Pekka: The Time has Come, or long since gone

But it's never too late. What the heck am I talking about?

I for one, and perhaps there are more, am sick and tired of the professional buyers and sellers here. I can't imagine the forum had that in mind when it started up and grew to be as large and great as it is. And perhaps the new software will nip this in the bud somehow.

But we've got many, many members who do nothing but buy and sell. They don't contribute to any other threads and are basically using this as their free and personal store. They zero in on good buys, snatch them up before anyone else can get the chance, and then turn around and flip it at a higher price where possible. They somehow have outlets where they are able to get tons of gear and then attempt to sell it here.

Yes, my friends, the time has come to start charging, a la FM, in order to sell on this forum. Now maybe a lot of members won't like that so draw a line in the sand and say those with a certain number of posts, those with a certain join date, those who've contributed here, be it with knowledge, humor, or whatever it may be, don't have to pay, are grandfathered in.

But as Lionel Richie said in his song, "The Time Has Come to Raise the Roof..."

me

My two cents on this Mark is that they create a market. Nobody has to buy or sell to them, but it is an option.

Now if you left it at nobody has to buy from them, I'd grant ya that.

One of the reasons I started this debacle of a thread is I recently posted 2 items for sale, a few weeks apart. Now I've sold many items here, but it's certainly not my specialty nor my main focus. These past two times, because my prices were low, I was inundated with those wanting to buy, and for the most part it was the type I mention above. Not exclusively, but in large part. And they were extremely aggressive and mad as hell when I didn't sell to them. In fact, the last thread I wound up withdrawing because of my poor handling of the buyer queue. While I did say I would sell only to reputable members with many posts, I found that hard to enforce without pissing people off. Perhaps I just worry too much.

In the future I'm going to state, in big bold capital letters: I RESERVE THE RIGHT TO SELL TO WHOMEVER I CHOOSE, whether you are the first in line or the last.

I see what you're saying, but to be honest, they can go f**k themselves. I'll be interested in the input from the powers at be.

BTW, it took me 10 minutes to type this because of my meatball fingers.

you obviously need some speedlites.

MDJAK wrote in post #16003015
But it's never too late. What the heck am I talking about?

I for one, and perhaps there are more, am sick and tired of the professional buyers and sellers here. I can't imagine the forum had that in mind when it started up and grew to be as large and great as it is. And perhaps the new software will nip this in the bud somehow.

But we've got many, many members who do nothing but buy and sell. They don't contribute to any other threads and are basically using this as their free and personal store. They zero in on good buys, snatch them up before anyone else can get the chance, and then turn around and flip it at a higher price where possible. They somehow have outlets where they are able to get tons of gear and then attempt to sell it here.

Yes, my friends, the time has come to start charging, a la FM, in order to sell on this forum. Now maybe a lot of members won't like that so draw a line in the sand and say those with a certain number of posts, those with a certain join date, those who've contributed here, be it with knowledge, humor, or whatever it may be, don't have to pay, are grandfathered in.

But as Lionel Richie said in his song, "The Time Has Come to Raise the Roof..."

me

Some thoughts:

We can easily prevent professional buyers and sellers from using the marketplace if they are reported. Stores or warehouses should not be able to sell here as pretending to be members.

If we'd charge for using the marketplace, they would just pay the fee as anyone else, even more so as it is a small businessplace cost to them, wouldn't they?

We do have plans for marketplace to make it cleaner, more secure, transparent, easier to follow and better controlled. This will happen after new software is released because all the other things are more important in the big transition scheme and marketplace will depend on gear database which takes time to build.

Understood and agree with you that they would just pay the price to sell. But as it stands, you're not making much needed money now. And you should be.

Well this would put me out of trafficking MDJAK

There's really no right answer here. I like that it's free, but with free comes a little bit of chaos. For most people, it's about the money. So you see a bunch of folks buying up stuff from the Canon refurb store for example and then flipping it on the market place for a nice profit. I agree with Mark in that it probably goes against the original spirit of the market place.

I tend to sell my stuff so that it sells quickly. I arrive at a fair market value, then discount it a little bit. I appreciate POTN enough that I don't want to rip people off or nudge the price upwards. I certainly appreciate when people do the same for me.

That said, this is what the market has become, so I suppose we just have to deal with it.

I agree with charging to sell. The list gets pretty long to wade through.
Also would like to see seperate threads for different types of gear.

If it upsets people that much maybe a post limit might help? Say make it 500 posts before you can even access the 4 sale forum? That would still upset newbies, but maybe keep some of the predators out.

Actually, there have been over 136,000 threads offering items for sale in the MarketPlace. Out of this number there have been very, very few scams. Not that there have not been problematic transactions, but human error, miss communications, and unplanned disasters do not rise to the level of deliberate scams.

I refused to sell to someone just recently.

Oh well.

How dare you exercise your own good judgment.

The issue isn't scams though is it? It's more about people who buy cheap and sell for a higher price, which is pretty hard to avoid. Even if you charge to sell, or limit to a higher post count, those same people will still be doing exactly what they do now. Charging a fee isn't likely to deter people who are already making a profit

Not to mention the next 100 threads will be about people who gift paypal AND gift POTN fees :P