Price discussions.. that old tart!

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iRetrOVolver

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Maybe this is not something for the whine cellar as it is not me going bonkas over something or being generally whinging and whining.. but when we sell something, we need to state a price and we have to obey that rule. We are also not allowed to ask what something is worth.. and that is cool too.

So what is my beef.. or better.. why this post?

Well.. the wanted section seems to be exempt of those rules.. people state they are searching for something, however fail to state what price they ware wanting to spend. This will result in responses from others saying "I will PM you" and then the next.. and the next.. and so forth and so on.. but often without success.. now that makes me think that these PM discussions are for the greater part price driven and maybe not in breach with the rules as they only over selling.. but against the idea of why these rules were put in place.

If I have something for sale, I don't check the wanted section.. I don't feel like responding with a price and then hear ten reasons why that price is not right.. so I just state my price and period.

So either abolish the rules... or amend it to include the wanted section.. makes sense to me!
 
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I agree. There is nothing more frustrating than to reply to a wanted thread stating desired price X and condition up front. To be then asked for photos, videos, tests to hear at then end the seller only has Y budget is annoying.
 
I don't agree with that actually. If a member wants to buy something and states that he/she can spend an X amount of cash maximum, then the sellers can easily ask for that maximum amount when they want to sell something in a wanted thread, even if they thought to sell it cheaper in the first place.
 
I would say if we had to change anything (works ok as it is), you have to state a price when offered in the thread,

for example


"Wanted, looking for A500 1.3 in good clean condition"

then a reply

"I have one, £xxx +P&P if interested" (and possibly add a photo of the item)


thats how I think it should be. the offer price in the open, there is no reason to haggle or say not in budget.. price in the open



If we do it the other way it would be a kind of price driving but in reality if the price is too low the thread would get no replies and as J.T.Kirk says above, if your willing to pay £xxx then you could be paying too much and get taken advantage of.
"Wanted, looking for A500 1.3 in good clean condition, I'm willing to pay £x +P&P"


The 1st example above I think is the best course,, all offers must be in the thread ??
 
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If a buyer says they will pay upto X amount they will most likely be changed X amount. Or sellers will out bid eatch other, offer lower prices to sell an item.

if you ask me the seller should state they want X amount up front.
 
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I think what Sardine says is the right way. Respond with a price. Then openly confirm with interested if you think that is on the money.
 
The whole price driving rule is what has been (in my opinion) the downfall of this site, it has allowed people to put outrageous price tags on items without any comment from the community and has inflated the prices on Amiga items to above what you would pay on auction sites, exactly the opposite to what was intend when Amibay was setup.

Where to go from here? Well I honestly don't know. I came back to Amibay to sell the last of my items because I bought most of them here I wanted to offer them back to the same same community, sadly it is not the same community it was when I joined originally, it's more like eBay, nobody leaves feedback anymore and you get the same old gripes after you sent something with buyers trying to get a bit of money off for the odd scratch here and there.

The topic has been discussed many times before, particularly wanted threads but there has been no clear agreement on how to approach them. I tried to lobby the idea of prices been declared in wanted threads a long time ago but it was argued against that it would in it's self be price driving.
 
This topic was already discussed (but in the private VIP forum) a few years ago. I believe our old friend fitzsteve :) may remember this discussion, in particular how wanted threads could actually encourage price driving.

But there was no agreement or satisfactory idea on how to effectively deal with this problem without changing the rules to make a wanted thread a "Reverse For Sale Thread".

IMHO the No Price Driving rule was best left to the trading forums but I do understand the considerable amount of extra work involved in moderating forum specific rules. The only alternative I can think of is to create a specific forum for "General Price Discussion Only" and limit all price discussions to that forum. ;)
 
Well.. fora are to be relics soon anyhow, as there are Facebook Groups with ten times the user base.. over 12,000 members in the Facebook Group Commodore Amiga to begin with.. but they also go by 'State a price' and 'no price driving' so no reason to abandon this guideline. And in all fairness.. prices are destined to go up as less hardware makes it through time..
 
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iRetrOVolver said:
Well.. fora are to be relics soon anyhow, as there are Facebook Groups with ten times the user base.. over 12,000 members in the Facebook Group Commodore Amiga to begin with..
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No offence, but fora will not die so easily as you may think, and on the other hand that F***book Commodore Amiga Group might have 12.000 members as you say, but I bet that half of them they don't own an Amiga ages now, they just liked the group and joined (it's like, "I just happened to be around", as we use to say here). Oh, I bet that the half of them don't know what an Amiga is as well.
 
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Partially correct only, as those not interested after all, leave by themselves as they won't want to see the posts anymore and we have plenty of "once in a blue moon" people here too.
 
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IMHO, the Wanted section is a special case.

Saying a price upfront works well when you have a large number of identical new things to sell. Not so well when selling an individual system because there may be dozens of different factors affecting the exact value of a complex specific item.

Example:
I am selling an Amiga 1200 with a 3.2 GB hard drive and an optical mouse and HD floppy

1. What is the exact age of the hard drive? What brand is it ?
2. The HD floppy is what type exactly and did it require modding the case to fit properly on the A1200 ?
3. What brand of optical mouse ? What the wear on it?
4. What's the yellowing of the case of the A1200? What's the condition of the keyboard? Are there any scratches or small dents to the case ?

I can calculate all these things and set a price but there will always be possible arguments for a customer to justify a price adjustment for whatever little reason and they may all be valid.

Now if it's a case of a wanted A1200 and the buyer is presented with 4 A1200 which each have easily half a dozen characteristics that could alter the price then the number of different possible prices becomes astronomical. There is no way ever you can simply say I have XXX much to offer. Every individual seller will have this or that reason to say his machine is worth a little more and they're probably all good.

The 1st thing that comes to my mind is how prices were negotiated in the game MULE.
 
you overly complicating the issue,

"wanted amiga A500 1.3 in good condition"
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YOU then decide what YOU think your A500 is worth and then present the price, and/or with a photo or 2

"I have one very slight yellowing on keyboard, come with 512k ram expansion £xxx here is a photo. works perfectly

If you want a psu and mouse thats £xxx extra"
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simple
 
Sardine said:
you overly complicating the issue,
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I think it's you oversimplifying the issue.

In a sales thread, I offer a machine and it is in XYZ condition and I say it is worth ABC$ and you buy it or you don't and that's the end of the story.

In this specific case, the problem for the seller is reduced to finding a relatively accurate value for the machine being sold and there are plenty of other places where you can chat with experts willing to offer an opinion.

BUT...
Let's assume we're talking about a thread in the Wanted section. Let's also assume the buyer doesn't mention any "limit" price.

In the case of the A500 you mentioned, then the OP could notice on one of the photos of the machine one of the keys is lightly damaged and say the machine lost a bit of value.

Then seller B comes along and says his machine is better because it has 1024K RAM expansion instead of 512k. But you can see in the photos the mouse has a severe yellowing and there are scratches on the floppy eject button.

There too many millions of details that can make an offered response having more or less value compared to another one.

Since you can't negotiate, no deal ever goes through and then you have people start a thread claiming wanted threads are useless. IMHO, they are rendered useless.

simple
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Nope... not at all. But it is very reductionist.
 
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over complicating as is all your posts on Amibay.

if you want to troll go elsewhere

SIMPLE>
 
Time to pull the plug on this thread, I reckon.
 
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