Selling stuff on forums

Fajitas!

Steve wrote: »

I beg to differ, they're not. We have no access to personal information on a poster.

Er. I think you picked me up completely wrong.Intend was; IP addresses should be availible to Amods, to check if someone is pushing up prices.

Gavin

Yo Doods, let's selfishly stick with the topic of the Cycling forum, so as Admins don't have to read off topic stuff and we get some quality feedback

Fajitas!

Would it not cover more than just the cycling forum? Non?

Photography stuff on the photography forum, bowling balls on the bowling forum, ivory chess pieces on the Chess forum, facial hair on the facial hair forum?

I think what's come up so far is relevant feedback to the situation, whether for or against sales on forum, as opposed to on adverts.

Adverts might be a great service for average run of the mill stuff but for specialised stuff like high-end bikes and components it's pretty crap. This is mainly due to the presence of "tire kickers" (example : there was a bike posted for 1500 euro, which was a really good price for that bike, some moron follows up "I'll get you started with an offer of 100 euro"). Most people go "Bikes? Oh yeah, they're all worth 100 euro max" and leave it at that. It's different from say console games or dvds or any other amount of goods that are traded on adverts, where the majority of people have a good idea of an accurate price for these goods.

I used bikes here as an example, but the same could apply to other specialised goods.

I wouldn't agree - Have a look at the Photography FS forum, plenty of gear going for €1k++ in there, and where nessicary, people get their knocks back down to realistic prices, but if something is worth a grand, then it'll sell for that.

Red Sleeping Beauty

Thaedyal wrote: »

Ok but what are those hindrances?
Personally I haven't found any but I will say that I have never sold anything
and have only bought two things so it seems I am missing something that others are running into, and that is pretty much what has me asking questions.

What are the hindrances?

The "hindrances" are quite obvious but only if you use the site regularly (or try to moderate it) . Although they're not really hindrances, they're problems. Problems with the design, software, planning etc. etc.

Have a look again at your ad : http://adverts.ie/107626
There's talk of Prague, kids playing games, wives being collected from gyms and something about Blackrock. All on a site that's supposed to solely be about buying and selling stuff. And there's even confusion (or lack of understanding due to) of the complex rules there as evidenced by the seller's last "post" (or comment) .


Ideally this is what should've been posted on that adverts "thread" is :

• Buyer : Offer 50, can collect in Blanch
• Seller : Will consider offer and reply next week.
• Seller : I'll accept your offer.

(How you force anyone to only post in such a regimental manner I've no idea *. AdMods have very limited tools compared to the boards mod tools.)
*Adverts' thread based system is one the biggest problems in itself and no matter how many rules you type up , it's nigh on impossible to get every user to follow them.

Now, nothing that either of you posted is terribly against the rules per se and everything worked out. But for other users (boards ones or sole adverts ones) it's just not the same. They don't make it clear that they are making an offer ('yeah I'll probably take that off you') and sellers don't make it clear that they're accepting an offer ('ok will PM you') . There's also people who bypass the "comments" procedure and just jump straight into making offers via PM.



My suggestion :

Let each forum (or "community") dictate whether or not they want a FS sub-forum with it's own rules and operated with the community's wishes.
This forum could be "closed off" so that you'd have to be logged in to read it (like Thunderdome) or you have to request access to post (like Soccer) or both. Or just make it completely private (ie, only reading and posting access granted by invite or request)
You could either keep the Adverts/FS forum's rules (mainly the on-thread dealing one) or leave it as a notice board (as in Shooting For Sale/Wanted) where you just put up what's for sale and then if people contact you they do and if they don't they don't .

Gavin

Anything from the admins on this ? Alan Rouge's suggestion seems goodo.

DeVore

For the moment we are going to allow Cycling to have a sub forum but thats primaraily because adverts.ie needs a pretty serious reboot, which is coming.

Ideally, adverts would handle all "selling" and we could integrate that *back* into the specific forums. Right now thats not possible but it is where we would like to get to, so dont get too comfy with the cycling sub forum cos its a stop gap.

DeV.

Gavin

Ok cool, cheers for that.