Rich,
To be quite honest, I have seen how some companies make big bucks and their sites are based in great part on the honor system. Sure some sites fail and some survive but not based mainly on whether or not the site's users were honest or not. If the majority of people already using faunaclassifieds sales/want ads were dishonest then how is it that people keep buying and selling there? They would just stop using the site altogether if all they kept running into, or even if the majority of their deals with others who use the site, were ripoffs; don't you think. The truth is people who are in business, legitimate business, find it to their advantage to be honest.
WebSlave said:
Aptly put. Quite bluntly, it wouldn't work at all because it is 90 percent an HONOR system. I have seen gun sites try this approach and it ALWAYS failed. People would keep their merchandise on the site forever, because they wouldn't want to admit that it had been sold, and therefore the commission due.
Sorry, but I've seen how this works.
So I don't know about that. Ebay seems to be doing very well and that whole system is based on trust that someone will not do an end around to contact a dealer or seller. The same goes at the twwo gun sites I mentioned, GunBroker.com and AuctionArms.com. The thing is, if your site becomes peoples' way of bringing home the bacon, they are not going to screw with it for fear of ri=uining a good thing. Sure there are dishonest people out there who will be dishonest no matter what but the so called honor system works on the largest auction/sale site on the internet, and it works to make the owners quite financially well off.
As far as keeping merchandise listed on a site because you say it sold elsewhere - why would someone really bother to do that. If you list an item on a site and, then it does not sell and you decide to sell it directly to someone so what. There are no rules in effect (unless they changed dramaticaly since I last sold an item) on any of those sites saying you cannot later offer an item elsewhere that did not sell on their site. There are no rules saying once listed here it must sell only here so you have to keep relisting it over and over. The rules say if it is up for auction you must have it available if anyone bids, and that is for auctions. You can always end an auction if no bids. You can also end an auction once the time frame for it winds down, you do not need to relist it.
If you have for sale only items, you can sell it however you want. The thing is, if you use a Buy It Now Button, and you keep seeing that buyers have hit that button for items being sold by a particular seller over and over again, and that seller always claims he sold the item through another media - well that would be a dead giveaway about a dishonest seller. Then you eliminate that person from your site.
On the big sites, there is also a rule saying if someone gets in touch with you because they saw the item listed on the sale site, then waited till it was removed or the time frame ended, you must still pay the percentage. That is fair, and my bet is many dealers do this rather than take the chance of losing the opportunity to sell on a premiere site. If this was not the case, then I think these big time auction/sale sites like the ones I mentioned would be out of business. Instead of being out of business they apparently are thriving.
Whatever, just my thoughts. No more on this particular idea from me.
All the ebst,
GB
