A cure for scam adverts?
Discussion
It seems that all the online car sites are plauged with scam adverts
Surely an easy way to solve this issue would be to introduce some code that is run whenever a seller attempts to place an advert for a car, that compares his asking price with the Glasses guide price. If the two differ signficantly, like they always do when its a scam advert, then the advert could be forwarded to the moderation team for review? I'm sure that it wouldnt take more than a few minutes to sort the crap from the genuine adverts this way, and it would save a lot of people from getting burned by all the scammers out there.
Surely an easy way to solve this issue would be to introduce some code that is run whenever a seller attempts to place an advert for a car, that compares his asking price with the Glasses guide price. If the two differ signficantly, like they always do when its a scam advert, then the advert could be forwarded to the moderation team for review? I'm sure that it wouldnt take more than a few minutes to sort the crap from the genuine adverts this way, and it would save a lot of people from getting burned by all the scammers out there.
We work hard ongoingly to provide systems that reduce the amount of scammer adverts with all sorts of clever mechanisms behind the scenes. We have looked at the price issue and it is something we have toyed with as part of our background checks.
The problem is in implementing the system. Not all cars uploaded have a valid VRM (regardless of checks you can put in place) for some reason or another so you would have to account for those cars, plus the numerous scrapped, CAT D, etc (as poaloh points above) which skew the system.
We have implemented some newer features recently which stops the scammers for a bit, but they are persitant and it takes them around a week to then come up with a new plan. If we did the price check then the scammers would just make the prices the minimum of the price band and thus make it harder for us to spot the scam adverts that make it through all our other checks.
The problem is in implementing the system. Not all cars uploaded have a valid VRM (regardless of checks you can put in place) for some reason or another so you would have to account for those cars, plus the numerous scrapped, CAT D, etc (as poaloh points above) which skew the system.
We have implemented some newer features recently which stops the scammers for a bit, but they are persitant and it takes them around a week to then come up with a new plan. If we did the price check then the scammers would just make the prices the minimum of the price band and thus make it harder for us to spot the scam adverts that make it through all our other checks.
paoloh said:
I see no possible way that would work.
The techie team would then need to become experts in car valuation.
Written off cars, damaged cars, desperate owners etc etc all make a huge difference to a cars value.
Yes - good point!The techie team would then need to become experts in car valuation.
Written off cars, damaged cars, desperate owners etc etc all make a huge difference to a cars value.
A basic idea would simply use "standard" free valuation data such as Parkers used car prices etc - and add a +/- 20% flag - anything outside those boundaries gets referred before going live? - The referral doesn't question the price, it just looks at the advert to see if it ticks any of the "THIS IS A SCAM!" boxes
After thinking about it, it becomes tricky when taking mileage adjustments into consideration, and as you say - desperation of owners!
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