Hey guys,

I was talking with Jason the other night, and we were thinking about posting a few simple community guidelines for selling and trading on the forums and wanted to get everyone's view on the subject.

One of the things we feel detracts from the spirit of selling items, especially in a collecting community, is posting items for sale without prices.

For example, user ABC posts a list of items for sale, but does not indicate the price he/she would like for them. The would-be buyer then must make offers, hopefully guessing what the would-be seller wants as proper compensation. I feel strongly that this scenario is a no-win situation for the buyer and seller.

What I would propose is that if anyone decides to list an item or items for sale, that he/she must post a price they would accept as the purchase price. This is not to say they can't take offers on the items; in fact, I would encourage the seller to accept offers. If the seller is unsure what to charge, it's acceptable to ask for more than they think it's worth -- this, at least, puts the burden on the buyer's shoulders as to whether or not they'd like to purchase the item.

Think of it as a type of classified ad where the sellers says, "$xx.xx or best offer." The would-be buyer can either take it, leave it, or counter-offer, but at least there's a rough price to base this decision on.

Trades:

I don't see anything offhand that is wrong with how trades are conducted on the site. If anyone has anything they'd like to mention, please do.

I look forward to your thoughts on this subject, as the goal here is to better the community without being too restrictive.

-Dain

Glad to see you liked my idea! What prompted this is we got to talking about how Qixmaster does his threads when he sales stuff. He always lists prices and seems to be more successful selling stuff that just about anyone. Then I visited another forum a few days ago that had the same rule in place, if you want to sale it then have a starting price. I really liked this idea cause it is conducive for selling stuff more quickly.
~~NGD

I think it's a good point. I mostly made FS/T threads without prices in the past, primarily to get my trade list out there and assuming that if somebody does not want to trade, they would offer a reasonable price (save me the hassle of placing prices on each item). However, the only offers I'd receive 90% of the time were quite low to the actual going rate of one or more items. I personally didn't always mind, as my intrinsic pricing is also slightly skewed to the buyer anyway (i.e. respectable collector wouldn't have to pay as much as a random buyer, unless it's a really rare item, of course), but it did get a bit irritating. Anyway, I then decided to add prices to a group of items I was selling, and within a couple of days they were all sold nearly at the full price...so, I couldn't agree more with you guys.

I'm a strong supported of the "adding prices" rule.

You should also have the item in your hands before you list it to sell! Nothing says bummer like buying something from a guy that he doesn't have only to find out that now he's not getting it!

Users should be upfront about shipping. If they don't want to ship to Canada, flat out say it. Don't wait until after the deal has been made to refuse shipping to another country... been burned too many times by this!

Accepted payment methods should also be listed. If you don't want to take paypal, make sure you say that so I don't offer it, only to be turned down. It can make deals go sour pretty quickly.

I totally agree with pricing, and especially with battymo. At this point in 2007, I feel it's assumed that Paypal is the online standard for transactions. If a buyer doesn't want Paypal, he should say so ahead of time to avoid problems after a deal is already "done". Same with shipping to Canada, especially on this site where a large number of the regular posters dwell in Canada. If you don't want to ship to Canada, say so ahead of time.

Some great points guys, I think Dain will also agree. Payment method and shipping location is something else that is good to post.
~~NGD

I have no useful points to add, but I like everything I am hearing so far!

I'd suggest a requirement for a hotlink to your place in the feedback forum but here we just have one thread to it and it seems no anchors to direct a click down to...