Silk Road forums
Discussion => Off topic => Topic started by: Ahoyhoy on July 17, 2012, 12:35 pm
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I'd like to do some research.
I have, to date, made 35 transactions. These can be broken down thus:
32 of the orders arrived without a hitch
3 orders did not arrive. Of these...
I have received 2 x 50% refunds
I have been scammed once (no item received - no refund)
That's a 10% failure rate and a 3% scam rate
How about you?
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Total transactions: 62
Total spent: ฿978.51
Refund rate: 0%
Auto-finalize rate: 0%
Member for: 1 year
but this KAT thing will destroy my perfect record, perhaps.
I got 2 refunds in my history that don't show here.
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5 transactions
1-3 went swimmingly. 5/5
4 Vendor didn't process order within 5 days so I canceled it.
5 Item never arrived, seller ignored all communication, got 100% refund via resolution (If he communicated I would have split the loss).
Now I have about an 80% refund rate, gonna have to start with a fresh buyer account. My old one looks pretty shit now. On my new account I will only be buying from UK vendors in small transactions (under £50) until I have built up some respectable stats. All it takes is one penis to fuck it up tho.
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Total transactions: 33
Total spent: $1632.38
Refund rate: 0%
Auto-finalize rate: 0%
Member for: 6 months
i had one order that was lost in transit and the seller was nice enough to resend, and now i have another item that's lost but the seller is making me wait five weeks until it can be called a refund. i finalized because it was gonna go into auto-finalize and i had no idea what the resolve button did at a time. he probably won't give me a 50% refund. sucks because i'm not really made of money and that $140 was a lot of money for me. oh well, can't win 'em all.
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Looks like it's quite rare to get scammed on SR. You wouldn't think so when reading some of the posts.
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Looks like it's quite rare to get scammed on SR. You wouldn't think so when reading some of the posts.
Just like anything in life people are far more likely to write about a complaint then they are to write about a positive experience.
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100% success rate so far for me - just make sure you go with reputable and established vendors. Too much to lose looking for a quick bargain or trying to save a few BTC - including, and most importantly, your name and address.
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Total transactions: 33
Total spent: ฿103.6
Refund rate: 0%
Auto-finalize rate: 0%
Member for: 3 months
I only buy personal amount's ;).
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Placed 11 orders in the past of which 4 never came, and 1 more Im currently waiting unusually long for (from US), plus a reship of one of the missing ones Im waiting 2 weeks+ for now (Europe - Europe) not sure if either will arrive or just late... to Norway.
I have received 1 x 50% refund
I have possibly been scammed 1-4times or more if current orders doesnt show and I don't hear from customs either.. 2 of the missing packages were just 5tabs of LSD each,one of these was my very first order (shoulda been extra easy to get thru customs?)
Only ordered from popular long established vendors
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I have a 4% failure rate - and I'm Australian! =D
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Thanks for this guys. + 1 karma to all of you.
OK, some maths. Of the responses received so far I think it breaks down as follows:
Total transactions: 179
Item didn't arrive but refund received: 10 (5,6%)
Scams: 3 (1.67%)
I call that a pretty good testimony to the SR system
Keep those stats coming in.
+1 karma to all contributors.
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I'd like to do some research.
I have, to date, made 35 transactions. These can be broken down thus:
32 of the orders arrived without a hitch
3 orders did not arrive. Of these...
I have received 2 x 50% refunds
I have been scammed once (no item received - no refund)
That's a 10% failure rate and a 3% scam rate
How about you?
Actually it's a 8,57% failure rate and a 2.86% scam rate.
According to this data set, using the binomial distribution, the probability of you not getting scammed in the next 10 transactions is of about 75%.
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I'd like to do some research.
I have, to date, made 35 transactions. These can be broken down thus:
32 of the orders arrived without a hitch
3 orders did not arrive. Of these...
I have received 2 x 50% refunds
I have been scammed once (no item received - no refund)
That's a 10% failure rate and a 3% scam rate
How about you?
Actually it's a 8,57% failure rate and a 2.86% scam rate.
According to this data set, using the binomial distribution, the probability of you not getting scammed in the next 10 transactions is of about 75%.
+1 for being a statistical smartarse. But have you taken into account regression to the mean?
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I'd like to do some research.
I have, to date, made 35 transactions. These can be broken down thus:
32 of the orders arrived without a hitch
3 orders did not arrive. Of these...
I have received 2 x 50% refunds
I have been scammed once (no item received - no refund)
That's a 10% failure rate and a 3% scam rate
How about you?
Actually it's a 8,57% failure rate and a 2.86% scam rate.
According to this data set, using the binomial distribution, the probability of you not getting scammed in the next 10 transactions is of about 75%.
+1 for being a statistical smartarse. But have you taken into account regression to the mean?
Nope, just applied the binomial distribution probability mass function: (10 choose 0)*(0.029^0)*(1-0.029)^10.
Unfortunately my statistics classes at the university didn't go further so I didn't have the opportunity to learn things such as ANOVA and regression to the mean yet, but I plan to keep on studying since I loved it.
Could you please tell me how would you apply regression to the mean in this case? I'm all ears ;)
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I have only had 2 transactions personally. The second went through without issue. I am still waiting on the 1st ordered 20 days ago, allegedly shipped 13 days ago, and vendor has not responded or even read my messages. He has a very high rating (top 8% of sellers) so I don't really understand what is going on, but it looks like I have a 50% failure rate so far.
Let me guess: You were buying DMT.
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I'd like to do some research.
I have, to date, made 35 transactions. These can be broken down thus:
32 of the orders arrived without a hitch
3 orders did not arrive. Of these...
I have received 2 x 50% refunds
I have been scammed once (no item received - no refund)
That's a 10% failure rate and a 3% scam rate
How about you?
Actually it's a 8,57% failure rate and a 2.86% scam rate.
According to this data set, using the binomial distribution, the probability of you not getting scammed in the next 10 transactions is of about 75%.
+1 for being a statistical smartarse. But have you taken into account regression to the mean?
Nope, just applied the binomial distribution probability mass function: (10 choose 0)*(0.029^0)*(1-0.029)^10.
Unfortunately my statistics classes at the university didn't go further so I didn't have the opportunity to learn things such as ANOVA and regression to the mean yet, but I plan to keep on studying since I loved it.
Could you please tell me how would you apply regression to the mean in this case? I'm all ears ;)
Well, we have a small sample which is, by definition, prone to statistical anomalies (Turkey for Breakfast's unfortunate 50% failure rate being a case in point). One could roll a die three times and get three sixes in a row but wouldn't assume that the probability of rolling a six was therefore 100%. At this stage in the data collection process we'd probably need to apply a large confidence interval to any % probability and reduce it slowly as further data was added.
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So let's build a 99% confidence interval for the probability of you being scammed ;)
The confidence interval for a bernoulli population at α(1-100%) is given by the following formula:
]E(X) - Z(1-α/2)*sqr( (E(X)(1-E(X) ) / n ) ; E(X) + Z(1-α/2)*sqr( (E(X)(1-E(X) ) / n )[
Let p be the probability of you being scammed, p=1/35, which is also the expected value.
Let n=35 be our sample size.
Since 1-α=0.99, α=0.01, therefore Z(1-α/2)=Z(1-0.005)=Z(0.995). Doing a reverse look-up on our Z-Table, Z(0.995)~= 2.575.
No we are ready to substitute the values in our initial formula:
]1/35 - 2.575 * sqr( (1/35*(1-1/35) / 35 ) ; 1/35 + 2.575 * sqr( (1/35*(1-1/35) / 35 )[
Calculating it gives:
]-0,0439413631 ; 0,10108422[
So the true probability of you being scammed should lie somewhere between this interval, but I'm getting a negative probability which doesn't seem right at all. I'll check what's happening.
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one full refund for package stuck in postal hell - dead mail
thats it!!
EDIT: moopsr can i hire u to do my taxes??????
:P
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So let's build a 99% confidence interval for the probability of you being scammed ;)
The confidence interval for a bernoulli population at α(1-100%) is given by the following formula:
]E(X) - Z(1-α/2)*sqr( (E(X)(1-E(X) ) / n ) ; E(X) + Z(1-α/2)*sqr( (E(X)(1-E(X) ) / n )[
Let p be the probability of you being scammed, p=1/35, which is also the expected value.
Let n=35 be our sample size.
Since 1-α=0.99, α=0.01, therefore Z(1-α/2)=Z(1-0.005)=Z(0.995). Doing a reverse look-up on our Z-Table, Z(0.995)~= 2.575.
No we are ready to substitute the values in our initial formula:
]1/35 - 2.575 * sqr( (1/35*(1-1/35) / 35 ) ; 1/35 + 2.575 * sqr( (1/35*(1-1/35) / 35 )[
Calculating it gives:
]-0,0439413631 ; 0,10108422[
So the true probability of you being scammed should lie somewhere between this interval, but I'm getting a negative probability which doesn't seem right at all. I'll check what's happening.
did you multiply that by pi (3.14) hahahaha but seriously looks just like an algebra formula to me. Are you well versed in the math sciences? I know a little
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>did you multiply that by pi (3.14) hahahaha but seriously looks just like an algebra formula to me. Are you well versed in the math sciences? I know a little
Can't say that I'm well versed, I find mathematics interesting and is always something cool to think of during a trip. I just know a little too of things that I learn on school, on khanacademy or read on wikipedia.
>EDIT: moopsr can i hire u to do my taxes??????
hehehe I'm probably not the best person to do it. But if you ever want some help on doing anything related to statistics, just tell me and I can give you a tip! I'm always happy to solve these kind of problems.
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So let's build a 99% confidence interval for the probability of you being scammed ;)
The confidence interval for a bernoulli population at α(1-100%) is given by the following formula:
]E(X) - Z(1-α/2)*sqr( (E(X)(1-E(X) ) / n ) ; E(X) + Z(1-α/2)*sqr( (E(X)(1-E(X) ) / n )[
Let p be the probability of you being scammed, p=1/35, which is also the expected value.
Let n=35 be our sample size.
Since 1-α=0.99, α=0.01, therefore Z(1-α/2)=Z(1-0.005)=Z(0.995). Doing a reverse look-up on our Z-Table, Z(0.995)~= 2.575.
No we are ready to substitute the values in our initial formula:
]1/35 - 2.575 * sqr( (1/35*(1-1/35) / 35 ) ; 1/35 + 2.575 * sqr( (1/35*(1-1/35) / 35 )[
Calculating it gives:
]-0,0439413631 ; 0,10108422[
So the true probability of you being scammed should lie somewhere between this interval, but I'm getting a negative probability which doesn't seem right at all. I'll check what's happening.
OK, I'll need a bit of time to digest this before getting back to you. Can we say half past fucking never o'clock.?
+1 for effort anyway ;)
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40 or so deliveries and only one never showed.
This was from a new seller and it was 2 grams of hash. Got a refund but got a 2% refund record now.
I am sure the guy never sent.
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Total transactions: 28
Total spent: ฿116.86
Refund rate: 0%
Auto-finalize rate: 0%
Member for: 3 months
1 order canceld by vendor and i had 100% refund.
bloody go on son, to the guy who used algebra to work out the probability +1 all day long lolo :P
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Total transactions: 28
Total spent: ฿116.86
Refund rate: 0%
Auto-finalize rate: 0%
Member for: 3 months
1 order canceld by vendor and i had 100% refund.
bloody go on son, to the guy who used algebra to work out the probability +1 all day long lolo :P
OK moopsr, let's say Skunky is 30 yrs old. At his current rate of spending on SR and assuming that the £/BTC rate remains the same as it is today, how much will he have spent by the time he is 50? Answers in pounds sterling please.
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I'm currently going on 4 months with 46 orders and 100% success.
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I'm on 42 orders 100% success but I recently had a order of shroom caps that were either heat damaged or they were not real shrooms, received a 50% refund for that order though.
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hahaha, please dont work it out, or if you do, please dont post it. I'll cry at the amount of money im gonna sniff, smoke, eat....... and if my mrs found out !!!!! my good god, she would go into melt down lololololo
+1 for eveyone :D
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hahaha, please dont work it out, or if you do, please dont post it. I'll cry at the amount of money im gonna sniff, smoke, eat....... and if my mrs found out !!!!! my good god, she would go into melt down lololololo
+1 for eveyone :D
OK moopsr, please calculate the spend in Vietnamese Dong to protect Skunky from the stark facts surrounding the true cost of his hedonistic excesses.
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First order (and only order) was a SCAM BY KAT/GUMMY.
FAIL FAIL FAIL.
All three trades i have performed have gone down a treat :) :)
Vendors account link has disappeared and SR wont get back to me on that via email so, im at a loss for further past what has been stated already
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haha, yeah, either Viet Dong, buttons, magic beans or anything else along those lines. so i can try to convince my self a small fortune is not being sent on here lololo :P
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Total transactions: 18
Total spent: ฿65.49
Refund rate: 0%
Auto-finalize rate: 0%
Member for: 1 year
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Total transactions: 18
Total spent: ฿486.03
Refund rate: 0%
Auto-finalize rate: 0%
Member for: 5 months
Never lost even a piece of mail in all my life! Shrug? Sorry folks. I have found nothing but honest vendors (but then I NEVER finalize - no exceptions!) and a USPS more dependable than is possibly believable. But it IS what it IS. Thank you Jesus!
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EDIT: moopsr can i hire u to do my taxes??????
:P
No shit! Dude! Your my mathematical hero! That entire equation(s) made my stomach roll! Lol.
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In 21 transactions over 11 months... my first order, for LSD, I got scammed. Luckily this did not put me off, and helped me learn how to avoid future scams (which mostly boils down to "never finalise early", though I make one exception to that rule for a great weed vendor who requires it, and who has always delivered high quality stuff). A few months later, an order from a well-trusted weed vendor never turned up, and his replacement package didn't turn up either, but due to his very high reputation I doubt he scammed me - I guess something just went weird in the mail. A few months later another weed order from a new vendor arrived, but it was really nasty gritweed - the sort where the ash from a joint stays as one solid unbroken lump, then in the next day or two turned into nasty oily shit, the vendor claimed surprise and claimed he'd send out new uncontaminated stuff but never did, and everyone else was complaining so I think this was just a wanker who thought he'd get away with selling awful crap on SR - his rapidly plummeting feedback soon dispelled that notion. Then a few weeks ago, a previously well respected weed vendor stopped fulfilling orders, seemingly scammed a lot of people and never lived up to his promise to refund or reship, but I was lucky enough to get a full refund through the resolution centre (probably helped that he never bothered to reply in the resolution centre and a lot of people were complaining, SR staff gave me the full refund, not the vendor in question).
So that's 4 transactions in 21 that didn't go as planned, 3 where I actually lost money due to it (I'm counting the gritweed as a loss here as nasty contaminated marriage-oowana isn't exactly what I ordered), 3 which truly appear to have been scams, 2 where I received no product and no refund. Though I'm not sure if "processing"/"in transit" orders show up in the purchasing stats, if they do then it's 19 transactions total as I have a couple that haven't arrived yet.
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Total transactions: 18
Total spent: ฿486.03
Refund rate: 0%
Auto-finalize rate: 0%
Member for: 5 months
Never lost even a piece of mail in all my life! Shrug? Sorry folks. I have found nothing but honest vendors (but then I NEVER finalize - no exceptions!) and a USPS more dependable than is possibly believable. But it IS what it IS. Thank you Jesus!
OK, I'm gonna need to do another stat analysis. Good to see that scamming is so rare on SR. I thought my rate was low, but in comparison with some, I've clearly been a bit unlucky.
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Total transactions: 7
Total spent: ฿43.43
Refund rate: 0%
Auto-finalize rate: 0%
Member for: 10 months
I know I do not have that many transactions(I don't particularly like drugs in the mail with my address on the package), but it seems easy enough not to get scammed. Only buy from vendors that would have more to lose than gain from scamming you.
You want to read up on a vendor you like anyways, look at their post count, their ratings, their vendor reviews. You can usually get a feel of their attitude towards selling, security, drug safety and the like just reading posts by them. Would you trust this person with your address?
Does the vendor have any scam alerts?
I like buying from vendors who have a 98+ rating. Who have had their vendor account for awhile and been selling that whole time. It means that they have been getting out packages consistently and have a process that works. They aren't making any mistakes regarding packaging or security and people are happy with them. When you buy something from them it's just business as usual, nothing special or new to figure out.
In the beginning, your choice of vendors really is limited. But the more transactions and the larger amount of money you have spent the more choices you have. No competent vendor wants someone with excellent buyer stats calling them a scammer or leaving a bad review.
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Total transactions: 7
Total spent: ฿43.43
Refund rate: 0%
Auto-finalize rate: 0%
Member for: 10 months
I know I do not have that many transactions(I don't particularly like drugs in the mail with my address on the package), but it seems easy enough not to get scammed. Only buy from vendors that would have more to lose than gain from scamming you.
You want to read up on a vendor you like anyways, look at their post count, their ratings, their vendor reviews. You can usually get a feel of their attitude towards selling, security, drug safety and the like just reading posts by them. Would you trust this person with your address?
Does the vendor have any scam alerts?
I like buying from vendors who have a 98+ rating. Who have had their vendor account for awhile and been selling that whole time. It means that they have been getting out packages consistently and have a process that works. They aren't making any mistakes regarding packaging or security and people are happy with them. When you buy something from them it's just business as usual, nothing special or new to figure out.
In the beginning, your choice of vendors really is limited. But the more transactions and the larger amount of money you have spent the more choices you have. No competent vendor wants someone with excellent buyer stats calling them a scammer or leaving a bad review.
Thanks. Sound advice. +1
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Failure rate was 0.00% for a long time including one good transaction with tony76. Based on that first good transaction, I finalized two purchases early because he said it was essential during the 4/20 sale.
So I lost $150USD and re-learned what I already knew: Occasionally, there is a reason to risk and out-of-escrow transactions. Occasionally. And you must me willing to accept the loss if something goes wrong.
One order from another country got stuck in their postal system for a long time. One order got stuck in my country's customs for a long time. I was patient and communicated with the vendors and was rewarded with completed transactions.
So my refund rate is 0.0% as is my auto-finalize rate. I consider tony76 my teacher. And an asshole.
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This survey has already been done before with over a thousand deliveries clocked up.
See my sig on SR statistics. 97.51% of packages get from A to B without incident.
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Current Status:
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Final Update:
DSR: 97.5173783515%
Results: 982 out of 1007 packages arrived without incident.
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If you prefer rounded down numbers for ease of remembering them:
DSR: 97.50%
975 out of 1000 packages.
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This survey has already been done before with over a thousand deliveries clocked up.
See my sig on SR statistics. 97.51% of packages get from A to B without incident.
--------------------------------------
Current Status:
--------------------------------------
Final Update:
DSR: 97.5173783515%
Results: 982 out of 1007 packages arrived without i
DSR: 97.50%
975 out of 1000 packages.
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Nice one, thanks. Impressive stats for SR.
What is depressing about these stats of course, is the realisation that my own delivery failure rate is almost double the SR average.....
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Nice one, thanks. Impressive stats for SR.
What is depressing about these stats of course, is the realisation that my own delivery failure rate is almost double the SR average.....
Not getting scammed or having random bullshit happen to your deliveries is an active learning process of hunting down a vendor with experience, decent feedback but most especially a brain. That's why the forums are so useful. You can learn in the Shipping subforum what the best practices for packaging/delivery times are and read responses from others to your vendor on his/her packaging.
Obviously, anybody can experience a run of bad luck, but paying attention to the details pays off here. Particularly even a precursory search of the forum would frequently save new customers from falling victim to a vendor turned scammer or a vendor who has no grip on reality.
I find that if a vendor doesn't take packaging seriously, then it's probably all downhill from there and you should run a mile. It's not that packaging is the be all and end all, it's just that all the good vendors tend to be interested in taking care of that problem. Being a reverse package profiling engineer takes some work.
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This survey has already been done before with over a thousand deliveries clocked up.
See my sig on SR statistics. 97.51% of packages get from A to B without incident.
--------------------------------------
Current Status:
--------------------------------------
Final Update:
DSR: 97.5173783515%
Results: 982 out of 1007 packages arrived without incident.
--------------------------------------
If you prefer rounded down numbers for ease of remembering them:
DSR: 97.50%
975 out of 1000 packages.
--------------------------------------
Do you know the domestic to domestic failure rate?
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Do you know the domestic to domestic failure rate?
Well, I'm not sure what is domestic for you, but you should be able to add up the USA only numbers in the thread in my sig.
Also, I prefer to call it the Delivery Success Rate. So much success and very little failure you see :P
In any case, I am sure it is something like 99% or higher, but you can go do some arithmetic for an exact number.
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Nice one, thanks. Impressive stats for SR.
What is depressing about these stats of course, is the realisation that my own delivery failure rate is almost double the SR average.....
Not getting scammed or having random bullshit happen to your deliveries is an active learning process of hunting down a vendor with experience, decent feedback but most especially a brain. That's why the forums are so useful. You can learn in the Shipping subforum what the best practices for packaging/delivery times are and read responses from others to your vendor on his/her packaging.
Obviously, anybody can experience a run of bad luck, but paying attention to the details pays off here. Particularly even a precursory search of the forum would frequently save new customers from falling victim to a vendor turned scammer or a vendor who has no grip on reality.
I find that if a vendor doesn't take packaging seriously, then it's probably all downhill from there and you should run a mile. It's not that packaging is the be all and end all, it's just that all the good vendors tend to be interested in taking care of that problem. Being a reverse package profiling engineer takes some work.
Did you look at variance in data sets? Were there any members whose stats showed unusually low 'delivery success rates' and if, so, what were the factors contributing to these? (ie a predominance of orders from outside their own country etc...)
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Did you look at variance in data sets? Were there any members whose stats showed unusually low 'delivery success rates' and if, so, what were the factors contributing to these? (ie a predominance of orders from outside their own country etc...)
I did a tiny bit of work on that but have deleted the original spreadsheet. I took away the largest data point from the survey, but I found that the average was very stable, always around 97.5% or so. If you page scrap the data you'll see the same.
Obviously some members had some bad luck, but again, you have to go to the thread to see for yourself, it's the last link in my signature.
I and many others believe from empirical observation that if the consumer uses PGP encryption they are less likely to be the victims of a selective scam or affected by simple embezzlement.
This is because A: the vendor is a lot less likely to think you're a chump, and B: if the vendor refuses to play ball with PGP, the odds are that he doesn't have particularly high I.Q to begin with and you should avoid a transaction with that person. Thus, however it works, it works.
The interesting thing would be if SR ran a ongoing survey so we could observe trends over time.
The problem is that the survey could be biased. I mean, clearly only people on the forum replied to it. It is hard to say which way it is biased too. On one hand, forum regulars are less likely to be inexperienced. And on the other hand, people are far more likely to be on the forum if they have a complaint. So it's hard to tell.
I totted up the data from this specific thread and I got:
G B
32 3
62 0
3 2
31 2
33 0
7 4
1 1
39 1
27 1
46 0
42 0
3 1
18 0
18 0
17 4
7 0
Where Totals = 386 19 in summation and;
Where G = a perfect transaction and B = some manner of problem e.g. a scam, lost mail, a refund had to be shipped etc
The result was 95.07% in terms of Delivery Success Rate. Or 4.92% in terms of Delivery Failure Rate.
So you see, the results are really quite stable, and I believe if you wait around until you reach 1000+ packages, then you'll
find that it is very similar to my 97.51% DSR.
Cheers!
Pine
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Total transactions: 24
Refund rate: 3.11%
Auto-finalize rate: 0%
Member for: 4 months
Plus one order currently in resolution
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Just to note that I have done 8 deals in the last 3 weeks and all fucking 8 came through. I'm chuffed as a bastard.
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0 fail
EPIC WIN.
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Just to note that I have done 8 deals in the last 3 weeks and all fucking 8 came through. I'm chuffed as a bastard.
Glad to hear it, can you change "What is YOUR SR failure rate??????" to "What is YOUR SR success rate??????"?
You just need to modify your initial post's subject line to do it.
Seems like 9/10 is a good batting average for any system, more success than failure :)
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i think i got 110% from all my transactions.
why the extra 10% i hear you cry?
i ordered a few benzo's from a UK seller & for some reason it took over 7 days to reach me first class post. contacted the seller & he made a new package and sent it out too me.
one day after i had recieved said package i also recieved the first, checked postage date to see which was sent earliest.
messaged seller & he wasnt bothered about me sending him a few coins to make up for it!
legend.