1. There is no such thing as a "pending" ban or Steam admin. Anyone threatening your account is a scammer trying to scare you. Read more.

Question about a trade middle man?

Discussion in 'SteamRep General Discussion' started by VarmeVarm, Sep 5, 2014.

  1. VarmeVarm

    VarmeVarm New User

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    I am not doing any trades or need a middle man, I only have a question (Saying this before you begin reading thinking I want a middleman.)

    In the future, when I am richer, maybe unboxed an expensive unusual, or traded to very good deals and such and want real cash/paypal, I am not going to trade with the guy unless he goes first, I can go first but he needs to be VERY KNOWN troughout TF2 and known as a trusted trader by steamrep admins,famous server owners, all that famous stuff, which is unlikely since those are not common to trade with, OR, I could get a middleman.

    Anyway, my question(s), who would this middleman be? Is it a steamrep admin or moderator? Because I won't trade with paypal with people that has lots of rep, as I have seen many scammers even with much rep. If it actually is a steamrep admin or moderator, do we even trust him? I mean, if you trade thousands of dollars to maybe 100 buds or so, I mean, the steamrep admin/moderator could actually steal 100 buds because thats like, thousands of irl money..

    REMEMBER, I AM NOT ACCUSING ANYONE OF ANYTHING. I am fairly new to steamrep, and all I am is afraid of some huge scams in the future. Don't hate please, I am not accusing of anything, I am new.
  2. VarmeVarm

    VarmeVarm New User

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    Why the heck, is this thread on this forum, I swear I posted this on the main one..
  3. VarmeVarm

    VarmeVarm New User

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    Can someone move this to general discussions, please? I have not even visitted this forum section, I don't know why it's posted here.
  4. Mattie!

    Mattie! SteamRep Admin

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    Well, life offers no guarantees about anything. You could get robbed by anyone-- the only truly safe thing to do is not to have valuables and never trust anyone.

    Anybody can "cash in their reputation", as it's called in the community-- and they very well could go rogue and start stealing from people.

    Yet, the trusted admins and middlemen often have years of reputation in the community, and frequently handle multi-thousand dollar transactions with no problem. The likelihood that your transaction will be the one where they decide to "risk it all" is a very small one.

    They'd be trading-in all future opportunities and trust, throwing away years of volunteering, etc. These community members would be the least motivated people to go rogue and they've proven (again and again) that they can be trusted with expensive items based on their past experiences.

    People that have earned a high reputation only have a small window in which they can "go rogue" and steal. Immediately when someone trusted goes rogue, alarm bells sound everywhere and they are quickly banned and branded so the damage is minimized.

    While rogue members can happen, it happens incredibly rarely. I've only seen people go rogue a handful of times in the three years I've been in this community. It's usually been high-rep traders rather than admins or middlemen-- in fact, I don't remember someone trusted running away with an item during a middleman transaction. (Maybe it happened and I never heard.)

    In the end, it's obviously a lot safer than trusting someone with no reputation-- but there's no answer that is 100% risk-free.
    Tio José das Vacas likes this.
  5. Ninja Otter With A Taco

    Ninja Otter With A Taco Retired Staff

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    If you ever do have over 100 buds and looking to cash out, a good way to minimise the risk is to trade in small sections, for example 10 at a time, would take awhile and you probably wouldn't make as much money but any losses would be reduced if someone did decide to scam you, always better to be safe.
  6. SilentReaper(SR)

    SilentReaper(SR) Retired Staff

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    High value items are normally traded for by other less high value things. Say an unusual is worth 80 buds. Cashout would then be:
    - Sell the unusual for 80ish buds
    - sell off the 80ish buds in small badges for cash to a lot of different people. Sure, you might get scammed once or twice, but if you keep the badges small enough.... it won't be a big chunk on the 80 buds you're selling.

    That way your unusual worth 80 buds won't be scammed in 1 go because you didn't observe to split it up in smaller chunks.

    Works the other way as well.
  7. VarmeVarm

    VarmeVarm New User

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    Okay, thanks for the replies. It gained me confidence, because I trust that the middlemen/community members as mattie speaks about is TO BE TRUSTED. But yeah, I got confidence in not being scammed now, thanks. (Yeah it's possible I can be scammed, but I am going to do NO trades with any steamrep banned users, non popular people, or anyone unless steamrep has verified them as trusted when doing paypal or something.)
  8. SilentReaper(SR)

    SilentReaper(SR) Retired Staff

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    We do not maintain reputation threads for traders. Admins and MM on SR and our partner communities receive green tags to note they are admins and make them stand out. This means, we do not "rate" normal traders to be trustworthy or not, only if they where involved in scamming activities and surrounding that.

    So we do not "rate" a normal trader "trustworthy" or not. You can gauge that by their reputation threads on partner communities who are more suited to maintain those. SR does only administrate its core goal: make trading safer by noting who where scamming, with enough proof to hold scrutiny. It provides a "central" place to check for this and we point to our partners who are handling the traders who did not fraud, to guide them on their trading, finding trades, reputation threads, buying/selling threads etc.
  9. VarmeVarm

    VarmeVarm New User

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    Alright, so I can count on those with green tags? Like, count on them to be trusted 100%. If we gave them a burning KE as a middleman to pass on to the other guy for example, we can still trust green tags? (I might be annoying, just wanting to know 100%, haha)
  10. Horse

    Horse Administrator SteamRep Admin

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    Situations change as time passes...you are a long way away from being in this situation and you are also throwing out scenarios that may never happen. Partner Communities that are tagged as such here with those green tags are not always a good way to measure how well someone can be trusted. IMO I think having these tags are getting a little out of control... I've seen newly installed Admins at other communities start begging for this pretty green tag here as soon as they get into that position when it should be something that was earned or reserved for those that have shown over a long period of time they can be trusted.

    I'll also say this....I don't agree with green middle man tags coming from SR being so easy to apply by any group that feels they can do this service. I don't middle man.... nobody at WA is doing middle man services just because I don't feel it is worth the trouble or possible s✿✿✿ storm it could cause if you screw up - we are all human and we all screw up at some point.

    I speak only for me ... I don't speak for SR in this regard just to make sure that is clear but I felt it was a good time to express my opinion on the matter.
  11. VarmeVarm

    VarmeVarm New User

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    I know I am long away until this situation, but just so I know.. Still abit unsure on who to trust though...I don't feel like trusting green tags if they get it by begging.
  12. Horse

    Horse Administrator SteamRep Admin

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    Well again that is just coming from me... and what I've seen in the past. The middle man community tags (also green) are applied by those communities and are not administered by SteamRep nor are they backed by SteamRep.

    But I think you got your answer you were looking for.... cross this bridge when you come to it rather than sit here and speculate on something that may never happen anyway.
  13. VarmeVarm

    VarmeVarm New User

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    "that may never happen anyway."

    Sure, keep thinking that :p
  14. gukingofheart

    gukingofheart New User

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    whenever I do keys for cash, I find someone with many pages of SourceOP, and put a limit on it so they're not blinded by greed.
    I figure, why would someone get themselves a scammer mark with less then $100. They'd want to try to get so much more!