where does buying and selling on here become trade?

please discuss…

whats your opinion?

I’m not sure TBH, I would think that it becomes trade when it is done for gain and not just to finance new bits or clearout etc.
or say where someone is buying a lot of stuff and putting it straight on EBAY.

When you ask more than two thirds of the price new!

When (one of) your name(s) is bustafajones

Some-one specific or just trolling?

nick-c…pass!

lol at the ‘WOF is minted’ tag
and no i wasn’t thinking about the bustafajones bloke

I’m not sure TBH, I would think that it becomes trade when it is done for gain and not just to finance new bits or clearout etc.
or say where someone is buying a lot of stuff and putting it straight on EBAY.

Done for gain? So if you’ve bought something on a cracking deal, you’re expected to pass that on rather than sell at “market” rate which may still represent good value to someone else?

Buying to put on ebay? If you can get cheap and sell on high, why not? I wouldn’t class that as trade at all, I call that smart. Anyone else has the opportunity to buy from here as well.

and to build your dream bike up for a more realistic price!

pk yes i know what you are saying and i think that is fairly savvy if you can be arsed to do it, all im saying is it is a blurred line where people who are ‘trading’ have to pay to advertise whereas so called ‘private sellers’ who are doing the same thing dont.
i think there is a distinction between someone who has the odd bit they can free up cash and those who do it a lot for financial gain.

Id raise an eyebrow if someone’s classified’s post were more than say 20% of their total posts on all three forums.

Same principle applies to buying from an unknown. If they dont post on the forums and show some kind of persona that illustrates at least a sort of “community” characteristic then I dont buy from them.

i’m with you mr stoner

I don’t like buying off anyone who hasn’t been a member for at least 4 years.

which is kind of screwed now

I *think* what f-m-h is geting at is folk who buy everything bargain-shaped on the classifieds and then either split or sell whole elsewhere at a yummy profit. Technically this is fine: what w-o-f got barred for was doing the opposite and then essentially ‘trading’ on the classifieds without paying his way properly.

What intruiges me is that if it is that acceptable to do so, then why do people sell on their ‘smart’ purchases on ebay with a commission rather than the classifieds here with a voluntary pie and pint to stw?

If, for example one was to snap up a bargain bike and then all the bits of it started appearing on the classifieds here, I would imagine a lot of people would have something to say about it. Sometime last year serial parts-tart Daffy got the stw magnifying glass of suspicion about just that, and a few folk that knew him insisted that he just likes to chop and change his parts; ie he has ridden everything he sells. But it is clear that some people who just sell stuff on will avoid selling it in the same forum they bought it from. If it was really that morally fine, then they would just sell it here again, no?

Does it really matter if its not ilegal and the purchaser is getting a bargain?

no it doesn’t ‘matter’.

Yes – it matters. The STW site costs money to run. The classifieds is provided for “punters” to buy and sell. Anyone making a substantial living from it should contribute to the running costs.

me personally i use the classifieds a lot because a) i can afford a new one or b) like to try something new. If it doesn’t work out i’ll sell it on here and if no takers i’ll fire it on the bay, usually folk on there are mental, if its any brand you can potentially make a profit on your original purchase – i dont see it as wrong though, maybe just lucky?

[devils advocate] druidh, the onus is on the seller to buy STW a pint not the buyer. The earlybird/magpie bargain reseller then pays ebay a comission to sell the stuff on. At a hefty profit.[/devil’s advocate]

…but imho it still whiffs a bit.

Oh this thread would be much more fun with a bit of naming and shaming, non?

Epo you don’t use them (classifieds) that much though, and your overall posting is that of a normal user i.e. spread over all 3 forums rather than just classifieds with the odd comment on chat or bike forum.

when someone buys something on here, barters the price down to get a proper bargain and then sells it on again through here for 30% profit – not only is that trade, it is also the sign of a tosser.

pk – what you describe is trade, you see it as smart, but you are obviously not smart enough to realise that what is happening is trade.

I see that Bustafajones is trying to sell on DW now.

B

i stress this isn’t about bustafajones. Just a general observation that myself and Monsieur Wilson have made since the new forum was set up.

merci!

serial parts-tart Daffy

Thank you for that Julian…T’is fair though 😕

in a funny way the bustafa method whiffs far less to me.

If you buy stuff on ebay then plenty of other people also had a chance to bid on it and if bustafa/w-o-f didn’t buy it then it would have sold for even less to someone else, so the original seller on ebay does slightly less rubbishly with their sale than if w-o-f hadn’t come along. He then sells it at a reasonable price on here. My understanding is that really he got barred from old stw because he didn’t pay his way, rather than any ripping off of stw-ers.

On the other hand, if someone earlybird/magpie like buys a screaming bargain off someone here who didn’t realise they could have asked a lot more for it, then they (ie seller) will never know, and essentially lose out beacause they don’t get to wait and see how much someone is prepared to pay for it as you would on ebay. And then the ‘buy on stw, sell on ebay’ merchant nearly always does well as usually a couple of bidders get the red mist and the final sale price goes all silly. A few months back I saw a full-bike Stiffee snapped up for a song off here sell for not quite twice the price one ebay a few weeks later in just that way. The old forum is gone so you will have to use your imagination as to whose it was originally and who made 300-odd quid out of it.

yeah PK you’re not smart enough! 😕

nowadays i just put the bits i dont want in the bin.
my mates can help themselves.

serial parts-tart Daffy

Daffy, I mean it in the nicest possible way: I blissfully live out my bike dreams vicariously through your posts and photos on here :-).

40% of posts are buy-sell, 40% bike stuff and 20% chatter, so even if someone puts half of their posts into classifieds, it still leaves them within the normal range.

It’s a strange one this. I generally don’t post to forums that much as I just like to read them occasionally. However I do have to sell stuff on and I know STWers will pay quickly and be honest. It does help that I’m not a million miles away from STW towers so a lot of people could pick up.

I like to put things on STW at a reasonable but not silly cheap price as I can’t afford to let them go too cheap. If no-one wants it then it goes on eBay and I normally have a good result, although it’s a lot more long-winded. I have bought one thing silly cheap on eBay thinking I’d use it then when it was delivered realised it wasn’t for me and sold it for a small profit (but still extra cheap to everyone else) on STW.

As long as the seller is honest and the buyer thinks he’s got a good deal does it really matter? You are free to sell your stuff however you like, and if you choose the quicker/less hassle but lower price STW way thats your choice. STW should deal with any obvious mini-trading type people (who will be quickly strung up on the nearest bike stand if I know STW at all ;-)) but other than that I wouldn’t worry.

See this is why I don’t post, it turns into an essay!

For me, its when you sell for a profit on more than one item on a regular basis. Of course subjective and how do you measure? Although people like the lad from Sheffield were getting a free-medium to shift on alot of stuff.

well, for me two things that would indicate a trader, would be volume and whether or not they had used most of the items themselves – sure sometimes you buy an item then realise its not for you but shouldn’t be too regular.

ive bought and sold lots of bits but now i have got the bikes i want specced as i want for much less than they would have been new. and i hope some of my buyers got some bargains along the way too. i know the fella who bought my anthem frame and forks did 😉 tho it was up for sale straight afterwards ;-( but each to their own and all that

If people are making money on a REGULAR basis from trading on this forum then that isn’t good – ebay should be for that sort of thing. How many bikes / parts can someone buy / sell in one month??

I’m not saying that people shouldn’t make money but people using the earlybird tactic to bag a bargain to be resold isn’t in the STW spirit in my opinion – takes deals away from STW’er who will USE the products.

My lesson learnt is to wait and see who pokes their nose above the parapet before selling – not sure I’ll reserve it for any earlybirds as it isn’t fair on people who want to buy something for themselves.

There’s the moral argument against it for sure – but there’s also a problem, if someone is just buying kit to sell on, they may not be checking and describing it as carefully as someone who’s actually used it.

soobalias – Member
when someone buys something on here, barters the price down to get a proper bargain and then sells it on again through here for 30% profit – not only is that trade, it is also the sign of a tosser.

pk – what you describe is trade, you see it as smart, but you are obviously not smart enough to realise that what is happening is trade.

Oh yes, that must be because I’m not smart enough!

What I’m describing isn’t trade, it’s opportunism on an occasional basis. It becomes trade when volume and frequency are considered high, which from memory there are only 2, maybe 3 people on here that *may* have been doing that.

Equally, if you’re willing to pay the price offered and consider that you’re getting a bargain, where’s the problem, buyer happy, seller happy? Or are you not smart enough to realise that?

right – I’d better post because my recent (especially with the new site) classifieds:bike:chat ratio is shocking!!!

can someone do a back of the envelope about whether anyone could really make any money spending a lot of time and effort buying and selling…

STW classifieds has allowed me to build several bikes for my family, find links to great repairers and is about to (hopefully) find me a nice all mountain frame and forks (hence so many posts asking for info on classifieds!)…

then again, I don’t think i’m one of the ones under suspicion – I’d have to actually get round to selling something for that!

I’m currently trying to rewrite the terms and conditions of use for the forums so this thread is very useful.

The original purpose of the classifieds was to give mountain bikers the opportunity to turn their old kit into a bit of cash to help them upgrade to new stuff or even just to pay the rent. The principal is more one of effective recycling than it is of profiteering.

Not that there is anything wrong with trading at all, just that this isn’t the purpose of our classifieds. Now that’s a general mission statement rather than anything that can be pinned down into clear rules. As has been said above, sometimes you get a bit of kit with the intention of using it but change your mind.. decide to sell it on and end up making on the deal. That’s a long way from someone making a habit of buying from here with the intention of selling it on or vice versa and buying elsewhere with the intention of selling on here and making a profit. Again, there’s nothing wrong with that process in principal.. that’s trading and the world runs on that principal but just not what our classifieds is about.

I’m hoping to try and write all that out in a way that clearly gets across the general terms of use but I think it’s going to be very difficult if not impossible to spell it out in specific rules. The line will be grey between what is acceptable and not and we’ll just use our best judgement in each case. There won’t be swift suspensions but rather some extra questions from us about what the purpose of the sale is if we suspect that maybe anyone is not really using our classifieds in the general way we want.