Xel'Naga

Legendary Skial King
Contributor
All official Skial Middlemen are expected to adhere to the rules listed in this thread when conducting middleman activities on behalf of Skial (if you're dual-tagged with other communities, be sure to note their rules, if any, as well).


RULES
These are expected to be followed 100% of the time when acting as a middleman for any Skial trades.
  • SCREENSHOT EVERYTHING. In the event of a dispute, you'll want to make sure you can protect yourself. Take a screenshot of the ENTIRE Steam chat(s). Middlemen can mistakenly get trade-banned by Valve if they unknowingly launder stolen items. It happens, and it's usually no fault of the middleman's. This isn't just to protect you from SteamRep, but to protect you from Valve.
  • Confirm with all parties after each trade. This way both the buyer and the seller know when items have passed hands. This minimizes confusion and helps speed up the sale.
  • Confirm the terms of the trade before the trade begins. This means finding out who is buying what from whom. This way you've got it outlined right in front of you, and you know what items you should expect from each party, and what you're expected to transfer.
  • Keep all chats related to the trade in a group chat, where all parties involved in the trade can see. Do not side-chat people involved in the trade, unless the discussion isn't related to the trade. This way, everybody sees everything, and there's no questions about who said what.
  • The seller trades to the middleman, the buyer transfers money to the seller, and the middleman trades to the buyer. This is the golden order, and prevents 99% of scams from happening. As long as you maintain this order, and do not mix and match, it's almost always a smooth process. Very rarely will you be expected to deviate from this scheme (giftable-but-not-tradable Steam games, for example), so stick with it whenever possible. Otherwise, for most cash-for-items trades, this is the ideal order to complete the trades in.
  • Do not middleman for anybody who is a tagged scammer on SteamRep. Even if you think they're honest and were mistakenly tagged, have a pending dispute, or even if you know it's 100% impossible for the tagged user to cause any harm. Don't do it. Trading with known scammers is likely to get you tagged on SteamRep, as well. Even for middlemen. This means you must look up each person you're trading with (for middleman purposes) on SteamRep prior to any trades. This can wind up with you getting a CAUTION tag on SteamRep for knowingly trading with scammers, and can result in getting your SKIAL MIDDLEMAN tags revoked.
  • Do not middleman for anybody who is an obvious alt of a tagged scammer on SteamRep. Don't try to get around this by having a scammer trade using an alt account. Seriously, just don't.
GUIDELINES
These aren't requirements, but just good ideas from my experiences in middleman trades. It'd be awesome if you followed these, too, but it's not required.
  • Never handle the money. There are numerous reasons for refusing to handle the money between traders. The most important of which are that it typically adds on additional fees, which means that somebody either has to pay more, or isn't getting paid enough. There's also the fact that, if you exceed a certain amount of transactions via PayPal, they'll report it to the IRS (or your local country's equivalent government organization). The only times I've had to handle the money, myself, were when somebody was using a MoneyPak card, but the seller was in a country that couldn't accept MoneyPak, so I redeemed the card onto my own PayPal account and transferred it to the seller. It's time-consuming, and was a transfer linked to my account that I had no real business with.
  • Be polite. Seriously, keep a level head. It helps tremendously. If the buyer and seller are arguing over the price in front of you, let them go at it. Don't take sides, don't get angry with them. Being calm and cool pays off with easier, hassle-free trades, and you're more likely to get somebody to leave you positive rep (or even tips!) if you're a nice guy/gal to them.
  • Be efficient. Make sure you've got all your information ready at the start of the trade. Any special instructions you have for the buyer/seller, links to your rep threads, even a copy/pasted greeting/agreement. This minimizes the time you spend in the trade, and makes traders more likely to return to you for business if you can get the job done quickly. If you've got multiple people lined up, being able to plow through a list of traders in one sitting is an amazing feeling. Juggling around between several group chats with different people with different items is a hassle.
  • Have a plan to report every scammer you meet. If somebody seems suspicious, don't call them out or refuse to help them. That's not your job. Your job is to be a safe conduit between two people wanting to make a risky trade with each other. If somebody seems fishy, you can continue the trade if you'd like (unless you really don't feel comfortable doing it, in which case feel free to kindly back out of the trade completely). Be sure to report any odd behavior, though. You (likely) won't be held responsible if it turns out somebody does a chargeback after you're gone. But letting us know ahead of time helps us keep an eye on potential scumbags.
Current list of official Skial Middlemen:
This post is a work in progress. Rules/guidelines/middlemen will be added/removed as time goes on. Be sure to check this post from time to time for any new requirements expected from middlemen.

Want to become a middleman? Submit an application here.
 
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