Disappearing acts

on_the_edge

on_the_edge

Gold Member
Feedback: +358 / =0 / -0
Joined
Jan 31, 2006
Messages
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How do you folks handle them? I have had people either express an interest in a knife to the point where they extend an offer or flat out say they will take it and then they magically disappear. I know Spark has tried to manage this type of behavior in the rules, but it continues and I am not sure how to remedy the situation. Most of it seems to go on behind the scenes even though I explicitly state in my threads that the first person to unequivocally say they will take the knife in my thread will get the knife. I guess some people may be afraid to post in the thread for fear of being called out later when they run and hide even though that means they may not get the knife if someone else posts in my thread that they want it. (Of course, they probably don't really care since they don't really want the knife in the first place :roll eyes:) I'm thinking I may start to do the following:

1. Explicitly state in my thread that the price is firm and that I will not entertain offers (even though I have never stated that I am open to offers or OBO);

2. Require that anyone who has any question post in the thread itself and not by email or PM; and

3. Add anyone who pulls anything to my ignore list so as to avoid the hassle of trying to keep track of folks who change their minds more than their socks.

What are everyone's thoughts?
 
I think putting some firm rules into your sales threads will help a little, but this whole "disappearing" act is just part of selling on forums.

There is nothing binding anyone to their word, and some people get hit with buyers remorse almost immediately after buying something...in the forum scenario they haven't paid, just showed some intent to purchase, and that is easy to walk away from.

I think that there are a couple of things I would like to see personally as rules, and I believe they would help with this kind of stuff;

Gold Members or higher are the only people that can sell or BUY on the exchange.

Feedback can be left for anyone who posts an "I'll take it" and then dissapears.
(The rules would have to be changed so that an "I'll take it" must be left in every sales thread by the buyer, I don't care if you want to be the "anonymous collector")
 
I've that happen many times, and I just ignore it. If they do it more then once, they go on my ignore list. If you tell people to ask questions in your sales thread you'll likely have three pages of foolishness. I really think it's unavoidable.
 
We don't want questions in sales threads for just that reason. You'll get meaningless questions that derail any chance of a sale.

Don't let flakes worry you. They are a cost of doing business. But if they say "I'll take it" but disappear, post a quick thread in GBU about them, just don't go to iTrader.
 
JR88FAN said:
I think putting some firm rules into your sales threads will help a little, but this whole "disappearing" act is just part of selling on forums.

There is nothing binding anyone to their word, and some people get hit with buyers remorse almost immediately after buying something...in the forum scenario they haven't paid, just showed some intent to purchase, and that is easy to walk away from.

I think that there are a couple of things I would like to see personally as rules, and I believe they would help with this kind of stuff;

Gold Members or higher are the only people that can sell or BUY on the exchange.

Feedback can be left for anyone who posts an "I'll take it" and then dissapears.
(The rules would have to be changed so that an "I'll take it" must be left in every sales thread by the buyer, I don't care if you want to be the "anonymous collector")
Click to expand...

I like these ideas and do think that they could help to curb the frequency of encounters with nut jobs. I personally have also never understood the desire to be so secretive in a knife purchase. Frankly, I don't really care who purchases what knives.

Esav Benyamin said:
We don't want questions in sales threads for just that reason. You'll get meaningless questions that derail any chance of a sale.

Don't let flakes worry you. They are a cost of doing business. But if they say "I'll take it" but disappear, post a quick thread in GBU about them, just don't go to iTrader.
Click to expand...

Understood about the questions, Esav. Your point is well-taken. I really do try to work with folks to make a sale/purchase a great experience for both parties. Part of that is being patient with communications to the other party. I know that not everyone lives on the computer and people lead busy lives outside of BFC. Still, it's hard to balance being too patient sometimes (and the other person has been long gone for awhile) versus not being patient enough. Like you said, I should accept that dealing with flakes is par for the course and not let them bug me.
 
I had one guy ask me to take 600 for a knife I was asking 700 for. Since that was what I had in the knife I said sure I can take 6. He says well, if I get the money I'll let you know. Very annoying to negotiate a deal with someone only to find out they were wasting your time all along! Not much to do about it though, besides avoid them.
 
Even worse, if he negotiated online. Now anyone following won't give you more than 600 and maybe try to knock the price down further.

If someone does that, tell me, and I'll pull the conversation offline for interfering with the sale.
 
iTrader rule. No feedback unless the deal goes through.

On the other hand, please do leave feedback on flakes in GBU.
 
Thanks Esav. I guess I can understand their rationale for it, but it seems to create a very strong bias in favor of positive feedback, in spite of there being transactions (even if they didn't "go through") that were less than positive. I think it lessens the value of the rating. While having lots of positive feedback means that lots of that person's deals have been good, it doesn't tell folks how many may have gone bad before the deal "went through." No system's perfect, and this might be as good as can be expected.
 
Any disagreement between buyer, seller, or traders generally becomes a tale of conflicting narratives. We do not have the staff to sort it all out, but making them explain themselves in GBU often leads to fairly obvious conclusions.
 
Asked 3 different mods for help on a listing this week, getting harassed and never did get a response - what is GBU?


Esav Benyamin said:
Any disagreement between buyer, seller, or traders generally becomes a tale of conflicting narratives. We do not have the staff to sort it all out, but making them explain themselves in GBU often leads to fairly obvious conclusions.
Click to expand...
 
I was discussing this very thing via PMs with someone this week. Sometimes things can happen, unexpected redirection of money for car repair, water heater, etc, that is understandable. But communication must continue. On the other hand, if someone is purposely going around claiming items in sales threads and then disappearing that is something we need to know about. If we see a pattern of behavior like that, then it's usually time to walk the plank. The rules say to honor your word, if people can't they don't belong here. If it is an innocent mistake, ignorance, laziness and not figuring out how things do work then instruction is required and if nothing comes from that, then they walk the plank.
 
rdave said:
Asked 3 different mods for help on a listing this week, getting harassed and never did get a response - what is GBU?
Click to expand...

GBU is this subforum that we are in now.:
FEEDBACK: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly!

What thread are you being harassed in?
 
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