I recommend everyone finalizing early use a 3/5 feedback, with a note saying "3/5 for early finalize - will update when product is received".Sellers have been taking advantage of the front-loading of the ranking and feedback system to build a scamming repetiore. It goes like this. Sign up, lurk for a bit, write up a post in the forums about how you are starting to sell such and such, and is anyone interested. Post on some other posts to get some forum numbers up.Next step is to acquire a small amount of the product you are interested in. Get yourself 5 or 10 customers who you make a sweet sample offering to, ship the product out and wait a week or two until they receive. Make sure they post in your forum thread that they have received and like your product. Once that's done, open up the floodgates. Ask for early finalization. Most buyers input 5/5 on early finalize for some reason. All of this front-loaded 5/5 feedback goes through, plus the dollar volume of the transactions counts towards seller rank, so you can actually end up with a 1-month seller grabbing himself a top-20 rank because a bunch of people jump on board for the sale and volume is high for this month.Stretch this out for 2 weeks or so until your first customers should start receiving. In the meantime maybe you've got 100 or more orders worth of BTC sitting there and you are sitting pretty on 5 or 10 grand in cash. No product is sent. Buyers are out, but can't do anything, and it FINALLY comes out in the forums that the seller is in fact a full-blown scammer. In the meantime dozens if not hundreds of buyers have been cleanly ripped off without a chance at any recourse and are left feeling burned. This especially pisses me off as a long-time seller on SR (I think I'm actually the oldest weed seller now) in good standing, because a lot of those BTC could be going to me and you guys could actually be getting product - so indirectly I have a personal stake in this one, as selfish as it may sound, which works in your favour becuase I want these dickless pieces of shit that give you guys the runaround right the fuck off of here.How you, as a buyer, can responsibly mitigate this. Simple: Leave a 3/5 feedback on an early finalize and update once you have received. MAKE SURE YOU UPDATE IF YOU DO RECEIVE. Good, reliable sellers seem to be rarer and rarer these days, and you don't want to burn bridges if this person is actually legitimate and providing you product. On the flip side, make sure you update to 1/5 if you don't receive so it damages the rank that much further. by leaving a 3/5 you will stop a seller from hop-skipping up the rank ladder with a bunch of bogus feedback and dollar volume, which will make buyers at LEAST think twice about taking the chance.In my opinion, a seller really needs to earn their place here, and anyone with less than 100 transactions shouldn't be even thinking about requiring early finalize. I didn't start offering out of escrow until after 100 transactions.If you do leave a 3/5 and your seller gives you a hassle (threatens not to ship), copy the message to me either on here or to me over on SR and I will call them out on the forums. We don't have time for any more bullshit these days - there's too much to lose with the outside threats constantly waiting in the wings without the infighting and damage caused by assholes. Let's take them head on.Finally, I am NOT saying amsterdam is a scammer. I haven't looked the situation or actually talked to anyone who has done business with him (successfully or otherwises), so I have no judgement to make. I'm just saying that I'm seeing a pattern these days, and people need to start acting in a way that hampers the rampant scamming that has been going on. This money that is being stolen from you buyers is your blood and sweat, and I don't want to see it lifted lightly. I'd rather it come my way and let me work for it then fill some asshole's pockets for empty promises and some momentum in the stats.Those are my (apparently much more than) 0.02 BTC on this situation, and any other similar ones. Take pre-emptive action, it will pay off for you personally, and for the community as a whole.Anarcho47