We've had a bit of angst recently about the Buying and Selling area.
I've updated the rules (first time since 2004!) to relax the AND condition for Suburb, State and Postcode. It's simply not necessary to have the postcode in the advert text. I'll be communicating this with our moderators in the next 5 minutes.
It's VITAL that it's included in the PM between you and the buyer / seller, particularly in NSW where disclosure of names, phone and address are required by law.
If there's anyone who wants their For Sale item back, and includes at least Suburb and State, it can come back. PM me.
If folks want to read the revised rules / guidelines and get back to me with improvements here, that would be awesome. I'll hold this thread open for seven days.
thanks,
Andrew
Craig Torrens6 times Australian, 7 times State Hillclimb Class Champion
Yes, that's a reason I've done this, but I want constructive criticism of how we can improve the Buying and Selling experience. We're not a paid-for advertiser, so we have to do it for real cheap, and the rules are part of the reason we can do so, as is our attitude to you folks when you post. It's one of our most popular areas, and I want it to stay that way.
Please let's have a discussion about the rules, and any improvements that we can easily make, as this doesn't happen very often. Once we've all had a chance to put in our $2.50 and they've settled in, the mods will be looking after those sections once more.
>>Even if it's $0 or a bottle of wine. ONO / OBO / Offers above etc are allowed. Not naming any price is not. Including a link to an auction site or car dealer is not helpful, so please don't do that here as you're getting the ad for free.
So the numerous pointers to ebay are now verbotten?
I'm trying to make it so that our members have first pick of the cherry in return for $0 in listing and selling fees. eBay is a way of getting around our not putting in a price rules.
Let's talk about how we can make this work. If an eBay listing had a "Buy it now" price, that would be acceptable to me.
Would that work?
thanks,
Andrew
BizarreModeratorThe artist formerly known as blue74l
^^ i like barry's idea. that way, we know if stuff is for sale, but its not clogging the thread of geniuine "I'm selling this on abd, and you get the chance to buy it first" sort of thing.
I really like the Classified section on the Samba. Selling is not allowed in the general forums. Sellers have a feedback forum which I think is a great idea when your looking at spending money on the internet. The adds are a good mix of private and company products. Say you want a oil pump cover,type it in to the search and take your pick of new or used. Feature adds are displayed on home page and I am always clicking on stuff from there.
The way the your add gets exposure here is by bumping or user replys. Your add stays on the first page for about half a day then its gone. Yeah its free I know but it still does not mean cant be improved. I would pay a fee to sell stuff on here, just like ebay. But instead of a time limited listing how about the add runs untill its sold. If the fee was a fraction of the cost of ebay I am sure a lot more people would sell on here and more companies would advertise products. Or maybe we just dont have the population to make it work.
just one thought on reading through, on contact method it only lists as must have a phone number, are we still allowing pm email as alternatives.
also post flooding? we still going to keep this one.
Different items should be allowed to have different posts, its more helpful for someone scanning the classifieds quickly. Maybe limit the amount of new posts per day by each member to stop the "flooding"?
Some forums I've been to have a section for non-brand sales forum ("Everything else"), and a Lost & Found section for rides that need rescuing. We could put eBay and other auction results into the "Everything else" section.
SuperOwen wrote:Different items should be allowed to have different posts, its more helpful for someone scanning the classifieds quickly. Maybe limit the amount of new posts per day by each member to stop the "flooding"?
there were a lot of instances of one user posting 27 different threads each having a different item.
71-BEETLE-SEDAN wrote:boost crusin has a good buy and sale sorted section, like it has turbo/exhaust and wheels/tyres etc
something like this would work i think, and could have one for random bits and pieces as well as one for the sponsers.
Sponsers allready have there own section,its called buiseness advertisements???
The for sale section covers all parts,theres no need to split it up into sections for wheels,engine parts or body parts etc ??? that would only make for more sections that it doesnt need???
what about people sponsoring the forum..........are their "for sales" strictly to be pigeon holed to the business advertisments where there is dramatically less traffic?
doesn't make sense that they sponsor, then get chucked in a corner where no-one goes?
i believe andrew is planning on getting rid of that section for that reason. Also i think that you will fine that post was before he became a sponsor as after months me denying he was a business he got caught out by having a half page ad in VWMA.
I think you should be able to have a seperate thread for each item. It makes it far easier to manage. Once it is sold you just let it move down into the never-never. When you have multiple items in the one thread you have to keep modifying the thread and people have to keep re-reading the same thread to see what is sold and what is still available. They end up becoming pages and pages of questions and modifications and end up messy. It has to be kept bumping up so that people know there are still items available.
Like I suggested a seperate classified section is the way forward. Keep it out of the gereral forums. I am sure the forum sponsors would like the opportunity to list individual items and sell directly from this site as do the private sellers. Seller wins, buyer wins.
Yes,no?
Yes, I am looking to get rid of the "Business" section - it's purpose has gone and I don't think it serves our sponsors well, and I'd really like for our sponsors to have more visibility.
I'd like for them to have a sticky post per sponsor (we only have 8-10 sponsors max, so it's not a huge deal), so they can have a single thread for their latest offers, etc.
Talking about that, I bet get my arse into gear and send out the renewal notices.
hellbugged wrote:what about a call to delete threads/items that are positively sold and delivered as per samba
Cleaner section and less bandwidth
That sounds like a good idea - I will look into setting the option up to allow original posters to hide a thread.
We have plenty of disk space left (about 30 GB) and we use only a tiny fraction of our bandwidth (20 GB out of 550 GB per month), so I'm not concerned about disk space or bandwidth.
Another thing I might try is setting up a poll to discuss turning on the max age of threads to be 30 days. - Thoughts?
vanderaj wrote:Yes, I am looking to get rid of the "Business" section - it's purpose has gone and I don't think it serves our sponsors well, and I'd really like for our sponsors to have more visibility.
I'd like for them to have a sticky post per sponsor (we only have 8-10 sponsors max, so it's not a huge deal), so they can have a single thread for their latest offers, etc.
...
All good... Give the sponsors real value and visibility for their money. I don't believe members will object.
vanderaj wrote:...We have plenty of disk space left (about 30 GB) and we use only a tiny fraction of our bandwidth (20 GB out of 550 GB per month)....
Some thoughts:
1. Remove the current restriction on "flooding" sales posts. There clearly isn't a bandwidth problem, and it *is* easier to maintain status on individual posts; it is hard to see what the benefit of the current policy is to administrators, users/members, guests or advertisers.
2. Add the ability for each forum user to "mark as read" posts that they no longer wish to see (strictly speaking, "mark as unwanted"). Thus, next time the god-botherers start up a post like "Which hymns do you like to listen to in your Beetle?", I can mark it as unwanted and not have the thread visible again. I know this would be a major forum re-development, but it would differentiate this forum from the rest. It would also help to deal with the occasional case of flooding of sales posts.
3. With respect to auto-deletion of aged posts, I can't help but think that 30 days is too short a period for selling a car; but then what is an appropriate length.
4. Resist the urge to over-regulate. If there is a way to transfer control to the members and away from the administrators (see 2. above) take that path and then reduce the degree of regulation. Add lightness and simplicate, or "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
If you have a time limit on For Sale adds, what if some time in the future you need a widget that you saw advertised here some time ago? As it is you can go back into the never never and look for it and maybe find it and maybe it is still available. Then you can buy it. Win win for two members.
Individual threads for each item are much easier to look through than the big clearance job lots.
If something is advertised here it is a big advantage to the purchaser members who access to those hard to find things first, so why not make it as easy as possible for the sellers.
Links to eBay and other places are also good for members, just for browsing or maybe for purchase. We don't all trawl everywhere all the time, but I'm sure that combined we go to most places VWs are bought and sold online.
Definitely $2.50 worth in there, thanks for reading.
I think the rules are ok. But i do think manners in a PM should be compulsory. My own rule is i reserve the right to not sell an item to someone who is rude.
