What does "close it down" mean to you? @Beerfan225

Ghosting should be a bannable offense, especially after a trade is agreed upon, but even if it isn't yet. It's just incredibly fucking rude and so pointless as well. I mean, how hard can it be take one minute to send a message along the lines of "Sorry, not interested anymore"?

 

"Close it down" or "shut it down" don't really make sense to me as an agreement to move forward with a trade. If it were me and someone said that to me, I'd be confused ... unless it was referring to closing down the outstanding trade request thread because a trade was agreed upon. That being said, ghosting on a trade thats been agreed to is a dick move.

 

My take as well, but I'm not sure what to do about it.

The most recent Bad Trader thread involved a victim who had gone out of his way to obtain some beer as a favor for a member living in another part of the country. After obtaining the beer requested by the member (in order to complete the trade), the BT cut off all communication with the victim. As it turned out, he had engaged in similar behavior with another member on the trading forum. Under those set of circumstances, he was eventually banned, after he was given some time to visit the BT thread and explain his actions (which he never did).

The current situation seems a bit different to me, as it sounds as if the OP has some alternative options for trading his beer, and it doesn't sound as if he spent money on obtaining his trade goods that he likely wouldn't have spent otherwise. In other words, the injury doesn't seem that severe, and it sounds like it will be fairly easy for him to be "made whole." Those are generally the factors I know I try to take into account when determining whether a Bad Trader thread should be started (as I'm always much more concerned about making sure the victim is taken care of, as opposed to beating up on the perpetrator).

That's just my two cents, for whatever it's worth. Maybe @dmbforever can weigh in on this topic as well (as he's our resident Bad Trader expert).

 

Its tough because an agreed upon trade initially is just agreed on in principle but not actually through the site here. I recently did a trade where we agreed in principal on the trade, at least in what was to be exchanged, but then we both had to go get the beer to be exchanged. Once we had the beer in hand, we opened a trade on here. There is that time period where there may be an agreed upon trade but no open trade here on BA. I'm assuming that is what happened here ...

So when something like this happens, do you force them to go through with the trade or face a ban? Do you suspend their trading privileges?

I know that there has been a reticence to involve the mods in trades that are not agreed to with an open trade pending on BA - especially in these cases where the harm to the person isn't as great as someone who sends beer that is stolen. That being said, there does seem to be a rise in people agreeing in principle to trades then ghosting. And I think is should be dealt with to some extent. I was very glad to see the retirement of the account in the most recent bad trader thread where the bad trader had ghosted on some trades. In my personal opinion, the beer trading community here has no need for people who aren't good for their word.

 

I agree, and it makes me unhappy that this has become such a widespread problem. As I mentioned in the prior BT thread, there seems to be a perception that the victim really hasn't been hurt by the actions of the BT, as the "victim" isn't actually out anything (in other words, he can just go ahead and drink the beer he bought himself). The fact the victim may have gone to considerable time, effort and expense to obtain the beer in question, and may have spent a fair amount of money on beer he otherwise would never have spent to obtain that beer, doesn't seem to register for a lot of people.

My impression is that for a lot members in the trading the community, they see this almost as a "victimless crime." Short of making it a ban-able offense whenever someone reneges on a trade agreement (and I'm not sure the bros or the community want to go there), I'm not sure what can be done to stop this sort of behavior.

 

I dont do much beer trading and its exclusively done through BA, so that explains why I had never heard it. Thanks for helping me out.

I always send a message with the trade request as well. haven't had any issues with my trades so far (knocks on wood).

 

Soooo... it appears the perpetrator is a repeat offender. So much for learning from past mistakes.

 

So maybe a warning for first time offenders and for repeat offenders like this dude then you get banned?

 

Could you not issue warnings to such accounts, maybe suspending their Trader status for a certain time, and then banning the account once a certain amount of warnings have been reached?