd. Vaguely remember a similiar offer on another forum months ago. Its a cultivar not commercially available. When I googled parts of the email I received, I see I received a copy of what was posted on another forum. I didn't want that cultivar but offered to send the seeds without bothering with being reimbused for stamps.. I wrote a rather long D-Mail giving details of the heirloom the person wanted and asked for a mailing address. Received no comment to anything I wrote but just the address.

Now I'm wondering if this person goes from forum to forum with a story about his one unusual cultivar (which could be anything in reality).

Is it possible to search for a person's posts? I tried the search box which says "search by user" with various words in the main search box and got no hits. Wonder if this person has ever posted anything on this forum.

Click on the person's name and it will take you to their home page. Look down the row and click on: View the threads Jane Doe has started. That's about all I think you can search for. You can also read feedback left for her by other traders!

Thanks plantladylin....you confirmed what I thought, there isn't a specific way to seach all posts by members (unless there is...lol...I've tried everything and sometimes I can find a few replies someone posted but not all).

Anyways....I did go to the person's profile and clicked on "View threads started" by that person. Nothing there. Never started any.

Haven't seen the person post replies in forums related to what is involved in the trade either (but I'm fairly new and might have missed older replies).





This message was edited Sep 22, 2007 8:43 PM

Try typing a user name in the 'search forums' space at the top of this page

Claypa: Thank you for that tip ..... I guess I'm still so new that I had no idea we could do that! Think I will test it right now!

What a great feature! Thank you so much for letting us know about it!!

You can also go to Google and type this:

site:davesgarden . com username

(remove the space around the dot). That forces Google to search just this site for whatever criteria you enter. You can do the same for other garden sites if you remember the individual from them.

wow, did that for myself and that's a bit creepy...

I don't think I want to know that much about myself............let alone others (LOL)

If you think that is creepy, try Googling "Your Real name" inserting your own full name between the quotes that will really freak you out, but it can also be fun to see just what kind of footprint you make in the digital world, LOL, KK.

Yeah, I've googled my name and it's really interesting to see how many you find with the same name!

The only reason you're seeing the posts at DG is (a) you're logged into DG when you do the search and/or (b) the posts are in some of the forums viewable by non-subscribers. If you log out of DG before executing such a search, you will not find nearly as many search results.

I've googled my own name and was shocked! There's a race horse out there with my name, first and last, and most of the selections are about "her".

My friend has a pretty unusual name, yet when we Googled her, we found someone with her name does, erm, uh, nude photography. It can be a real eye-opener, that's for certain.

Laugh :D

Yes, and it was a bummer because the domain with her name was taken by this person. That business is certainly a far cry from my friend's intent -- handmade greeting cards! LOL!!

I just googled myself and found out there's quite a few of me.