Is the wargames trades section a bidding site?

Recently a thread was posted asking for "bids" on some items and I thought the whole process should be transparent but ended up a blind bidding auction through PMs.

Can we please get some firmer rules regarding sales of items on here? Perhaps state that people need to put in an asking price for goods they wish to sell rather than a blind bidding auction? Getting a reply "sorry that's not enough" is a little irritating.

I would second Dobbsy's thoughts.
In a perfect world, we could do without rules BUT all other web sites that I frequent have rules for this sort of thing and they work well.

Sellers put a price on their goods and everyone knows where they stand.
All buyers have to post their intentions in the for sale thread. This keeps eveything out in the open and is fair to all.

If a seller wants to auction their goods,we all know where Ebay is.

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i dont entirely agree, people should have the option to sell how they want to who they want, and should have the freedom to decide what criteria they use to decide those. that includes the ability to exclude certain buyers. this is doubly so for epic, where we're plagued by resellers on ebay. if people want to hold an auction, then they should be able to do so without worrying about it going off to someone who only wants to triple the price and relist it. if they want as much money as possible for their item, they should be allowed to entertain offers until they're happy. people shouldnt be forced to sell to me just because i was first off the mark.

transparency is a good thing too, but again, there are some potential detriments to having people openly bid on things, and in the end it should probably be the sellers decision as to how they handle it, and if you're not happy with their decision, ask for an adjustment, or just dont buy from them.

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Agreed.


Using your logic then no one will ever get an item as the person can essentially hold their auction FOREVER until an exorbitant amount has been reached. Plus those bidding have their time wasted and are forever having to bid and have no idea what the limit will be. If you want to hold an auction do it on eBay. This is a "trades section" or at minimum a "sales" section.


So in the end your logic means people will just not sell anything as people won't want to buy from them.

Setting a price up front saves both parties time and the hassle.

Sorry to hear that you had a bad experience but personally I'm not sure I necessarily see it as a problem or something to be legislated against. It would be helpful for a person listing stuff to be clear on what they have and the means they wish to sell it, but I don't see anything inherently wrong with someone selling items by highest bidder should they choose. If they have forumware this wouldn't be possible to eBay afterall. It might also get them a better price than if they guesstimate a price for something OOP that proved to be a lot less than the actual market value or what they might get on the likes of eBay.

A while ago when I first started getting into bad financial circumstances Frogbear posted suggested I should maybe think about auctioning stuff on here by this sort of method, rather than loosing stuff to the community by selling on eBay. I never actually did so myself, but I thought I'd mention it to point out there can be a number of perspectives and some are fine with this sort of thing.

But how hard is it to just put a value on something? if you ask too high no one will buy and you'll quickly work out the value.You don't feel it's inherently wrong to stuff people around?

I sit with Dobbsy on this one. It is well within someone right to get what they want for their goods. I do think that transparency on auctions is essential for the fairness of things. Maybe the solution to this is to make the Trades area, trades, and to have a separate Forum where people can list their ebay auctions. I would always prefer to sell my excess to Taccoms members, however if there is an issue, I am more than willing to move to Ebay and advertise here so that the community gets a good look in.

Cheers
Aaron

i tend to assume that in general, people who post something for sale, want to sell the item. this is born out by the fact that yes, people can choose to hold their auctions or trade deals forever to see if a better deal comes along, and yet they dont. there is currently no legislation here in taccoms about forcing timeframes on sales or payments, or infact, any restrictions at all. and it seems that the system works. if someone causes problems, they get a bad trader note, and people stop buying from them. we dont need to be introducing rules to force specific values on the sellers here, especially ones that heavily favour the buyer over the seller. all that will do is discourage potential sellers.

yes, having a "i want this much for it" works out fine, if they simply want X for it, and dont care that it may be worth more.
if, however, they want "as much as they think they can get for something" that is their perogative, and they should have that option available to them

if you put in a bid, and you think its reasonable, and the other guy doesnt, you've lost all of a minute or two of your time, and now you can adjust your bid, or not, based on that information. you dont need to waste huge ammounts of time, put in an offer for what you think is reasonable and what you're willing to pay, if they want more than that, well, its probably unreasonable and/or more than you're willing to pay.

if the seller wants to see how much something can fetch, saying "i think its worth X" only hurts his goals, because it means the offers he gets will be at or below X (which results in things like on WAU where i had an army deal set at a high buy-price with the option to consider lesser offers, which is just an arsebackwards way of doing things)

seriously, the WAU method of trade forums makes things awful for sellers. its a terrible system, and i'd be disappointed if we picked it up here (even though i've no intention of selling any epic stuff anytime soon, so the changes would really only ever benefit me, they're still a monstrosity that shouldnt be propogating)

in general i think hidden reserves are stupid. if you have a minimum amount you're expecting, then just start bidding at that amount. but i dont feel the need to enforce that view on other people.

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I personally find putting a value on things hard and it's been the main reason over the last couple of years I've turned to eBay rather than here. Without intending to I reckon I guesstimate a fair trade price roughly around 50-75% or so what on average something ends up selling for on eBay. If I had money to spare I wouldn't necessarily care, but my sole and only income for the last 15 months now has been selling possessions so getting a good price has been important for me personally. Most of my epic eBay sales are listed at a start price of 0.01p and sell for however much they go for, but I realise people vary. I did mention in my previous post that it's important for a seller to be clear upfront how they wish to sell/trade something, but I don't view selling to the highest bidder within a certain time frame to be stuffing people round.

It might well be good to get some rules or guidelines on trading here worked out, as this is evidently a problem for some of you. I'm offering some thoughts on it but should the majority decide against auction style trading then I'm completely fine with that and have never traded in that fashion myself anyway.


Actually, there already is - there's a Trade Forum and a Trade Notices Forum, where you can stick up posts pointing people in the direction of sales/auctions you have on eBay or elsewhere. I've used both a fair bit over time.

What if you don't know the value but you want to be happy as long as someone else is happy? Getting bids gives you an idea of what the community is willing to pay for something, then that allows the seller to know what his product is worth. Not everyone has been in the community for age's and knows what stuff sells for.

I'm kinda on the side of jtg and Glyn. I don't really see a problem with users selling in whatever manner they choose. Mind you I go straight to eBay with anything second hand I have because it sells for lots more there.

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As I said earlier, this is all nice in theory but it doesn't work.
As an example, in a for sale thread, a seller had some Warp Spiders advertised. I posted in the thread and PMed him. We agreed on a price and then I waited for him to get back to me with postage costs from UK to Aus.
After we had agreed to make a transaction, he was contacted by another member on TacComms (by PM) and he sold the Warp Spiders to them. There was no communication from the seller to me at all. Eventually I PMed him and was told that he couldn't find the Warp Spiders now...
I noticed later that the buyer eventually put up a Good Trader notice and mentioned the Warp Spiders. I contacted the seller who got all angry with me for catching him out.

Posting a negative feedback about him was pointless as he was selling all his Epic stuff and he hasn't been back here in a few years now.

This sort of crap is maddening and really just isn't on.
And of course it's fine for a seller to sell to who he wants to but once a deal is agreed upon, IT MUST BE HONORED.

The seller always has the Ebay option available to them. This isn't an auction site. There are many rules for governing auctions and I think they would be more onerous than just requiring a seller to put a price on their product and requiring the seller to honor any agreements made.

Absolutely disagree with this. WAU provides a great platform for sellers to advertise their sales at the prices that they choose - how is that unfair for a seller? The seller can still choose who he sells to (preferences given to bulk purchases, local pickup etc) but they must include a price for their wares. This is completely fair to all involved.

A seller just needs to get a price they are happy with. Anyone who isn't sure about how much something is worth just needs to do a little research.

This isn't something to lose sleep over but it is always going to be a difficult subject when money is involved.

_________________
Just call me Steve.

NetEA Rules Chair
NetEA FAQ

Want to play Iron Warriors in Epic Armageddon? Click HERE
Some of my Armies.
My Hobby site.

Legally, until money has changed hands there's no contract of trade.
It might be annoying to be "gazumped" but it's within the rules of law.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

That's exactly the sort of "garbage selling" I'm talking about trying to limit, though. I find it highly odd people would actually willingly choose to allow themselves to be stooged....
But hey, whatever floats (or sinks in this case) your boat. <shrug>