Just to be clear: we absolutely pre-authorize credit cards with the credit card companies before allowing subscriptions. (We don’t simply rely on ccv algorithms to verify card numbers.) Maybe the bank allows electronic pre-auth on a valid, but expired card. Hasn’t really been an issue to date.
I didn’t see a reply to the situations above:
"here at C2 all credit card entries are pre-authorized (that is, validated) when they are typed in by the subscriber - even those used for free-trial systems. Verification includes billing-address matching. So system vendors can rest assured that their customers are legitimate. "
So, you also compare customers across user IDs to prevent aliases?
If someone signed up with the same credit card under 5 different aliases and did free trials, C2 would block 4 of them?
If someone signed up using 4 different credit cards in their same name (Discover, VISA, AMEX, MC), C2 would block 3 of them?
No, C2 would not do that – again, because 90% of the time it would serve mainly to make life difficult for legitimate users and would not actually solve any particular problem.
On the other hand, if there’s a particular case where a vendor suspects some kind of “cheating,” I investigate and can use a series of tools (which I won’t document here) to look into it.
I mean no disrespect to any of the posters in this thread when I say: Enough already. Let’s move on from this subject and stop obsessing about subjects such as credit cards and people trying to “cheat” you. No one is trying to cheat you. Really, people are obsessing about problems that simply do not exist to any measurable degree. Please see previous post about marginal cost of IP versus diamonds.
C2 doesn’t use names for CCs, so the second case would be a NO. But there should be one trial per CC number, and one trial per broker account in case of Gen2/3 autotrading. Sure, there will be some who trade with Gen1 or manually and have several credit cards, but really how many could there be, and how many credit cards can they have?
Not allowing reviews from free trials will definitely create a survivor bias. And making anonymity optional will likely result in anonymous negative reviews, and “signed” positive reviews. Anonymous reviews will be bashed. I say you keep them as they are, for now.
"Not allowing reviews from free trials will definitely create a survivor bias."
Sorry, but I completely disagree. The biggest problems are that free trial reviews let:
– a vendor sign up without cost to his own system and leave glowing reviews under an alias
– clueless newbies on free trial disproportionally dump on vendors, usually because they do not understand how C2 or a system works or they bend a minor issue into a major one or many other things. This has been a past complaint from vendors. I would rather let vendors make the decision to allow or not free trial reviews
– people who are very tentative customers average out the reviews from existing customers, who are likely to give more thorough feedback.
See the thread "Boy I wish we could comment on reviews" in this Collective2 Suggestions category for some of the truly dumb feedback, often by newbies…
C2 is not yet so popular as to have hundreds or even tens of reviews on a system. The most popular systems can maybe have 6 reviews, so I personally prefer to have all reviews available and filter them myself. Any serious prospective subscriber can distinguish useful reviews from dumb ones. Vendors get a chance to write rebuttals. All in all, I think the current method is pretty good.
if you were the vendor, and you have a single review, a 1 star review because a clueless knuckle head wrote something like "I subscribed, but I did not get any signals during the 3 days I tried it" and it turns out they did not know how to look at the signals,
you might feel a little bit pissed. That is the kind of comments some vendors get. All some potential subscribers see, is a 1 star review.
A rebuttal is somewhat like putting lipstick on a corpse.
I do think that the whole star rating thing is not very useful here on C2. It is too subjective and it will very likely change over time, based mostly on results. Subscriber reviews should be about issues like the vendor’s communication with subscribers, whether the system is easy to follow manually or requires split-second reactions, the way the vendor manages stops and profit targets, and so on. Things which are not easy to tell based solely on statistics. Someone on a free trial could decide not to pay for the system based on these issues, and could accurately comment about them.
I liked the idea of giving subscribers a free trial, but no longer do so because of competing vendors who use the free trial period as an opportunity to post unwarranted derogatory feedback.
Matthew, if you are concerned about a positive bias in feedback by disallowing free trial feedback, how about at least not allowing free trial feedback by other vendors? If this type of policy was in place I might feel comfortable allowing free trials again.
I simply believe you have to EARN your right to comment.
Pay the vendor, take his/her system seriously for a while, AND THEN comment on it.
It’s DISRESPECTFUL to vendors that work so hard on their system to let a mere passerby issue an uninformed (if not outright malicious) opinion that will denigrate that vendor for life and affect his reputation and even livelihood.
And I see an easy correction to this glaring injustice: one MUST PAY TO TALK.
That policy would likely lead to better comments too, reflecting a REAL life experience with the system, and will improve C2 in that will allow us subs to free-trial systems now closed to the idea (as described above).
Just my humble & unbiased opinion, of course, since I never had a sub, but subscribe to several systems here.
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that is exactly my opinion.
free trialers are not customers. they are tire kickers that MIGHT subscribe and are more likely to leave damaging or uninformed feedback
Even if they leave positive feedback, it is still likely to be uninformed
I’d like to ask why we have both reviews, and my analyst comments, and the chat area, and forums. All this needs streamlining in my opinion.
Personally I couldn’t give a monkey’s about how many stars a system has. But I do want to know all the comments people have made, and I want to know about the people who have made them - ie how long they traded it, when did they trade it, were they autotrading, did they make money on it, etc. I also want to know that it’s being traded with real money, and how many people are subscribed - at least a “subscribed popularity”. We already have the “most popular systems” ranking, which I guess is based on page views, we can already see how many people have a system in their analyst pages, and how many have bothered to comment on it. Why not some idea of how a system ranks in terms of actually being traded?
At the moment, to asses a system, especially in terms of what other people think about it, is a whole lot of work, going to all kinds of different areas on the site,. It really needs all pulling together. IMHO.
I agree with Jack. A good compromise would be a single page showing all the comments made about a system, with each comment labeled “subscriber”, “autotrader”, “free trialer”, “observer”, or things like that. Each comment could then be voted as useful or useless by the community, and the comments page would sortable by usefulness, date, and label. The star rating system can go. I don’t know if subscriber reviews are modifiable right now, but they should be.
If opening up again the structuring of reviews/My Analyst, I again request that people be allowed to respond (attached) to comments. This format is used in many places, from epinion.com to amazon.com
IF someone says something, others often have useful feedback related to the comment, and that option is lost here.
That would put it in serious risk of becoming a forum, with people entering into heated discussions, leaving questions there, and so on. Extra care would have to be taken to avoid that somehow. It should stay focused.
everyone else in the world who does this manages fine.
For example, this review page for "Pride and Prejudice"
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B00005MP58/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1_cm_cr_acr_img?_encoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
Where you see "Comments (13) " under the first review. People can read them or not, if they want.
I would also apply it retroactively to remove non-paying subscribers. And I also have way more than 1 credit card. It doesn’t seem there is anything stopping people from just using multiple cc#'s
Seems good to me. There are several good things about Amazon’s review system. Notice the “X people found the following review helpful” thing, the sorting according to usefulness/date, the “top 50 reviewer” and “real name” badges on the reviewers’ names. Some of these ideas would need tweaking to adapt them to C2, but they are on the right track.
Would vendors be OK with the labeling I proposed? People who only signed up for the free trial would be able to comment just like anyone else (even those who didn’t sign up for anything), but they would be identified as having only tried the system.
And I also have way more than 1 credit card. It doesn’t seem there is anything stopping people from just using multiple cc#'s
Yes. I disagree with the earlier thought that it is not an easy thing to do. When something costs $500 a month and offers a 30 day free trial, I can see someone getting 6 months worth rather easily, and the temptation is high.
