Auctions and other buying/selling question

I've just gotten involved in the Buy/Sell/Trade board of this forum and have experienced a minor bit of confusion. Seeing a few auctions that have poorly described items or important information missing, then seeing sellers running auctions with no clear closing time or worse, deciding to extend their auctions because they haven't gotten the price they want . . . I began looking for posted auction rules for this forum. I could not find any . . . am I just missing it?

If it is not a case of my missing it, I would be happy to write a set of suggested guidelines as a post outlining a simple uniform auction format. It is my not so humble opinion that this would be very helpful to a lot of forum members. Or if this already exists could someone point me to it?

 

Sadfuly there are plenty of auctions that are vague and/or missing important details. The way we can deal with this is to ask them either in the thread (might be a strategy for "bumping" for the OP) or PMing them. Not sure how many would follow a guideline but it would help

 

I think a guideline set of minimum requirements - BIN, end date, payment methods etc. would be a very good idea. Give it a go, we can review in this thread.

 

Thinking more on this and utilizing suggestions from this thread, I think that a starting point would be a simple copy and paste auction form such as the example below for auctioning domain names:

For sale: adomainname.com (or name available via PM)
Duration: Use the posting time in top left corner of post and add so many hours
Registration Date: When registered, when renewal is due
Pagerank:
Registrar: Self explanatory
Income: Must be backed by proof of some sort
Domain Stats: Urltrends or Alexa reports as examples
Starting price: $?
Bid Increment: $?
BIN: $?
Payment options: Paypal or whatever
Notes: Example: Buyer pays transfer fees (if any)

About this domain name: More information about potential uses or anythign the buyer should/must know.
About transfer: Examples: free push to . . . or buyer initiated transfer

How am I doing so far? If nothing else; a copy and paste form such as this would get the seller thinking about their sell listings. I've seen so many poorly constructed sell listings with missing information, I think something such as this would help.

 

Pretty good I think it would be nice if there was at least some kind of standard. Though I don't think it'll happen on an official level, so the best we could hope for would be for the community to stand together and regulate ourselves.

I also think something like your list would/could benefit other areas of BST like in link sales (kind of like what's being discussed here)

 

Katy

Thanx for the input but I have read all of the stickies pertaining to guidelines, that is the point of this thread. I am only new here at DP, I have extensive experience selling online and where as a DP newbie I am reluctant to throw my two cents in, I cannot be the only experienced online seller that is greeted with a mishmash of poorly constructed and confusing selling posts.

Guidelines and warnings of potential hazards as found in the threads you link to are vitally important but so too is eliminating a great deal of these same problems by the simple premise of describing items for sale properly.

 

Surely these sort of parameters for trade should be enforced by a forum moderator?

 

richard.feakes

That's a tough call, the issue becomes to what degree do moderators want to become involved in enforcement of trading parameters? A minefield of potential liabilities await any entity attempting to enforce trade paramaters between third parties. We must always keep in mind that the medium provided for selling our items here is free.

 

Well I am a native namepros.com trader and we have strong enforcement. It makes it damn easier for EVERYONE. Sellers know what they are required to do, buyers can judge their bids more efficiently and it makes for a much smoother trading experience (less disputes etc.).

It is free but it is a community and communities have rules and parameters by which their 'citizens' may function.

 

Well I am a native namepros.com trader and we have strong enforcement. It makes it damn easier for EVERYONE. Sellers know what they are required to do, buyers can judge their bids more efficiently and it makes for a much smoother trading experience (less disputes etc.).

It is free but it is a community and communities have rules and parameters by which their 'citizens' may function.

 

richard.feakes

We are in total agreement, but also true is the influence that site members can have on the site's trading environment. I am a namepros.com member as well as a number of other simular forums and auction sites. What I am attempting to do here is introduce what I feel are some of the more important aspects from those sites to this one.

For starters, I was looking for feedback on a simple listing form for domain name auctions. From here I would post it with pre attributes so that it may be copied and pasted by sellers. It would be my hope that it would not drift into forum oblivion with a link to it possibly appearing somehwere that it may be found easily. A standard listing form increases sales and makes life easier for everyone, buyer, seller and forum admin.