Time to do "Something" About Abe's

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In a prior thread Brian said: <i>"I have a script set up that will do

this about every two weeks. This way Abe's will pay the $5 premium

basically to have a positive testimonial that is going to get deleted

soon. I hope Abe's pays millions of people $5 for deleted

testimonials."</i> Unfortunately "Abe" is not paying any money but is

giving credit on future purchases so their strategy is really costing

them nothing.

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Today we had 3 consecutive posts about Abe's - one of which

acknowledges the incentives and defends his actions as part of the post.

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This continual assault of NtN by Abe's stooges is making a mockery of

that forum. I would suggest one of 3 actions be taken to address this

problem (and it <b>is</b> a problem): 1) allow postings only by paid

members, 2) allow postings only after some minimum finite period has

elapsed after registering as a user, or 3) run the above mentioned

script at least once a day, if not hourly.

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I think that, if nothing else, the script should be run much more often than every two weeks. If not, at any given time, there is going to be a number of funded Abe's "reviews" on the board even if somewhat fewer than millions of stooges are posting.

Excuse me, but doesn't that type of posting fall under new SPAM regulations?

No

The reason for running it every two weeks is to allow time for people to get their $5. I want Abe's to pay for ads that are going to be deleted.

Ah, I didn't think of that.

Basically there are two advertisers on PN I have personal experience. They are both excellent in their variety of merchandise, service and price. Almost no need to go anywhere else certainally not Abes. Just click on either Adorama or B&H from this site and PN I would assume should get some credit. I think the site should stress this more frequently. I have no connection to either of these stores.

Might be better to delete them nightly. It's $5 of store credit, not cash, so people have to shop there again. They probably make more off it than it costs them.

 

Compare that to the cost of dealing with a lot of ticked off customers who wrote reviews but who never got their $5.

We all know how dishonest merchants like Abe's operate. I would be willing to bet that any $5 store credit on a future purchase would almost surely be offset by a $5 increase in the "handling" fee for said purchase. You can bet this "paid" shilling is going to cost them absolutely nothing, and will in fact attract suckers back to them for repeat business.

 

Mike

While I personally disagree with the official position of p.n management on how to deal with this problem I will respect it (actually, that�s all I can do). Brian has taken action that will at least cull the forum after 2 weeks and that�s better than doing nothing.

 

A question for Brian - How does the script work? Is it targeted specifically towards �Abe�s� and/or �Family� or is it generic in nature based on the history of the person posting? If generic it would catch any vendor that may choose to follow the same path.