This topic has come up before, and some similar ideas exist. I was lurking in this thread and Abbott_, half facetiously said
I think this sort of service would be a good, revenue generating venture for LL or even perhaps Perb itself. I work in tech and I have experience starting companies, but I have no interest in getting involved directly with something like this. For that reason, I'll just share the idea here. If it's not new, or if it sucks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
What's the problem? When an SP books a new client, they expose themselves. There is a nontrivial amount of risk not only to their safety, but also to their time; SPs complain a lot about time-wasters. We as clients have this forum and other resources to minimize our time-waste, service-quality risks, but SPs can only rely on a limited amount of information.
There's a way to improve that situation. A trusted third-party, such as LL could verify clients. There would be 2 levels of verification, and an SP-controlled "karma" point system.
Level 1 involves a client having to pay a verification fee and engage in a short video-conference with a support agent of the third-party. During the call, the client displays a piece of ID and the support agent confirms their name and year of birth (+age). No personal information is recorded by the support agent. Nobody wants LL to leak a database of clients. The only information that gets recorded is the phone number, year of birth, and the fact that the client was verified.
Level 2 adds additional information to Level 1. It also requires the support agent to verify some reasonable piece of occupational information from the client, such as a public LinkedIn profile, a workplace online profile, or an email with a domain belonging to the workplace, etc. Again, none of this information gets recorded. Only the fact that the verification was performed gets recorded. It may make sense to record the client's ethnicity at level 2, since that's important to some SPs for social reasons e.g., they don't want to run into someone they know.
Karma is either given by an SP or not after a visit. It adds to the client's karma, but it does not subtract. If for whatever reason the SP had a negative experience with this client, they'd have the third-party arbitrage the situation and assess whether it's warranted to rescind the client's verification.
For all of this to work, the third-part would have to provide an app for the SPs to research a client's verification + karma.
I feel like this is the right balance of client privacy and SP confidence.
Seriously, though. Why not? I mean, there is preferred411 and some similar services, but those are primarily American and it's a pain to get "certified".There should be an agency that certifies gentlemen.
I'm thinkin reward miles :star:
I think this sort of service would be a good, revenue generating venture for LL or even perhaps Perb itself. I work in tech and I have experience starting companies, but I have no interest in getting involved directly with something like this. For that reason, I'll just share the idea here. If it's not new, or if it sucks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
What's the problem? When an SP books a new client, they expose themselves. There is a nontrivial amount of risk not only to their safety, but also to their time; SPs complain a lot about time-wasters. We as clients have this forum and other resources to minimize our time-waste, service-quality risks, but SPs can only rely on a limited amount of information.
There's a way to improve that situation. A trusted third-party, such as LL could verify clients. There would be 2 levels of verification, and an SP-controlled "karma" point system.
Level 1 involves a client having to pay a verification fee and engage in a short video-conference with a support agent of the third-party. During the call, the client displays a piece of ID and the support agent confirms their name and year of birth (+age). No personal information is recorded by the support agent. Nobody wants LL to leak a database of clients. The only information that gets recorded is the phone number, year of birth, and the fact that the client was verified.
Level 2 adds additional information to Level 1. It also requires the support agent to verify some reasonable piece of occupational information from the client, such as a public LinkedIn profile, a workplace online profile, or an email with a domain belonging to the workplace, etc. Again, none of this information gets recorded. Only the fact that the verification was performed gets recorded. It may make sense to record the client's ethnicity at level 2, since that's important to some SPs for social reasons e.g., they don't want to run into someone they know.
Karma is either given by an SP or not after a visit. It adds to the client's karma, but it does not subtract. If for whatever reason the SP had a negative experience with this client, they'd have the third-party arbitrage the situation and assess whether it's warranted to rescind the client's verification.
For all of this to work, the third-part would have to provide an app for the SPs to research a client's verification + karma.
I feel like this is the right balance of client privacy and SP confidence.






