Ask HN: Is this idea even legal?

[safelysell]

Ive built a very basic service which i haven't made available so its not ready for 'Show HN'.

I've put up a landing page and would love some early feedback and help.

One of the big questions for me is if this service leaves me open to being sued if its later found some information attached to an address isn't accurate.

Another big question is 'does this service make sense and seem worthwhile?'

Id really love some feedback please.

The site is www.safelysell.co.uk

Thanks

[byoung2]

Where can you get the data? I can't speak to the legality issue, but practically speaking, you (or businesses that use your service) will have a lot of confused and angry customers who want to know why you won't ship to their address. Do the ratings for an address reset when a person moves out? It seems unfair to punish me because the last guy who lived here was a problem customer.

[ripsoco]

Hi, thanks for getting back.

The search bit would be free, so i was hoping that sellers would share their both their successful and unsuccessful transactions. To prevent spurious data the seller would have to provide postal tracking numbers.

Buyers would be given the chance to claim their address and associated 'delivery' reputation. This lets them take their reputation with them when they move. Periodically the buyers would receive a letter from the service just to confirm they are still at the said address - proof required also.

I guess these are some of the problems that need resolving if this service was to fly. There's definitely a large problem here but maybe this approach isnt the silver bullet.

[safelysell]

The above comment is from me. I used an old browser session that cached an old username.

[wikwocket]

The standard answer to the problem of being sued for business reasons is to incorporate. The corporation may be sued and may even go bankrupt as a result, but in certain situations the corporate shield protects you individually. This is in the U.S.; as it appears you are in the UK you can always talk to some lawyers and accountants about best practices.

[ripsoco]

Fair point. I was thinking along the lines of whether posting statistics against unique addresses without consent could lead to successful lawsuits. I didnt originally think this - eg google maps does this with rated restaurants.

I wouldnt use an addressees personal details unless they chose to claim their address.

Your right though, id need some professional legal advice.

[brothe2000]

One thing that I always find with the "rating" sort of systems is that negatives can always sink a site or reputation so instead of allowing negative postings, perhaps allowing people to post the deliveries and then rate them up if they were exceptionally great.

This avoids the negative impact but allows the view to total deliveries and those that were "positive".

In addition, each user has their own opinion so you may need to add variance for the rating.

[safelysell]

Hi, i agree with the "positive" approach to rating. I'll think i'll adjust the stats accordingly.

How would you deal with variance of opinions? Mediating between buyer and seller opinions is a problem im not sure how to solve.

[brothe2000]

I think that each person is their own variance. So somebody might rate on a 1 - 10 scale at an average of 7 while others rate at an average of 9 so you have to apply context.

I wouldn't mediate between the two of them, I would simply display the facts and let those viewing the data make their own conclusions the same way that a 1 star rating on Amazon is viewed as less credible than a 2 or 3 star rating because it "seems" more realistic. People who say strong words like Hate and rate 1 star are probably rating a lot of things low.

Make sense?

[fractallyte]

I get lots of junk mail on my address - people who try to open bank accounts, insurance, buying from catalogs, threats for debt collection (from agencies pursuing fraudsters)... So I'd be pretty annoyed if I ended up on a 'blacklist'.

Possibly your service might even be affected by the UK's defamation law.

(Incidentally, Langley Drive is about 15 minutes' walk from me!)

[safelysell]

Im in the neighbourhood too, maybe its fate and we should work together on something in the future ;-)

Im trying to avoid the 'blacklist' thing, its a horribly aggressive approach. I wanted to create some visibility on delivery stats in the hope it weeds out anti social behaviour along with allowing the seller to be more selective about customers.

I dont think every buyer is worth servicing just because they are offering to pay you.