Why remove asking price?

[OvalmanPA]

Something I never thought of before now having been involved in these threads before in response to wanting to know or have an idea on the value of a knife. Leaving the prices for this purpose would be a great benefit to all the members in the "community" since this forum has a rule against anyone other than GOLD members asking the price or value of a knife. Never quite understood the rational behind that anyway?

 

[Esav Benyamin]

Leaving the prices for this purpose would be a great benefit to all the members in the "community" since this forum has a rule against anyone other than GOLD members asking the price or value of a knife. Never quite understood the rational behind that anyway?

Here are the Exchange forum rules: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/announcement.php?f=699&a=98
See SECTION 6 - Miscellaneous:

WHAT IS MY KNIFE / GADGET / SPATULA / TUNING FORK WORTH ?!?!?!?!
In order to curtail potential abuse of membership privileges associated with the forums, questions regarding valuation of knives and collections are limited to those with a membership level which permits selling on this site. Accordingly, registered and basic members may not start or post in threads with such requests whether with the intent to sell or for informational purposes only. This rule applies throughout the site.

What that means is, all too often new members ask "What is my knife worth?" Then they turn around and tell us "I have a knife I want to sell."

 

[OvalmanPA]

My point remains though Esav. If the prices remained in closed sale threads, people would then be able to see what a knife may be worth without asking, hence benefiting the entire BF community and lessening the chance of members breaking this rule.

 

[Esav Benyamin]

If the prices remained in closed sale threads, people would then be able to see what a knife may be worth without asking, hence benefiting the entire BF community and lessening the chance of members breaking this rule.

Typically, this is a violation found on a new member's first post. It is often the reason he signed up. Finding the price on a rare knife his great-uncle brought back from Borneo will not be helped by Busse sellers leaving the price up.

The rule I quoted is not my rule. Spark makes the rules. He has participated in previous discussions on this question and said clearly he does not want to make leaving the price in the post mandatory.

 

[richard thurman]

There usually isn't malicious intent in removing the prices. Maybe the buyer asked them to, but as the seller I've found that if I don't take the price down I will keep getting emails asking if it is available.

then why not just closed the thread down??

 

[RevDevil]

then why not just closed the thread down??

For the same reason that Spark leaves people the option to leave or edit the price. Do you guys want this place flooded with more rules? I think it's kind of nice to have some choices in the manner in which we can conduct business.

 

[AR_Shorty]

I agree. This is the only forum that I'm a member of that the selling price gets removed after a sale. Some other sites forbid you from removing the selling price. You can just add "SOLD" in the title and in the post. Seems to work just fine. It is annoying that you can't use it as a tool to see what various knives are selling for. Helps sellers.

 

[richard thurman]

For the same reason that Spark leaves people the option to leave or edit the price. Do you guys want this place flooded with more rules? I think it's kind of nice to have some choices in the manner in which we can conduct business.

then the person should not complain about the email he gets after he has already sold the item.

 

[RevDevil]

then the person should not complain about the email he gets after he has already sold the item.

That is something I can get behind and agree with. Requiring people to leave in a price would require a grace period to allow folks to make and conclude the transaction correctly. Otherwise, we'd have miles and miles of infractions to hand out.

 

[bdmicarta]

Leaving the price helps buyers to see what previous knife prices have been. Removing the price helps sellers because they can mark up prices without as much regard to what similar knives have been selling for in the past. I don't remove prices on items that I sell but as long as the rules of the site don't prohibit it, you can't fault a seller too much for removing prices. I don't know why the owner of the site sets the rules as they are and as a user I will accept the rules, but I also wonder why a seller would want to remove prices.

 

[The Government]

As a seller, I always remove the price. I value the privacy both to myself and the buyer.

I wrote earlier about "market price." Past sales in this forum should not be used as a price index, IMHO. When we have so many independent buyers and sellers with all kinds of ideas as to what their stuff is worth, I just don't think of that as being reliable at all. When I sell a knife I don't go searching the forum for past prices, I just list the knife at what I know is a fair price and see if it sells. If it doesn't, I mark it down or take it off the list. If we start a rule that makes us leave the price, it implies to me that we are supposed to use the forum as a kind of fair-price index.

Also, consider this: The listed price is not always the price an item sells for. I have taken many counter-offers that are below my listed price. If we take this into account, then it would mean that under a "leave the price rule," we would also have to re-edit the price it was actually sold for.

What if we do a partial trade with money? How do we account for a sold price then? Do we have to list what was traded and how much money was involved? (this applies only to gold members or higher, obviously)

What if I am feeling good and list an item at an unreasonably good deal? How does that help anyone set a future price? It lessens the value of the knife to the buyer, and lessens the possible sale price of anyone else looking to sell a similar item in the future.

It just isn't needed, IMHO.

Thanks for reading,

Max