Thread: After Buy it Now in Classifieds, shouldn't it automatically be marked as sold?

Originally Posted by Magpie

same thing happened with one of my razors. paypal got paid, razor didn't get a sold sign, and a second purchase occurred. I hated to disappoint somebody like that.

Has happened to me twice in the past yr

Why are you guys complaining ? You're doubling your money !!

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

Why are you guys complaining ? You're doubling your money !!

So then, I will take that under advisement Should it happen with me I will keep the cash and tell folks to apply to you for a refund or sympathy


yes, I'm kidding double selling is just an embarrassment.


enjoy,
jim

Yes, the software is broken.
It is a piece of crap. We're actively looking into alternatives. The problem is that not all alternatives are desirable. They may work better, but come with strings. The latest option we investigated was very cheap but they insisted on being the payment processor and being the one dealing with financial disputes. Not entirely certain on this, but I think there was also the possibility they wanted a percentage on the sales.

They would provide a marketing place, but also take full control of what goes on there, which is hardly ideal. Plus they had no option to enforce limits. This makes sense from their pov. They just want people to sell as much as they can.

[QUOTE=Bruno;1241651]Yes, the software is broken.
It is a piece of crap. We're actively looking into alternatives. The problem is that not all alternatives are desirable. They may work better, but come with strings. The latest option we investigated was very cheap but they insisted on being the payment processor and being the one dealing with financial disputes. Not entirely certain on this, but I think there was also the possibility they wanted a percentage on the sales.

They would provide a marketing place, but also take full control of what goes on there, which is hardly ideal. Plus they had no option to enforce limits. This makes sense from their pov. They just want people to sell as much as they can.[/QUOTE
The limit system is also broken,you can have nothing for sale for weeks and still cannot post.
Why not create a system where SRP charges a percentage,leave all the paypal as it is.
I would gladley pay SRP say 3 % of my sales.

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

The limit system is also broken,you can have nothing for sale for weeks and still cannot post.
Why not create a system where SRP charges a percentage,leave all the paypal as it is.
I would gladley pay SRP say 3 % of my sales.

Of course you would now that you are doubling your earnings....

I just do it without the Buy It Now and monitor my email, unless something has changed with that

[QUOTE=pixelfixed;1241678]

Originally Posted by Bruno

The limit system is also broken,you can have nothing for sale for weeks and still cannot post.
Why not create a system where SRP charges a percentage,leave all the paypal as it is.
I would gladley pay SRP say 3 % of my sales.

Yes, but SRP doesn't want your 3%. Really. We don't.
Because as soon as we start taking your 3%, there is a world of difference for us.

We are no longer covered by non profit market place. We become liable for a whole load of things.
We are earning money, which means a load of tax crap that we now don't have to deal with because we don't earn.
We'd need lawyers for dealing with the previous points, which cost loads of money.
Overall it would cause loads of grief to take your money. Aside for the grief, there is also the fact that yours truly would have to deal with said grief without getting any actual money myself.

Aside from that, in the aforementioned case, we'd also lose control over the marketplace.
And I'd like to add that the classifieds is not meant to be a storefront. It is meant to sell low volumes of stuff, not to enable you to move a lot of stuff in return for a cut.

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

The limit system is also broken,you can have nothing for sale for weeks and still cannot post.

Yes, it is broken because it is not supposed to work that way. But in its broken state it works closer to how we want it to work. As Bruno said, it is meant for occasional sales, not for running the equivalent of a storefront. So X ads per Y time is what we want to limit, not X active ads at all times. Because the second option allows you to keep posting new stuff for sale as fast as it sells, becoming closer to a storefront.

Plenty of companies want to be a marketplace already, like say ebay. They have already set up a much better infrastructure to support your storefront. Yes, there is a cost associated with it, but that will be the case here as well. I don't think it's likely that we can lower that cost without cutting corners for example by not taking into account certain risks and charging for them, while still being fully liable for those.
In other words for you may be as simple as "I want to sell my stuff for the lowest fee possible", but for us it's not as simple as "let's just charge a little bit less than ebay".

Most importantly, though, SRP wants to continue to be a community, not turn into a bazaar. The later is fairly easy to do because there is the monetary pressure, as you have pointed out. But that's not what SRP is about, so we have to be careful to strike the right balance. As with everything it is a work in progress, so we may expand or shrink the commercial activities on the site, but these things happen after deliberation.

The software worked just about perfectly this time what with Jimmy operating it in manual mode.

Dimitry just confirmed for me that I am indeed the buyer of the razor.

All's well that ends well, as they say.

Thanks to Jimmy, and to all you other folks that work so hard on these complex issues, and take so much thought and care to make this place so comfortable and valuable for us duffers.

Don

I bought a razor last month under those circumstances. The Buy It Now feature aborted and gave me a message something was wrong. Somewhere in the process, the seller's email address was revealed, and I went to PayPal and paid him. I then contacted the seller because the Buy It Now button remained. In this instance I was the first buyer because the seller emailed me back and said, "I'm glad you told me, I'll shut down the ad now."

Had I not been the first buyer I would have understood and accepted reimbursement. We are a community of friends and I would expect anybody who missed out on a sale under these circumstances to do likewise.

Gugi made an important point that this is not intended to be a storefront. I think the intent of the Classifieds is to find a new home for items that are no longer being used and to help the seller recoup part of his investment. It's kind of a letdown to me to have members selling and never fellowship with us on the forum. I like to buy from people I know.