Buyers Policy Discussion

[megalomaniac]

i wanted to take a few days to cool off and see what direction would come about from this thread...
there was plenty of open discussion before i posted, and that discussion stopped soon after i posted...
i had requested this thread remain unlocked to allow for a continued discussion about this incident, the ramifications it could have on an individual (me), or the perception this may display about the forum (modretro)...


however with all discussions stopped, there has been no resolution to this incident.
so i will now post some of my own thoughts and observations:



as a forum moderator, Tchay showed personal disagreement with my policies in regards to selling and created a post within the "moderator forum" to present his personal views of disagreement. As evidence Tchay posted an edited and incomplete chat log to support his personal views. The result, led to the creation of this thread originally titled: "BEWARE WHEN BUYING FROM MEGALOMANIAC"

While this thread may have been created prematurely, i understand Kickback's actions as a moderator were to inform and protect the modretro community. As I have also been a moderator at other forums, i understand how a bond and trust is formed between mods and admins, a bond and trust that usually goes without question. I applaud Kickback for his efforts, but lets not forget the root cause of this incident was based on personal disagreement.

Thanks to the members who were quick respond and and provide their opinions in defense of my character reputation. Their posts left very little work do be done on my end. Yet, the continued theme of this thread had been for me to respond and/or defend. Not a single time after Kickback realized this thread to have been created in error; not a single time after Tchay was informed how his personal views do not constitute any wrong doing on my part; not a single follow up post was created by them to indicate their unjustified approach to this situation, or to amend the situation by taking responsibility for this mistake.

Everyone is entitled to make mistakes and have their own personal views, but as moderators, and direct representatives of this forum, there comes a responsibility to claim and amend mistakes, and also comes a responsibility to put personal views aside for the good of the forum.




I call to question the actions of Tchay, as moderator, for having a total disregard in not performing his own investigation before making claims of personal disagreement into my shipping policies as I have made every attempt for the buyer to be aware upfront of my policies using large bold print.

i call to question the actions of Tchay, as moderator, for using a snapshot collage containing less than 25% of a discussion to be used as any type of proof to support his disagreement of personal views against a members character.

l call to question the actions of Tchay, as moderator, for believing his personal opinions should be the basis of forum policy with intent to use his personal opinions to dishonor a forum member.

I call to question the actions of Tchay, as moderator, for indicating (via PM) that he was utilizing this forum's protocol by which his personal disagreement would become a topic of discussion for admin/moderator concern against a forum member.

I call to question the actions of Tchay, as moderator, (as he indicated via PM) to put the entire blame for this thread on his fellow moderator, Kickback. This display of action bothers me the worst, a private backstabbing used to remove himself from any responsibility on his part. Tchay's personal disagreement and views were, in fact, the sole catalyst for these events, yet he is quick to blame others for his lack of duties and responsibility as a moderator.




I hope my thoughts and observations bring to light the events triggering the creation of this thread, the total lack of public responsibility taken for the creation of this thread, the abuse of power utilized to present a disagreeing personal view against an individual, the failure to restore back into good standing the character of an individual after defamation, and the immoral backstabbing qualities displayed by one moderator against another moderator.

 

[Tchay]

Here is the PM I sent to Megalomaniac

Hey Megalomaniac. First off, I apologize that one of my fellow staff members posted chat logs between you and I publicly without your permission. For what it's worth, I did not want them to be posted publicly. At least not without further review and contacting you first.

I attempted to follow protocol by presenting our chat session to our modretro staff for further review. It's no secret by now that I completely disagree with some aspects of your shipping policy; however, it is up to the buyer to be aware of your shipping policy. And we can't fault you for having a shipping policy just because some of the staff may not like it.

What might seem like buyer paranoia on my end, stems from past issues with scammers, and fraud sellers that have come to Modretro. I'm not saying I thought you were a scammer, but I felt the urge to present our chat session to the staff for further review. Ideally, then fellow staff members would have mentioned that there was no need for any level of concern given your positive reputation. Obviously it didn't go that way.

I don't believe I have the admin powers to access old chatlogs, but Zero or Mario, if you are able, you can dig up the entire chat session between Megalomaniac and I, and then, with Megalomaniac's permission, you could post the entire chat session in this thread for everyone to see.

 

[robm]

As a member of staff, let me apologize for the way this was handled.

What should have happened here is that Tchay posted the log in the admin forum, couple of the staff say Meh, we've dealt with him and had zero issues, someone did some fact checking, and everyone shrug and say no big.

Unfortunately, this incident has caused some internal turmoil between a couple of key members of the forum and has delayed and interfered with any action being taken, and for that I also apologize.

Megalomaniac, while I do not personally agree with your responses, your previous actions speak for you, and am happy to leave it at that.

Please don't let this incident be reflective upon Tchay or anyone else on staff - this was just handled way, way wrong.

 

[megalomaniac]

as Tchay has now posted the PM publicly and i confirm this is the exact PM i received, now everyone can view his statements which include:

his blame towards another moderator without taking any responsibility
his lack of control over the situation he started
his abuse of power to reinforce his personal opinion within the moderator forum using an incomplete chat log as evidence
his lack of investigation into my policies
his lack for claiming any responsibility leading to my defamation
his failure to apologize for his actions and role in this situation



that PM, combined with the public posts within this thread validate all my statements and all my concerns i called into question...

 

[ShockSlayer]

Please don't let this incident be reflective upon Tchay or anyone else on staff - this was just handled way, way wrong.

The rest of the staff? No, not their fault. Tchay? Absolutely. These are his opinions which he stands by and should be judged based on them just like everyone else. We can't hand-wave it just because he didn't intend for them to be public. That's bullflax.

Nowhere in his PM to mega do I see an actual apology, just throwing KB under the bus. Tchay handled everything wrong from posting incomplete chatlogs to seeking action based on a personal disagreement. He should absolutely be held 100% accountable for it.

MR's policy has always been to stay out of trades, only to ban known scammers and help victims by providing as much info as we can, but it has never been our policy to enforce specific rules(because it's time consuming and we can't.) This whole event was driven by one thing and it was 100% personal. Wanna know how I know? There are plenty of sketchy trade threads and absolutely no cave threads about them.

If Tchay is going to continue pull flax like this, he is unfit to moderate, plain and simple. Just because it is not public does not make it any less wrong.

So either apologize and make strides to correct this kind of behavior or step down from being staff, nobody wants staff that dictate forum policy based on personal grudges.

SS

 

[robm]

his blame towards another moderator without taking any responsibility

Tchay did not explicitly blame another moderator, Kickback. That moderator has already apologized for posting the log without doing any research himself, and accepted responsibility for that.

his lack of control over the situation he started

There wasn't any real control to be had. He posted a valid concern in the admin forum, which (by the way) I agree with his concern. Another moderator acted outside of protocol and made the information public.

his abuse of power to reinforce his personal opinion within the moderator forum using an incomplete chat log as evidence

I can't see how any additional information in addition to what was posted would have made what you stated any less apathetic. However, I do await the release of the logs.

his lack of investigation into my policies

While he may not have looked into any of your previous transactions, which would have exonerated you of any misgivings he may have had about you, it is your specific policies that he took issue with.

his lack for claiming any responsibility leading to my defamation

He had no responsibility in any leading to your "defamation," if any defamation has occurred, which it appears it has not, as I have seen nothing but positive reinforcement from those you have dealt with.

his failure to apologize for his actions and role in this situation

It is clear from his PM that he has done both.

Let me be clear - I do not like how you came across in the chat logs. I run a large-volume business, and I go to any length and expense I can to help a customer of mine who runs into any kind of shipping issue, and a such, I'm not sure that I would be comfortable dealing with someone who wouldn't.

However, we all make mistakes, all of them in this case by staff, for the most part. As I stated before, Tchay had what I felt was a valid concern, he brought that to the admin forum, where he would have been corrected by those who have dealt with you before, and nothing else would have been said.

Part of what has caused this situation to get out of hand is the actions of a member here by the name of ShockSlayer, who has used this opportunity to cause a staff disruption, which we (the staff) are currently working on.

 

[Aux]

Hi there, hopefully I can clear some things up. It sounds a little bit like you think Tchay is trying to abuse his moderator powers or something, which I can guarantee is not the case. First, you need to understand how us staff members "govern".

We have our little private staff-only forum where we can post and discuss any concerns or problems, and we use it a lot. 90% of it is just us informing the others when something concerns us, in case it concerns some other people too and something should be done about it. This is pretty standard protocol. Sometimes it's one person being paranoid, and sometimes it's an actual problem that needs to be addressed. Until the initial poster gets feedback, they aren't sure which one it is.

Tchay did exactly what I or any other staff would have done in his place after discussing your shipping policy- posted a private thread for staff to bring it to a discussion and see if it concerned anyone else. We have had problems with people being scammed in the past, so it's something we're very sensitive to. Tchay in particular also got burned by USPS losing some very important stuff, so he knows first hand the extent to which shipping policies can get ugly.

Like I said before we've had problems with scammers in the past, so KB tried to do what he thought was best and posted Tchay's private concern publicly and immediately, so in case the staff took a while in reaching a consensus at least the community would be warned. KB assumed this was one of the "yes let's do something right away" cases, but as we all know now, you're a pretty cool guy who doesn't afraid of being honest and none of this should have ever gotten dragged out publicly. Our private thread came to that consensus pretty quickly, but once the bird's flown it's pretty hard to get it back. This thread got started and we (the staff; not Tchay, not KB, not any individual) felt it was better for you to be able to defend yourself publicly instead of just deleting it and pretending it never happened. People already saw it. And we wanted those people to hear, from both you and us, that you're not a bad guy.

So let me address each of your individual concerns, now that hopefully you're got a better idea of how we usually do things.

his blame towards another moderator without taking any responsibility

I don't want to say it's KB's "fault", because he only did what he thought was best. But Tchay was just following our usual protocol, asking questions. It certainly isn't his fault.

his lack of control over the situation he started

What is Tchay supposed to do? As I said before, once the staff became aware of this it became a staff problem, not a Tchay problem. We're in this together.

his abuse of power to reinforce his personal opinion within the moderator forum using an incomplete chat log as evidence

It's not abuse of power. It's what moderators do. We look for shady things and ask others "hey, does this look shady to you too?" And he couldn't get the chatlogs raw, so he just took some screenshots. It wasn't some kind of willful redaction. He just posted what he had.

his lack of investigation into my policies

He spoke with you at length about your policies and posted his concerns about them. Again, it's what we do.

his lack for claiming any responsibility leading to my defamation

Because it's not his fault. Please see above.

his failure to apologize for his actions and role in this situation

He apologized that it became some kind of public bru-ha-ha. All he did was ask the other staff for their opinions, which once again is what we all do all the time.

 

[ShockSlayer]

It takes more effort to make and upload screenshots than it does to "select all" "copy" "paste" even on a mac.

Someone explain this.

 

[robm]

A copy-paste is a whole lot more editable than a screenshot.

 

[ShockSlayer]

Is his credibility really that bad?

 

[Aux]

A copy-paste is a whole lot more editable than a screenshot.

It's also a lot less legible, usually.

 

[robm]

Are you done dragging this out as far as you can?

Edit: Directed at SS.

 

[ShockSlayer]

Just this tangent? Yeah, I think it's reached the maximum funny for me, the whole "sacrificing key information for legibility and because we don't trust Tchay." I doubt it'll get much better, but feel free to prove me wrong.

Otherwise I'm/we're still waiting for Tchay to own up. Everything's on him.

SS

 

[robm]

Then with that said, I'm locking this for now.

Megalomaniac, please reach out to me, Zero, or Aux if you have any more questions or if you feel you would like to have more say here on this matter.


edit: topic unlocked as per Megalomaniac's request - Tchay

 

[Diminuendo]

This is garbage. An apology with an asterisk is not an apology.

The fact is Mega always straight up said that if you didn't pay the extra for insurance then you do so at your own risk. Mega just wants to sell his awesome product and feels that he shouldn't pay for another party's incompetence, which is entirely fair. No buyer wants to lose $50 but if Mega has to resend and replace an order he is the one out $50. I don't see how he should be the one to lose out for the mistake of others, and I think it's fair that if the buyer wants that security than it is reasonable for them to pay extra for it.

I received my order from him two days ago and he has been nothing but awesome with the help and support he has given me for my project.

The fact is when there hasn't been a single forum member who has purchased from Mega complain about his products not turning up it is unfair to single him out. The moderators should only be able to punish members for what they actually do, not for what they might do. (and this entire thread attacking Mega is a punishment and might of prevented his from future business)

I personally think both Tchay and Kickback should hand in there Moderating badges for this entire thing.

 

[laingsoft]

How about we stop the forum drama, ignore the chatlogs, lock this thread, and move on?

Oh what am I saying, I love forum drama

 

[Noah]

I personally think both Tchay and Kickback should hand in there Moderating badges for this entire thing.

Didn't want to step in, but in case you didn't notice KB already apologized** for posting this, and he even told Mega about it. Everyone makes mistakes, and I'm sure if you were in his shoes you would have done the same. Oh, and I'm not really sure how this thread is a "punishment" when it was made to be a discussion thread.

I'm sure being a moderator is not an easy job, and KB was just trying to warn anyone who planned on buying from Mega that this could be a possibility so that something similar wouldn't pop up later on down the road. If anyone is being "attacked" it's looking like Tchay and KB to me. Mega could have had the thread locked and that could have been the end of it. However, he requested to leave it open when PMs would have been a much better way to settle this and not get anyone else involved and picking sides.

The fact is when there hasn't been a single forum member who has purchased from Mega complain about his products not turning up it is unfair to single him out. The moderators should only be able to punish members for what they actually do, not for what they might do. (and this entire thread attacking Mega is a punishment and might of prevented his from future business)

Like I said before, since it is still unclear to me at least what exactly happened, KB should be aloud to warn people about Mega's policies so that something like this doesn't happen again. He isn't being punished in any way that I see, and actually most people in this thread are agreeing with him. Seeing as how I have never bought from him before, I really can't say anything about his shipping/communication. You should rethink your post, more than half of the information is incorrect and presented badly.


** Okay, maybe I was wrong. Kickback didn't directly apologize, but he recognized his mistake and I believe Mega requested that the thread stay open.

You guys are actually right, I made this thread without even bothering to do too much fact-checking or anything.

I'm gonna leave this up so megalomaniac can defend himself if need be.

 

[megalomaniac]

i apologize for the long post here, i only wanted to address all the previous replies adequately


robm, aux
i pose a few a questions for your consideration:

have you seen and read the full chat log?
if the answer is no, then how you can have a full understanding which led up to these events??
wouldnt it be important to read and absorb the entire dialog to understand how this "evidence" posted by tchay was taken out of context and his concerns were unwarranted?
how would it reflect upon yourself to take a stance without being informed of the full details??

Please don't let this incident be reflective upon Tchay or anyone else on staff - this was just handled way, way wrong.

this incident is directly reflective upon Tchay. he is the one who chose to provide misrepresented information to support his opposing views.
i do not see this incident to reflect upon other staff, however if any staff would like to defend his position without being aware of the full facts (dialog), then this presents a predicament where this incident can also reflect on those other staff members...

the fact of the matter is, selective information is false information.

his blame towards another moderator without taking any responsibility

Tchay did not explicitly blame another moderator, Kickback. That moderator has already apologized for posting the log without doing any research himself, and accepted responsibility for that.

please point me in the direction where Kickback posted his apology.
as seen in the PM Tchay posted, he placed the blame on "the fellow staff member" who posted the chat logs, which by default, he blames Kickback for this incident.

his lack of control over the situation he started

There wasn't any real control to be had. He posted a valid concern in the admin forum, which (by the way) I agree with his concern. Another moderator acted outside of protocol and made the information public.

his lack of control for the situation is based on how he posted snippets of dialog to promote his personal opinion and create the possibility for the situation to get of control.

his abuse of power to reinforce his personal opinion within the moderator forum using an incomplete chat log as evidence

I can't see how any additional information in addition to what was posted would have made what you stated any less apathetic. However, I do await the release of the logs.

as ive indicated, full logs are different than snippets

his lack of investigation into my policies

While he may not have looked into any of your previous transactions, which would have exonerated you of any misgivings he may have had about you, it is your specific policies that he took issue with.

you mean my specific policies which are in large bold print that everyone can see at the top of my thread?
http://www.gc-forever.com/forums/viewto ... =18&t=1235

his lack for claiming any responsibility leading to my defamation

He had no responsibility in any leading to your "defamation," if any defamation has occurred, which it appears it has not, as I have seen nothing but positive reinforcement from those you have dealt with.

if Tchay had taken a few moments to investigate before posting, none of this would have happened, he would not have posted out of context screenshots, he would not have left an open potential for another moderator to publicly post his submitted personal disagreements...

his failure to apologize for his actions and role in this situation

It is clear from his PM that he has done both.

please point me in the direction where he explicitly apologizes for this situation.

Let me be clear - I do not like how you came across in the chat logs. I run a large-volume business, and I go to any length and expense I can to help a customer of mine who runs into any kind of shipping issue, and a such, I'm not sure that I would be comfortable dealing with someone who wouldn't.

you are right, i agree with you, i do not like how i come across either from those out of context dialogs.

as ive indicated in my initial post of this thread, i discussed with tchay a concern for a forum member that did not receive his package after 40 days. i provided assistance to that member and he successfully received the package. i also indicated that i may have also sent replacement product if he continued to have issues.
...but none of that dialog is displayed in the screen shots, therefore going back to the top of this current post my question for your consideration:

have you seen and read the full chat log?
if the answer is no, then how you can have a full understanding which led up to these events??
wouldnt it be important to read and absorb the entire dialog to understand how this "evidence" posted by tchay was taken out of context and his concerns were unwarranted?
how would it reflect upon yourself to take a stance without being informed of the full details??

However, we all make mistakes, all of them in this case by staff, for the most part. As I stated before, Tchay had what I felt was a valid concern, he brought that to the admin forum, where he would have been corrected by those who have dealt with you before, and nothing else would have been said.

his personal disagreement does not constitute a valid concern.
I do understand how normal events would not have led to this information from ever reaching the public eye, however it did. It has been posted and no amends on his part have been provided.

Part of what has caused this situation to get out of hand is the actions of a member here by the name of ShockSlayer, who has used this opportunity to cause a staff disruption, which we (the staff) are currently working on.

i do not see how shockslayer has done anything to get this situation out of control by posting his views of the situation. Would you also point the same finger at the other members who have posted to show their support of me as contribution to this thread for the direction it has turned??

Hi there, hopefully I can clear some things up. It sounds a little bit like you think Tchay is trying to abuse his moderator powers or something, which I can guarantee is not the case. First, you need to understand how us staff members "govern".

We have our little private staff-only forum where we can post and discuss any concerns or problems, and we use it a lot. 90% of it is just us informing the others when something concerns us, in case it concerns some other people too and something should be done about it. This is pretty standard protocol. Sometimes it's one person being paranoid, and sometimes it's an actual problem that needs to be addressed. Until the initial poster gets feedback, they aren't sure which one it is.

Tchay did exactly what I or any other staff would have done in his place after discussing your shipping policy- posted a private thread for staff to bring it to a discussion and see if it concerned anyone else. We have had problems with people being scammed in the past, so it's something we're very sensitive to. Tchay in particular also got burned by USPS losing some very important stuff, so he knows first hand the extent to which shipping policies can get ugly.

Like I said before we've had problems with scammers in the past, so KB tried to do what he thought was best and posted Tchay's private concern publicly and immediately, so in case the staff took a while in reaching a consensus at least the community would be warned. KB assumed this was one of the "yes let's do something right away" cases, but as we all know now, you're a pretty cool guy who doesn't afraid of being honest and none of this should have ever gotten dragged out publicly. Our private thread came to that consensus pretty quickly, but once the bird's flown it's pretty hard to get it back. This thread got started and we (the staff; not Tchay, not KB, not any individual) felt it was better for you to be able to defend yourself publicly instead of just deleting it and pretending it never happened. People already saw it. And we wanted those people to hear, from both you and us, that you're not a bad guy.

thank you for the information.
I am well aware of these types of moderator / administrator discussions in the private areas. I have been moderator and admin on other forums, so i am very familiar with how this typically plays out.
Also i am also aware that as a moderator and admin, that if i a was to provide inaccurately represented information, then i would be held accountable.

My statements regarding abuse of power come from the fact of using his position on this forum to present his personal objections about my policies. As i do not know any of the moderators or admins here, the out of context evidence could have lead to an unjustified decision. If kickback had not publicly posted this information then there would be light on this situation. That is an abuse of power, to present his personal disagreements as arguments within a private setting using incomplete resources for a decision to be made which could impact an individuals reputation. Tchay's previous shipping experiences have nothing to do with me.

his blame towards another moderator without taking any responsibility

I don't want to say it's KB's "fault", because he only did what he thought was best. But Tchay was just following our usual protocol, asking questions. It certainly isn't his fault.

does usual protocol include the act of presenting inaccurate out of context information?

his lack of control over the situation he started

What is Tchay supposed to do? As I said before, once the staff became aware of this it became a staff problem, not a Tchay problem. We're in this together.

as i previously stated:
his lack of control for the situation is based on how he posted snippets of dialog to promote his personal opinion and create the possibility for the situation to get of control.
furthermore, he has done nothing else to address anything within this thread

his abuse of power to reinforce his personal opinion within the moderator forum using an incomplete chat log as evidence

It's not abuse of power. It's what moderators do. We look for shady things and ask others "hey, does this look shady to you too?" And he couldn't get the chatlogs raw, so he just took some screenshots. It wasn't some kind of willful redaction. He just posted what he had.

i have already addressed this which i will restate:
That is an abuse of power, to present his personal disagreements as arguments within a private setting using incomplete resources for a decision to be made which could impact an individuals reputation.

his lack of investigation into my policies

He spoke with you at length about your policies and posted his concerns about them. Again, it's what we do.

yes we did speak at length, but not just about my "questionable" policies, we also discussed other area of shipping, tracking, insurance, package value, and my willingness to help a forum member who had not received his package after 40 days. yet he failed to understand the conversation, or chose to ignore all these other aspects of the conversation to present only a particular perspective of the conversation.

his lack for claiming any responsibility leading to my defamation

Because it's not his fault. Please see above.

it is his fault for presenting incomplete information...

his failure to apologize for his actions and role in this situation

He apologized that it became some kind of public bru-ha-ha. All he did was ask the other staff for their opinions, which once again is what we all do all the time.

as indicated by another forum member "An apology with an asterisk is not an apology."

as i presented at the top of this current post were my questions for your consideration:

have you seen and read the full chat log?
if the answer is no, then how you can have a full understanding which led up to these events??
wouldnt it be important to read and absorb the entire dialog to understand how this "evidence" posted by tchay was taken out of context and his concerns were unwarranted?
how would it reflect upon yourself to take a stance without being informed of the full details??

 

[Kickback]

I personally think both Tchay and Kickback should hand in there Moderating badges for this entire thing.

More than happy to apologize for jumping the gun and making a thread warning about policies, considering what's happened with people like Bo in the past, at which point I did do via PM to you, maybe not publicly, so here you go.

Sorry Megalomaniac if you feel like you've been scrutinized, or singled out unfairly. I got no problems with you as a person or a member or anything like that, and really should of waited for the cave thread to blow up before any of this (if need be) went public.

So now we got apologies and flame wars out the way, shall we keep this locked and at least try and learn from it?

 

[PalmerTech]

have you seen and read the full chat log?
if the answer is no, then how you can have a full understanding which led up to these events??
wouldnt it be important to read and absorb the entire dialog to understand how this "evidence" posted by tchay was taken out of context and his concerns were unwarranted?

We now have full logs of the entire chat. The staff is fully aware of the context.

If you would like us to post them publicly so people can make their own judgement, we can certainly do so. I agree that it is unfair for people to form potentially unfair opinions of you without all the facts, I am stepping in to try and make this right. Let me know how you would like to proceed.