butterflywing

am i the only one noticing that there are suddenly a number of brand-new members who are only posting items that they want to sell?

yesterday, i noticed, in the wanted/buy/sell area someone selling crochet books. when i checked out this new person, i saw that she/he has posted 15 times, 13 of which have been for items for sale.

i also saw recently a member that was new to me (i never saw her/his name before) selling an expensive sewing machine, in the box, blah, blah, blah.

these might be great deals, but who are they? will they stand behind their products? are they contributing a share to the board, as are other sellers here?
will they accept returns if something is wrong or missing? who pays shipping?
are they really store owners making a living?

someone said that none of us knows any of us, so what's the difference? the difference is that we all have a feel for what kind of person we are and we didn't come on board with an agenda. although we may have sold one or two items over time, we didn't bounce right in trying to sell.

i think everyone should consider carefully what they're doing before buying from a stranger. this is your money you're spending with no guarantees as to quality or return policy. we don't even know where to go after them if they're not telling the truth.

Admin

Patrice and I are currently discussing this and considering new guidelines for the classifieds section to deal with the inflow of new people who seem to be doing nothing but posting stuff for sale.

wvdek

Glad to see this posted. I too had noticed and was wondering. Thanks for staying on top of things.

janRN

Thank you admin-you're really earning extra bananas lately. And Kudos to Patrice, too. My profile is set to exclude stuff for sale but in recent topics it seems like more and more new members are just here to sell.
Thank you.

Up North

I have noticed it too. I feel bad for people if they respond and get stung. I hope no one does but without them having joined in and possibly doing a swap so they could be felt out we just don't know. I for one also always try to be prompt with sending things for swaps. If you were going to procrastinate why join in the first place. There are some exceptions of course- life gets in the way for all of us sometimes. I think good communication is the key on this board. I love this place and really appreciate all that Admin has done to keep it running smoothly!

samroberts01

I am fairly new here but never have sold anything, and I too notice alot of people that I had not seen selling alot of things. I also read the posting rules ( not sure what they are called) and it does say if you are new not to come right out and start selling things, I wonder if any of those people have read this??

rivka

I might get flamed for this, but...I'm really not seeing that -- I just looked through the most recent 10 items being sold, and just about all of them are from people who have at least a few dozen posts. A lot of people, such as myself, do not post a lot on the forum, but read it regularly every single day (sometimes several times a day, in my case!) Do you have to have a post count over 1000 to be a "real" member?

I can understand the concerns if the very first post that someone makes is to sell something (but hey, I did that myself, and I'm still around), or if the only posts they make are to sell items, but again, I'm not seeing much of that. I do think that there are a lot of people who don't post regularly who are posting items to sell right now, probably because the holidays are over and they're looking to get rid of duplicate items/gifts or just doing spring cleaning.

There are also thousands of members on this site -- just because you don't recognize the name doesn't mean they aren't a regular member. I think there's a tendency in forums like this for people to be clique-ish -- which is understandable, because of course, you're going to feel more comfortable with those that you talk to regularly and who have thousands of posts. But there's always a danger in making people who don't post regularly feel like their opinions or activity within the forum aren't valid by dismissing them for not having enough posts. Not saying that's what anyone is trying to do, but I've seen it happen on many other forums, and I'd hate to see it here.

Your points about buying from someone online whom you don't know are very valid, though. You should always approach doing so with caution.

karielt

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I too noticed this and I enjoy this board because we are all here to help and encourage eachother. If we have a stash or extra something we need to sell, give away, trade or donate that is one thing. To just be on this site to sell is wrong. I know I was looking at some of those books that were for sale and $25 for a book was crazy when you can go to Ebay or Amazon and get them for $10 or like yesterday I looked up one book I wanted and got it off Amazon for $13 that was with shipping. I love the ladies on here and I love sending people fabric that is needed or helping out. That is why I love this site.

Admin

This doesn't sound right. If you excluded the Classifieds section in your profile, then it shouldn't appear in your listings of Recent Topics at all.

If you have it excluded but still see posts from Classifieds in Recent Topics, then please let me know. I'll look into it.

Admin

There are many different points of view on this from buyers, sellers, non-buyers and non-sellers.

If someone doesn't want to see any of the sale offers, they can exclude that category from their listings. And it could be argued that posting offers doesn't really hurt anybody so there is no reason to restrict it.

But what about the "regular" members who participate in other discussions and sell stuff? All members who only post offers and nothing else present an unfair competition for them.

There is no limit on the number of topics the Classifieds section can carry. But every new topic pushes all previous ones down.

So imagine one member who is a regular here and greatly contributes to the community. One day, she decides to sell some of her fabric (or whatever else). She makes a new topic, and within a day it gets buried underneath 20 topics made by people who do nothing else on this board but post offers.

That decreases the chances of this "regular" ever making a sale.

Just something else to consider.