Allow Users to sell E-books

[FisherGee]

We should allow e-books to be sold as long as they are 100% white hat. There is no reason why. It could help both the buyer and seller make money. They should be staff approved.

edit: please do read the replies below as they have good points that could change your mind, appreciate all contributions!

 

[FisherGee]

Summed up my point a lot better, thanks.

No problem.

In the end, the buyer should never be 100% Guaranteed their money back, especially if the e-book can be leaked or saturated. Yes I agree that they should have a chance at getting their money back but it doesn't make sense for them to be entitled a full refund upon request.

Now if the resource or e-book was not as described (what justis was saying)

Any 13 year old will spend 10 minutes writing a couple dozen pages of triple spaced garble, charge $50 for it, and refuse to refund.

That wouldn't necessarily be the product/e-book's problem, it would more less be "False advertising". Same things goes for servers, if I said I was selling a server for $100 and it had 5 custom coded plugins but it came with 4 plugins, that would be false advertising and at that point, they would be entitled to a refund.

Hence why I suggested a thorough and precise set of regulations/reasons that the buyer would have to meet, to require a refund.
Reasons why it could be refunded?
-Faulty
-Not as described
-Not descriptive/Low amount of content
-E-Book or method becomes saturated, meaning it no longer works[DOUBLEPOST=1540428455][/DOUBLEPOST]Justis If you have the time, I'd like to request a reason on why you disagreed with my statement above. ^

 

[Justis]

Reasons why it could be refunded?
-Faulty
-Not as described
-Not descriptive/Low amount of content
-E-Book or method becomes saturated, meaning it no longer works

When you break down this suggestion into what will result of it, there is absolutely no difference from your previous suggestion of having a staff member "approve" a book or rejecting it. You're just moving the appraisal part to after people have made purchases.
It has all of the same problems I listed with the manual staff approval issue.

Putting aside the huge risk to buyers...
Imagine a $500 book receives dozens of purchases and then someone complains about it not being worth what they paid and they demand a refund; imagine a staff member reviews the book and decides it's not worth the $500, approving the buyer's refund request.
As soon as that happens, the staff member has essentially informed all of the previous purchasers that there's something wrong with the book and they can get a refund too if they just provide the same reasoning.

Having "MC-Market approved" ebooks places too much liability on our site since it would imply that we've verified that it's worth the money the author is charging.
MC-Market should never restrict or imply a product's price/value.
Not to mention the amount of time it'd take from our staff team.

It is for both the safety of the buyers who cannot possibly know what they'll receive until they get it and for the sellers, so that they're aware ahead of time of the risks associated with the selling of content evaluated entirely in the subjective, like ebooks.

For as long as I remain your administrator, I will do everything in my power to protect you and the rest of our community from the discretely self destructive policies you're suggesting.

A mutually agreed 100% satisfaction or refund guarantee, or no sale on this platform.

Read Walmart's post as well for various side problems.

 

[FisherGee]

When you break down this suggestion into what will result of it, there is absolutely no difference from your previous suggestion of having a staff member "approve" a book or rejecting it. You're just moving the appraisal part to after people have made purchases.
It has all of the same problems I listed with the manual staff approval issue.

Putting aside the huge risk to buyers...
Imagine a $500 book receives dozens of purchases and then someone complains about it not being worth what they paid and they demand a refund; imagine a staff member reviews the book and decides it's not worth the $500, approving the buyer's refund request.
As soon as that happens, the staff member has essentially informed all of the previous purchasers that there's something wrong with the book and they can get a refund too if they just provide the same reasoning.



It is for both the safety of the buyers who cannot possibly know what they'll receive until they get it and for the sellers, so that they're aware ahead of time of the risks associated with the selling of content evaluated entirely in the subjective, like ebooks.

For as long as I remain your administrator, I will do everything in my power to protect you and the rest of our community from the discretely self destructive policies you're suggesting.

How will we ensure that the "100% Money Back Guarantee upon request" rule is used appropriately?

 

[Justis]

How will we ensure that the "100% Money Back Guarantee upon request" rule is used appropriately?

"Was the sold item an ebook?"
> Yes
"Did the buyer request a refund?"
> Yes
"Then refund."

If the seller does not, that's what scam reports are for.
Very straightforward.

 

[FisherGee]

"Was the sold item an ebook?"
> Yes
"Did the buyer request a refund?"
> Yes
"Then refund"

If the seller does not, that's what scam reports are for.

Hmm... but the incentive towards the refund is if you paid for something you didn't get. Shouldn't there at least be a reason?
"I want the ebook and my money" is not a reason for a refund.

 

[moon10k]

How about a "E-Books/Methods" Area/Section, where the only people that can post threads are people who have Supreme, and meet other undisclosed requirements. There could also be a message on the section, like in the investments/loans area, that says "Purchase E-Books/Methods at your own risk blah blah" So, people can reply on E-Book threads and stuff, yeah, but only people who have supreme and meet certain requirements can actually post threads there. I'd suggest these requirements to be a bit strict.

 

[Mick]

Despite Justis being pretty keen to re-implement ebooks on the site, I am going to deny this suggestion. With the amount of problems arising from ebooks and other content (especially in the past before any regulations were placed on writing them), it will simply be better to continue disallowing them entirely.

While I have no doubts that implementing a money-back guarantee policy would greatly improve the market for ebooks, there are still countless other problems with the sale of this content. Ebooks aren't going to evolve into a massive niche on our marketplace and the excessive moderation and complex policies just doesn't seem worth it.

Denied, thanks for the suggestion.