@TECSHARE - I do agree that Vod does have somewhat of a conflict of interest here however he does have somewhat of a point in that once Microsoft finds out about the person selling the keys that they will all become invalidated, which would generally be considered a scam in most people's eyes. I am not sure however, how exactly Microsoft will invalidate some of the keys; if Microsoft can in fact invalidate keys to something that is connected to the internet even if it is not getting any kind of product update then the negative trust would be appropriate and my above statement would apply; if however Microsoft cannot invalidate keys (and cannot cause any product to stop working immediately) then the negative trust is probably not appropriate.
Trust me when I say this, just because someone has negative trust form someone on the default trust list, it does not mean that people will take the warning that was given to them. I have left negative trust to dozens of ponzi's in the gambling section and people had still "invested" hundreds of BTC in those ponzis. Similar results took place when someone was selling stolen Starbucks gift cards that would go bad after 4 days.
What will probably happen in the future is that people will take the ratings that Vod leaves less seriously and the effect of his ratings will diminish if he leaves feedback that is not warranted/appropriate. As I said above, I am not sure if they are appropriate in this case or not, however regardless it will not stop people from buying from them
His point is irrelevant. There are no customers complaining. What he is doing is NOT criminal or scamming. Anyone paying so little for a Windows key HAS TO know there is some kind of catch somewhere, yet still I don't see ANYONE complaining. Are we acting against future "scamming" here now? Where does it end? At what point does this community become exactly what it was built to escape from?
His point is that they keys will eventually become invalid. I guess you could somewhat equate this to confidence loans, in a sense that lenders are not complaining about getting their loans repaid, but a confidence loan scammer will eventually run away and scam.
I do understand your point about them not having any unhappy customers......maybe if they were to give more disclosure about the risks from buying from them then a neutral rating would probably be more appropriate
This guy COULD POTENTIALLY MAYBE be a scammer so lets treat him like one and just save some time!
As I mentioned above if Microsoft can invalidate your copy of Excel (for example) once the MSDN keys get revoked then it would be more appropriate for the negative trust, if not then it is not appropriate.
Not that you care at all since you are not engaged in any kind of trading here, but a negative rating DOES IN FACT seriously affect people's ability to trade. Everyone is SO PARANOID about being ripped off here that even the slightest hint of something not being right people will go elsewhere. VOD's only value comes from the volume of people he can harass and label as scammers. This way, scammer or not, when he acts out of line and abuses the users here himself, he can just point to all the "service" he has done for this forum harassing people over non-issues, and magically his abuse is excusable!
I don't trade on here quite as much as you do, but I do trade on here a bit. In fact my S3 that I recently sold on here is on it's way to my buyer who was willing to pay me upfront. Plus I have traded well over a hundred accounts on here generally without issue, so I do understand the pressures of trading with others.
The difference between "normal" trading (as in trading things at a generally "fair" price or at what most would probably consider to be a market price) and what these people are doing is that it should be generally obvious to most that the seller is doing something they shouldn't be doing. When someone trades with you they will generally give you $100 and will get roughly $100 worth of something in return - if you were to scam them then they would get nothing - the risk/reward ratio is not good because if everything works out they still have the same amount of money worth of stuff as they started with but if they are scammed they lose (IMO I think the chances of you scamming is very low).
With these MSDN sellers (and the stolen Starbucks gift card sellers, and the amazon rebate services, and the ponzi operators, among others), their customers are getting a much better deal. Microsoft keys tend to cost hundreds of dollars while they are being sold on here for $10 or $15, that is in excess of 90% off. In other words in the event that these sellers follow through then they will get something they need for 90%+ off while if they are scammed then they only lose a small amount. They would need to get scammed at least 10 times before they would have been better off simply buying the keys directly from a retailer of directly from Microsoft. The risk/reward ratio is much better (although the chances of these people eventually scamming is much greater)
