The selling section in any forum needs its own rules. In my view, only people how have established themselves in the forum a little should be able to sell in the selling forum. Although all buyers purchase at their own risk, buying from a 'regular poster' does help the potential buyer a slight degree as they will be purchasing from a more trustworthy source.
Although the forum administrators can never guarantee a seller to be 100% genuine (hence why buyers purchase at their own risk), there are some rules that can be put into place in order to help the buyers a little further.
Here are the rules I think the forum should implement for the selling/buying/trading section.......
Please prefix the title of your thread with the following tags:
FS - For Sale
FT - For Trade
WTB - Want to Buy
Price Check - Price Check
1. In order to create a thread in the selling section the user must have a post count of 30 or above, AND have been an active member on the forum for at least 10 days.
(If you have to have a certain post count, peopel are more likely to contribute on the forum, rather then just join to sell a piece of kit and dissappear. However, you need to be careful since some people will join, and spam to get their post count up. Hence by saying the user needs to have 30 posts, AND be a registered user for 10 days, it gives the user some time to generate some quality posts. If the seller is genuine and trustworthy, he/she is likely to stick around and make some quality posts, and any potential buyers will be able to judge for themselves where to go ahead with a sale....)
* * Rules * *
Below are the rules for this forum. Please follow them, as they will be enforced strictly. Any posts seen to be unfit will be edited or deleted, and any infractions given as needed.
1) No sale lowballing. If you think someones price is too high or you want to make a lower offer, PM or e-mail them. There is nothing worse than if you are trying to sell something and someone says that price is too high. That scares off other prospective buyers. On our forums, a lowball is officially defined as an offer less than 75% of the asking price. Buyers offering less than 75% is perfectly fine, but please ask using the PM system.
2) Update your thread when your item(s) gets sold or are no longer available for sale. Report the thread or contact a moderator if you want the thread closed.
3) You MUST post a price in for ALL FS (For Sale) deals.
4) You cannot sell something you do not have in your immediate possession. You must provide pictures of it to show the condition and demonstrate it is in your possession (ie: picture of laptop with your forum username also in the picture, or a picture of the forum's website on your laptop's screen showing you logged in, or a piece of paper with your username on next to the item, etc).
5) Be courteous and professional when buying or selling, and please use commonsense.
6) List the payment methods accepted (IE. Paypal CC or non-CC, Money order, Check, COD)
7) Do not just post external links to eBay or another forum. Add all relevant information to your thread and you can link to eBay as long as previous rules are met.
8 ) You cannot include such things as +3% to cover Paypal fees. It is against the Paypal Terms and Conditions.
9) If you have sold items on eBay/Heat, post a link to your screen-name so users can verify your previous history of selling/trading/buying. If you have sold items previously on this forum, you may also post user names of those may act as references. If you claim to have eBay feedback, you MUST post a link to the feedback. Saying to PM for a user name is NOT acceptable.
10) You cannot ask for donations (and/or other freebies).
11) Absolutely no jokes in the selling forum. Transactions are serious and people will get irritated by jokes involving monetary loss.
12) Forum Staff and Moderators reserve the right to block any sellers who repeatedly fail to follow these rules. We have a zero-tolerance policy against sellers who market stolen or pirated goods, and those selling said goods may find themselves blocked upon their first offense. If it isn't legal, don't post it for sale...and please ask a moderator beforehand if you have any questions about your item or the legality of selling it.
13) If your post does not conform to these rules, forum staff and moderators reserve the rights to delete any of your listings without notice.
Mk5GolfGTI.co.uk is not responsible for any transactions: this is not eBay. All sales and transactions are done at buyers and sellers discretion and all risks are assumed by those parties only. Admins cannot help to resolve any disputes.
