Raffle Escrow Protection

JB Cases

JB Cases

www.jbcases.com
Silver Member
This is my idea of how raffles can be run on AZB with protection for all sides.

1. Don't use PayPal. It is against PP's terms of service to use them to process raffle ticket payments. Instead someone who is a member in good standing should get a merchant account and use that to accept payments. When all the payments are in the raffle can commence. All fees should be built into the price of the tickets.

2. When the raffle is done then the goods can be shipped to the winner. When the winner reports that the goods arrived and are satisfactory then the money can be sent to the seller in ONE payment through PayPal.

This adds a layer of protection to the who process. All you people who love to get in the raffles are protected. One of our members can make a little bit of extra change for providing this service. No one's paypal account gets shut down. The Raffle Escrow person can be diligent about verifying authenticity when the raffle is offered.

If there is ANY problem with the goods the seller takes it back and everyone is refunded through the merchant account. However the odds of anything being wrong with the goods under this system are very slim. But when the seller has all your money and then the goods are wrong then he has all the advantage. This way he has a very big incentive to provide proper goods. And also it means that any newcomer can raffle since they won't be getting the money until the goods arrive and the winner approves it.

Payments can be made using credit and debit cards which increases the protection. Anyone with a PP account can also request a PP debit card which they can use to pay the raffles.

As it is now every raffler is truly skirting the knife's edge regarding using PP to get money and every raffle ticket buyer is taking chances on the goods they are bidding on being in good condition and authentic.

I only see upsides here. What do you all think?

(note: none of this takes into account the myriad of laws governing raffles in every state and country - that is beyond the scope of this system - this system is only to provide a way to protect buyers from sellers in a raffle situation.)
 
Instead someone who is a member in good standing should get a merchant account and use that to accept payments.
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Of the 1000's of raffles that have gone off without a hitch, how many times has something unfortunate happened like the Counterfeit Raffle?

How many raffles are going on at any one time. Thats a Full Time job for one person to keep track of each separate raffle and process all the payments, specially if people are using credit and debit cards. Thats almost like a large companies Accounts receivable and Accounts Payable Dept.

Providing you find someone that will assume the responsibility of that job, whats in it for them after all is said and done?
Are they going to do it for free?

So TAS or whoever he is had a flawless record here until he decided to screw around. Suppose you find someone else who has a flawless record to do this. Then, all of a sudden they pull off a disappearing act with all the money. One raffle might have a few hundred tied up, all the raffles might have a few thousand tied up.
Like you said John, different States have different laws governing raffles. Suppose you're lucky enuff to find the person and try and prosecute, only to find out that what has been proposed here is illegal.
If your Booking Agency rips you off, what are you going to do, call the cops and tell them that your bookie ripped you off?

If I enter a raffle for 10 bucks and get ripped off, I'm certainly not going to worry about it.
 
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Blue Hog ridr said:
Of the 1000's of raffles that have gone off without a hitch, how many times has something unfortunate happened like the Counterfeit Raffle?

How many raffles are going on at any one time. Thats a Full Time job for one person to keep track of each separate raffle and process all the payments, specially if people are using credit and debit cards.

Providing you find someone that will assume the responsibility of that job, whats in it for them after all is said and done?
Are they going to do it for free?
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Actually people complain about the goods they win in raffles a lot. Cues warped, not as described, goods not received etc....

There are programs which automate the process. It's not any problem at all to set up a web page to take payments for raffles. It's not any problem at all to set up a raffle item with 46 spots in inventory.

Yes it would be a job for someone. So each raffle costs a tiny bit more spread out among all the spots and that tiny amount per person insures a secure transaction for everyone concerned and no one needs to be scared that PayPal will shut them down for life as has happened to several upstanding members here already for running raffles through PayPal.

Automate the process and take 5% off the top for the work and risk.

At the end of the day I really don't care. I don't participate in raffles and when I run one then it is a free raffle that breaks no laws and carries no risk to me or anyone else. This is just my suggestion as to how you all, as a community, can have your raffles without everyone in fear that they can be pulled at any time due to PayPal's policies. Did you know that PayPal can also threaten to eliminate Mike Howerton's AZB paypal account as well for allowing raffles on his site to use PayPal? This has happened elsewhere on other forums.

So my thought is that you need to insulate the raffles from PayPal for the protection of everyone concerned.

Remember when raffles used to flourish? Then someone caused a bunch of trouble and the amount of raffles offered and the amount of people participating dropped off significantly. Personally I think that a lot of people who could offer raffles don't want to risk losing their ability to use PayPal.

Anyway, y'all do whatever you want. Just remember that PayPal can and will shut down your account and hold all the money until they decide to release it and there isn't anything you can do about it.
 
Raffle

First off I have to say I really like these raffles. Gives everybody a fighting chance at Items they may never be able to affford. That last Searing raffle & the guy won that for $125, a $7000+ cue. Just a word to the wise with not only raffles but anything here on AZ. Know who your dealing with, If a new member all the sudden wants to raffle off a Szamboti with no feedbacks the red light is going to go off and I would pass on that raffle. And it's really a small world in the "Cue World" it would only take someone one or two BAD feedbacks here on AZ and he would never be able to do business again and overall we have a great bunch of folks and so far so good for me everybody I've dealt with is A+++. Got to go, off to not only finish one of my raffles started but look for my next raffle to participate in. All my best ! ! !
 
12ozCurl said:
Is it lonely up there on your pedestal?
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Sorry I don't understand what you mean. By the way how is Tasaddicts doing on his promise to refund everyone? Or did he rescind that promise? You gave him some praise, has he lived up to it?

All I am doing is making a suggestion to prevent such crap from ever happening again. But like I said, it's not my problem.

With my way a member could come on AZ with no posts and no itrader and put up a raffle and NO ONE would get hurt if they bought tickets. No chance. With the way it is it's highly doubtful that the community will send money to an unknown member with no reputation.

And also my way protects the membership from getting conned by any longstanding members who go rogue.

About the ONLY real risk is that whoever is doing the raffle escrow service could abscond with the money from raffles in progress. And even in that situation each and every person who bought tickets could file a dispute through their credit card company/bank and get a refund. In that case the credit card company takes the hit and then they go after the merchant. This protection is part of their service. PayPal offers no such protection for virtual items like raffle tickets. The only reason people have any chance to get their money back in Tasaddicts raffles is not because he was running a raffle but instead because he was selling counterfeit goods.

Otherwise PP says no buyer protection for intangible goods. Which brings up another aspect. You should sell a tangible item and give away a free bonus raffle ticket IF you want to use PayPal. Don't know how far that will get you but it's certainly better than a pure raffle.
 
tasaddicts has not made good on my paypal claim as of yet. It seems he is pulling a disappearing act.
 
TAS made good with me, refunded me ALL of my $$$ I had tied up on those fake cases, thank GOD!! I would like to think of myself as one of the biggest raffle supports and I think many could vouch for this lol and the last thing I want is for raffles to go away. The problem is that I bet there's been numerous counterfeit products that have been raffled off on here, but the FAKE flowers cases were the first ones that were clearly pointed out to be counterfeits. I am weary to join any raffle that is ran by someone overseas because there is no way for me personal to verify if the product is legit or not. I'm not saying everyone overseas is a scammer of any kind, it's just kind of hard when counterfeit goods can be easliy purchased overseas opposed to stateside. I like JB's idea but would anyone be actually willing to do all that work to run all the raffles?
 
it's just kind of hard when counterfeit goods can be easliy purchased overseas opposed to stateside.
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True, but they can be easily imported to North America.
With all the cues being counterfeited also, I Suppose that the only thing one can do is be more careful when entering a raffle. I mean, if a guy has a brand new Joss for sale, it might raise a red flag or cause you to be a bit more diligent.

I would think or at least hope that with the last curfuffel (sp) that went on here, that anyone in their proper mind wouldn't try this scam again or at least, any time soon. Its too bad if this incident is going to hurt the legit rafflers. I hope not.

The one good thing that did happen from this, is that it has raised the awareness of counterfeits. Should any member of AZ come across
J Flowers cases for example, on EBay or anywhere, then the sellers can be reported. At least it might make it a bit more tougher for the sellers to make a profit from this if everyone keeps their eyes open.

If anyone finds an original JF or a JB case on the market for 50 to 100 bucks, that should be enuff to perk up your ears. Cause that just ain't gonna happen.
The funny thing about the Predator BK knock offs tho, is that the asking price for the knock offs weren't all that far away from the
legit BK's that in some cases people might not really pay close enuff attention, other than the name was pretty much a dead give away. The Predator cases might be a different animal too.
 
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The easiest way to get some kind of verification is to send an email to the brand owner and ask them. Provide a link to the sale page and see what they say.

Basically there isn't much in the way of true "authorized" dealers for top name brands in Asia. So for the most part the chances are VERY HIGH that anything being sold as a name brand item through Ebay Hong Kong or Ebay Taiwan/China is fake. Not always but a good chance.

So send an email to the brand owner and let them do the investigative work to insure that the seller is selling legitimate goods. Question the seller and make them provide their proof that the goods are legit. Should be easy if they are. They can say who they bought from and the chain of sales can be traced back to the main source.

As for someone willing to do the work? Why not, there is money to made for providing the service. Honestly I looked around and there are plenty of ways to set this up so that raffles can be paid for using credit cards and it all happens pretty much automatically except for the initial item setup. And that's super easy, takes all of 3 minutes to enter in an item number and a short description. It's really not much work at all.

Basically each ticket is treated as an inventory item. When the available inventory is gone, ie. the spots are all paid for then the raffle goes off. In the unlikely event that refunds have to be given out then it's all easy to do through the payment gateway. Takes a few minutes per spot. As Terry pointed out this is a rare occurrence now and would be even rarer in an escrow situation.

Wouldn't everyone just feel better knowing that the seller had major incentive to provide perfect product descriptions? That no matter who won the liklihood of there being a problem drops to almost zero? And the same goes for the seller, he or she can sell with confidence that when the buyer gets the product it's not going to be any problem at all and all the money will arrive in one payment with no danger to their paypal account.
 
I agree with the idea that paypal is probably not the best way to run things. But as far as the raffles go, I do not believe we need buyer protection for the product. I have been fortunate to win four raffles (one on a live stream) and everything has been great and exactly as described. I have participated in many raffles, probably over a hundred, and I have been satisfied with what was being sold every time. I would say people get screwed less in the raffle process than they do buying in the WFS section. There are people being hosed constantly there and tasaddicts was the first indiscretion I've heard of in a raffle.

I enter raffles that are priced well and almost always are from reputable sellers. I am confident that the majority of raffles are well run and trustworthy. There is no need to entirely revamp the system because of one bad transaction (I know there were multiple raffles but it was the same product and person).

America is governed based on rules designed for the lowest common denominator. I don't believe we need that here. I for one think the system we have is working very well and I have no complaints save the paypal payment ordeal, which would not change in your given scenario.
 
brandoncook26 said:
I agree with the idea that paypal is probably not the best way to run things. But as far as the raffles go, I do not believe we need buyer protection for the product. I have been fortunate to win four raffles (one on a live stream) and everything has been great and exactly as described. I have participated in many raffles, probably over a hundred, and I have been satisfied with what was being sold every time. I would say people get screwed less in the raffle process than they do buying in the WFS section. There are people being hosed constantly there and tasaddicts was the first indiscretion I've heard of in a raffle.

I enter raffles that are priced well and almost always are from reputable sellers. I am confident that the majority of raffles are well run and trustworthy. There is no need to entirely revamp the system because of one bad transaction (I know there were multiple raffles but it was the same product and person).

America is governed based on rules designed for the lowest common denominator. I don't believe we need that here. I for one think the system we have is working very well and I have no complaints save the paypal payment ordeal, which would not change in your given scenario.
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I agree, if it's not broke don't fix it. But you are slightly mistaken about paypal. Using the way I suggest there would be virtually no way to have any paypal issues since PP would not be used to collect the payments for raffle tickets. If a buyer wanted to use paypal to pay then they could ONLY do that using a PayPal debit card # and not as a direct payment from their PP account. The only way PP would be used is for the escrow to make one single lump sum payment to the raffle holder when the winner receives their goods. And for PayPal that would be a straightforward tangible goods transaction where the buyer is the escrow service.

There wouldn't be 46 individuals all making disputes with PP as we have here.
 
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