More Buy/Sell/Trade housekeeping

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Posted By: Brian McQueen

I wanted to add a few points to this and elaborate a bit on Leon’s point about communication. We don’t have any set rules for how we govern things on BST and we haven’t really been too involved in policing this section until now, however I want to mention a few additional “unwritten guidelines” if I may for BST conduct. Fortunately, 99.9% of transactions on our board go very smoothly and there are few problems that we hear about. I think the following will seem like common sense to most of you, but hopefully these pointers will help everyone with future transactions.

1.From a seller’s standpoint, solid communication is crucial on potential purchases. Many times, when a card is listed, that person will receive multiple responses about the item. If you’re a buyer and you’d prefer to “pass” after seeing the scan/asking the price, etc…, do the seller a favor and let him know this as soon as possible so he can begin working with the next person that responded. Most people work via a “first come, first served” basis on the board, so if it’s your “turn”, please remember that you might not be the only one “in line”.

2.Be honest. Things do come up and sometimes backing out of a purchase is unavoidable. This is fine and we have no problems with this. However, if you tell someone that you have to back out of a purchase because your car’s in the shop and the next day, you’re back on BST wanting to buy e107s, you’re behaving in a way that is dishonest and certainly not professional. These sort of situations are tough for Leon and myself to pick up on which is why we need you all to let us know about your non-positive buying/selling experiences on the board

3.Please make an attempt to pay for your purchases in a timely manner. Stretching out payments to the point that you still owe someone money months after you’ve committed to buying the card is not appropriate unless arrangements have been made with the seller. Continuing to buy other cards while you owe someone else money (thusly racking up even more “debt”) is also not the proper way to conduct yourself on the board.

4.Honor your transactions. I once had a seller list a card on BST for a set price, I believe it was an e107 HOFer. I responded to the person and let him know that I’d take the card and then shut my computer off and went to bed. I woke up the next morning expecting to see an email from the seller letting me know how best to pay for the card (ie..check, paypal, etc..). Instead, what I got was an email saying that although I had accepted the price, someone had written the seller offering more money. I had the choice of topping this person’s new bid or losing the card. We understand that renegging happens from time to time. However, backing out of transaction you have already agreed to because someone offered you more money for the card you’re selling, or backing out of a purchase because you found a better deal on the card elsewhere, aren’t proper reasons to reneg on a deal with someone. Also, this isn’t Ebay so sellers really shouldn’t be engaging potential buyers in bidding wars for cards either.

Of course, we don’t want anyone stealing cards or selling altered, fake or otherwise misrepresented cards on the board either. We will boot those people off immediately. However some of these smaller communication issues are important too and we seem to be hearing about them a little more the past few weeks. So we’re hoping that we can tighten things up a bit in the interest of making the BST the smoothest place possible for buying and selling cards.

Regards,
Brian