Why not cut off your nose to spite your face? This exclusionary policy is only going to be a detriment to your group members. Some items can be difficult to sell and you need to post in multiple groups in order to find a buyer. As such, users might decide to NOT post here and your group members loose the opportunity to buy something that they may have been looking for.

I don't have an obligation to sell something to the first person that responds to an ad. I've had people get VERY upset because instead of just agreeing to pay my asking price, they asked me a zillion questions and in the meantime I sold the product to someone else that paid my asking price. I have often priced things low to move them quickly and have had multiple offers to buy. I don't need to accept the first offer. If a person sounds flaky or shady I may choose to NOT sell to them and sell to someone else instead.

That said, if I make a commitment to sell something to someone I stick with the deal, even when someone else makes me a better offer. That said, many people flake on their deals and don't show up and either ghost you or give some lame excuse. Or they show up and decide to back out of the deal because they were expecting something else because THEY misread my very, very clear and informative ad.

This is the only online group that I have ever encountered with this exclusionary ad policy. This group is not even close to the only game in town. You really need to rethink this ad policy.

quote:

Originally posted by AllenBundy:
This is the only online group that I have ever encountered with this exclusionary ad policy.

If you don't like it, you're free to take your business elsewhere. Nobody's stopping you.

quote:

Originally posted by AllenBundy:
This group is not even close to the only game in town.

True, but, we feel it's the best game in town

quote:

Originally posted by AllenBundy:
You really need to rethink this ad policy.

Trying to tell the boss how he needs to run his site usually doesn't end well.

SF classifieds is organized & moderated in such a way to filter out flakes & scammers and does a better job of that than probably any other firearm-centric forum on the internet. One of the trade-offs - if you consider it one - is the rule against cross-posting.

Asking a zillion questions is an act of showing interest. It is not a commitment to buy. Go ask anyone in sales, especially auto or real estate.

If someone seems shady or disreputable to you, you have seller's prerogative not to sell to that person, for instance, members w/ very low post counts or who seldom if ever post outside the classifieds.

Your criticism is not going to go over well w/ SF ownership & mods nor IMHO does it reflect well on you. I see ensigmatic already responded for starters.

quote:

Originally posted by AllenBundy:
This is the only online group that I have ever encountered with this exclusionary ad policy. This group is not even close to the only game in town.

I'm curious why you feel the need to state the obvious but I'm not actually asking you, because as sure as I'm typing this, you would give me one of your long-winded Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder responses, nine paragraphs long and getting lost in minutiae.

Aside from the need and the common good of adhering to the implied social contract of living in this society, a man should seek his own path and do what he feels is right. This policy you don't care for- it was borne out of a need and more than once I have explained its purpose and how it came about. This policy is not for my benefit; it's for the members.

In this forum, we don't apply policies so that they align with what other such forums are doing. The rules and policies you encounter here all have been created over time and with experience. I don't give a tinker's dam what anyone else, anywhere else, is doing. Most earnestly and from the heart, I tell you that I do not care. My concern is this forum alone.

I've been at this a very long time- more than two decades. Day in, day out, for some twenty-odd years. Day in, day out. That's a fact. I think it's safe to say that I've got a bead on things. Mind you, it's not that I never seek advice. From time to time, I do just that, but when I ask for advice or opinions, it's from the established membership, who recognize this place as something unique in its substance. I do not seek advice or opinions from those who are so blind that they would look, for example, at this thread, which is fast approaching ten years in existence, and with five pages of commentary including comments from yours truly, and think so much of themselves that they would presume to lecture me on the efficacy of the stated policy, and that, buddy boy, includes you.

You know all those forums you had in mind when you posted your little rant? Yeah, most of them have been bought out over the past few years and some of them are now owned by foreign entities. It's not only that they are outside the borders of the United States that chafes me; it's that this ownership never appears in those gun forums and they do not give the first shit about the Second Amendment or firearms in general. These gun forums that have been snapped up- they now serve as venues to place ads, to generate revenue. Look around this forum. Do you see any ads? Don't misunderstand me. I'm all for free enterprise, but these boards formerly were owned by individuals- Americans and gun owners, but now they are owned by people who would be just as content with what they get out of owning those places if they were, say, jeep forums, watch collector forums, or any number of other hobbies and pursuits.

These groups who cruise the waters like sharks devouring whatever is in their path- they've come sniffin' around here and I have sent them away, and those who thought that my initial rejection of their offer was an overture to begin negotiations and come back around- well, they get told to climb up their own ass, and that I will never sell this place to these soulless people. Better to turn this place I love into a smoking hole in the ground. I could not be more serious.

So, when you want to come around here with your lectures and your pointless observations and your unsolicited and wholly unwelcome advice, you do your best to try to remember that you are in one of the old holdouts of gun forums, and you try to show some respect.

With regards to your credo on buying and selling, you can set your mind at ease. It's not going to be a problem for you here, because your rights to post in Classifieds are revoked as of today. Hey, problem solved, huh?

I'm not going to ban you, though. I'm certainly within my rights to do so, I believe, but I'm going to give you a chance to wake up. Outside of Classifieds, the forum is still available to you, and if you don't care for that, you can just go pull your little John Wayne and then I'll have the pleasure of booting your clueless fucking ass. But, if you choose to stay, don't ever presume to again lecture me about this forum.