Ban proposal: Catch of the Day

Related Stores

Catch.com.au

Marketplace

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  scotty on 12/08/2014 - 23:56

  +1

  See this discussion on Catch of The Day's recent disclosure of hacking incident 3 years ago.

  We ban merchants for spamming, sockpuppeting, selling counterfeit items, etc. We don't "punish" merchants because of bad PR (failed to notify their customers immediately after breach). I don't see how it is a "victory" for anyone either.

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  jaackyy on 13/08/2014 - 00:27

  +2

  sounds more like OP has a personal grudge against COTD and wants them to lose publicity from ozbargain.. not that I'm supporting either cause, but suggesting bans of ' over a year ' to ' the rest of their days ' seems excessive.. and makes me question whether or not there's an ulterior motive here

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  p1 ama on 13/08/2014 - 00:35

  +5

  Note that COTD deals are posted by members and not COTD themselves. Hence, a ban would go against what OzBargain is about, which is sharing information.

  There are people out there who want a bargain and don't care about COTD's privacy issues. For them, to ban COTD is a loss.

  If you have a personal grudge against COTD then it's fine for you to not shop there, it's fine for you to comment and to talk about your experience, but other members here have the right to know what deals are on and all here are old enough to know the risks involved with purchasing from a particular retailer.

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  IVI on 13/08/2014 - 03:37

  Concerned about Privacy?

  Why not create some alias-like user accounts for sites, whose Privacy policies you object to.

  Paying with PayPal (&/or similar) might help you buy using such accounts, ie, rather than an acc't in your own name.

  "It's as safe as paying cash, in a shop."

  (Be -careful- to use your own -real- details for -some- items, eg, bank acc'ts, prepaid SIM cards, & whatever else could get you into strife - eg, as possible tax evader, etc. - if you gave false details.

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  timmypete on 13/08/2014 - 09:38

  +3

  I sort of agree with the sentiment of the OP that a response to COTD might be warranted, but I'm not so sure a ban is the right method.

  Given different issues with other sellers (eg. Gearbest), perhaps a new site feature could be implemented to tag warnings for particular stores. It could either be a text field like "FYI - Store has a history of slow shipping [link to forum post]" or "Warning - Store did not report data breach for 3 years [link to here]", something more akin to the L and P plate symbols for users, or something else entirely. I feel this sort of warning provides OzBargainers with more information so that they can objectively assess any potential tradeoffs against the low price of an item. I'm not proposing we go into the territories of eBay style DSRs, as I feel the incentives for sellers to encourage non-neutral voting is too high, but something less rortable could be useful.

  Why not create some alias-like user accounts for sites, whose Privacy policies you object to.

  Because it nearly always kicks off fraud triggers if a purchase is involved. I do this for freebies and comps but it is harder with stores. A better - though less immediate - way of solving this is to vote with your feet and explain this to them in writing. If enough people do this, it gives their business analysts and management evidence they can quantify and therefore demonstrate a need for change.

  Finally, as bad as the breach is, this should serve as a warning that everyone needs to avoid password reuse and perhaps should consider one-off email addresses. Clearly we can't trust companies from COTD to LinkedIn/Adobe/Sony scale enterprises to protect data, and as inexcusable as the lack of notice was, we should taking our own precautions too.

  • 

    p1 ama on 13/08/2014 - 23:07

    I feel this sort of warning provides OzBargainers with more information so that they can objectively assess any potential tradeoffs against the low price of an item.

    This would be a bad idea because of non-response bias. Statistics and analysing data is how I manage to buy food and pay bills, so I'm not making this stuff up. It's a genuine issue in the real world.

    The issue is that people who have an axe to grind are more likely to respond than people who have generally good experiences. This is why "voluntary feedback" is usually a bad idea unless people are almost forced to give feedback, e.g. on eBay, where it's no longer voluntary as such.

    For example, let's say that a particular customer has a grudge against a store, which is commonly the case here, I see posts on the forums complaining about the most trivial issues. If these issues are used to rate a store and their performance, it would be unfair because we are potentially judging a store based on the experiences of firstly, a very small sample and secondly, a very biased sample, i.e. those with an axe to grind.

    I think the system that has been working for so long is good enough. Unless a store actually does something illegal, e.g. scams people of their money, then their deals should be allowed to be posted here without any other notes or comments. People who have issues with stores can post them in forums, whether that be here or other popular places such as Whirlpool.

    At the end of the day, when someone here wants to buy something, it's their responsibility to research the store and look at the experiences of others. They will then be able to make an informed decision.

    If we buy without at least googling an unfamiliar store, then we're fools. We really don't need to save fools from themselves.

    • 

      timmypete on 14/08/2014 - 09:52

      I guess I wasn't clear enough in my initial proposal that this warning would be implemented at a site level, by the mods, for a limited number of stores, and with at least some sort of threshold before a warning occurs.

      it would be unfair because we are potentially judging a store based on the experiences of firstly, a very small sample and secondly, a very biased sample, i.e. those with an axe to grind.

      I think this is the status quo with people negging based on store rather than deal. In terms of sample sizes, the recent experiences with GearBest demonstrate a need for this sort of warning. They are presently banned, though the record now seems to indicate the issue was actually slow-shipping, not the fraud most people originally thought it was. A warning like I propose might actually help to mitigate the damage that GB faces from people (including myself) who perhaps too quickly assumed fraud and reported as such, especially as many didn't correct the record 100 days post-purchase when stuff finally arrived.

      People who have issues with stores can post them in forums, whether that be here or other popular places such as Whirlpool.

      At the end of the day, when someone here wants to buy something, it's their responsibility to research the store and look at the experiences of others. They will then be able to make an informed decision. If we buy without at least googling an unfamiliar store, then we're fools.

      I agree on all of these points entirely, but this system isn't aimed at people like you or I. Unfortunately a lot of outbound OzB clicks are from people without accounts, the too-trusting, and the less tech savvy.

      We really don't need to save fools from themselves.

      I feel that we as a community of savvy bargainers have a small but important duty to help the less astute protect themselves. Sure, we can't completely avoid stupid behaviour, but enlightening those who won't search is easy enough.

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  mooney on 13/08/2014 - 10:37

  +1

  I agree banning COTD is not appropriate. I do like tplen1's idea of warning tags for different stores though.

  Personally I made them delete all of my user details as a direct consequence of the lax handling of the privacy breach. Just as a nice reinforcement that it was the right thing to do it took me 4 emails and two weeks to get them to action it properly, despite them telling me three times it was completed. They are not to be trusted.

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    timmypete on 13/08/2014 - 14:17

    It took four months, ten emails and countless job tickets/unsubscribe tools to get CNet to do this with an address I originally had subscribed to a ZDnet list…aaand this is from a tech website FFS!