The Brickset forum is a great place to trade and buy and sell LEGO. The people here are a great bunch and you can trade with other members with confidence.
SafetyIn the 18 months the forum has been operating we are aware of only
one transaction that didn't work out, where it appeared that somebody joined to set up a deal and then didn't fulfil their side of it. A very isolated incident, and one we don't want to happen again.
So, before participating in a transaction you should satisfy yourself that it is safe to do so. There are several things you can do:
- View the user's profile, by clicking on their name, to see when they joined.
- On their profile page, click on the links in the side menu to view the discussions and comments they've posted.
- Contact them through the forum and ask if they have eBay or BrickLink feedback you can view
- Always use PayPal
This is obviously a generalisation, but people that have only just joined, or who do not contribute to the forum and don't have a trading history elsewhere might be a cause for concern and you should take particular care when trading with them, especially if they are not in your own country.
Let's be careful out there...
EtiquettePlease remember that the Marketplace is intended to connect trading partners and sellers with interested buyers.
Members - especially those that have no intention to conduct direct business with the offering party - should not treat it as an opportunity to scrutinize the desired transaction, i.e. criticizing the asking price or mentioning alternate purchasing opportunities.
Comments
I bought a $1,500 Lego set here and paid with it marked as a gift. So it can and does work, but you have no recourse if the item doesn't arrive.
Whilst I see that it could get out of hand and become personal (but then isn't that why forums have mods) I actually think either of the above, and certainly the latter would be a good thing. This is a community and if as a community we're able to stop people getting shafted then that is surely part and parcel.
I think the above is rare but once a month or so a somewhat optimistic valuation is placed on things for sale/trade. I've also seen spurious percentage discounts being used to bring ridiculously optimistic valuations more in line (although still overly high). I've no problem with either - buyer beware, but if we're going to rightly allow it, then surely as a community its equally right to allow us to call out when necessary. Surely its all part of self regulation that as a community we should do.
After all, we freely comment on good and bad prices at retail stores (and some of the marketplace sellers are no different), we comment on the packaging and delivery services. We should also remember that if people want to sell without comment there are plenty of services already available - ebay, amazon marketplace etc.
Ultimately I just don't see the reason. If you're selling at good prices (most seem to be better than ebay/amazon/bricklink) then nobodys going to call you out, and almost all marketplace sellers, @LegoFanTexas for example, would have nothing to worry about as their prices are always fair. Whilst there may be some comments that become personal its easy enough for a mod to delete them or warnings to be issued. The alternative of course is for threads to appear in the UK or US shopping sections warning that some bricklink prices are too high - but that would seem like even more trouble to me.
My major complaint is on the (rare) listings with no apparent selling price and questionable desire to sell at all. The "taking offers" indefinitely style of selling. If you're selling an item fine. If you want to keep your price hidden, that's also fine. But let's end this "i think I might want to sell if I get an offer that's at the right price" nonsense. Otherwise, just turn the Marketplace into ebay.
If you were genuinely concerned that I'd overpriced my item, you could have PM'd me, and if I'd wanted to, I could have lowered my asking price without anyone being any the wiser (which I have subsequently done to bring in line with the eBay BIN prices I was pointed to). If I didn't want to change - let it sit there and fester with no interest.
If you were offering a discount of x%, why not simply lower the price to start with?
If I was genuinely concerned that you'd overpriced your item, I would not PM you as you'd simply ignore my message and no one would be educated. Yes you could have altered your price, but lets be honest, you've now changed your price as you simply have little choice to do so. This isn't personal, it's just an example that has been brought into the spotlight.
I agree with @adammullins, as I also feel that such comments - when warranted - would protect purchasers and help them be better informed.
The marketplace could simply be a place to trade items. As @cheshirecat has said, there are other means in which to sell, but folk prefer to sell here as there are no fees (maybe this could be introduced?)
As has already been said, everything should be open for comment. If your item is priced too high, members should be allowed to advise other members, as we do for the retail stores etc.
Surely this would make Brickset a better place in the long run, with buyers and sellers sharing their information, educating everyone and new members knowing they will not be ripped off in the marketplace.
I would welcome a comment such as "I was interested but your price is too high for me, will you accept offers?". It is constructive, and opens up conversation on the offer posted, allowing the seller to consider negotiating.
A comment such as "Damn that's expensive, I can get it for half that at [insert retailer]" is damaging, and basically shuts out the person offering from rescuing that thread, and as in my case led to the point of the topic being lost.
^ As for pricing lower in the first place. Limited time sales are a marketing tactic. Retailers do it regularly to boost sales and traffic/footfall, so why can't a Bricklink store?
And for the record, I wouldn't dream of ignoring anyone that wanted to speak to me, 100 friends are better than 100 strangers. I especially wouldn't ignore a potential repeat customer.
Perhaps it was the way I advertised. If I'd promoted just the 30% off all stock, rather than the highlight of my inventory, would I have received the same feedback? I don't know.
I don't disagree with some of the points made by @tom4086 and @cheshirecat but what constitutes a reasonable price is massively subjective and the potential for flame wars and public spats on pretty much every single marketplace thread is thus considerable. I actually think that @TyoSolo was quite restrained in his response to the initial challenge; others would not have been so reasonable.
At best, such price commentaries on what a forum member perceives to be fair or otherwise have the potential to pull a simple "For Sale..." posting completely off-topic, and to be frank the staff have better things to do than fight fires on the marketplace 24/7...
If you have a serious beef about a posting then feel free to contact me or another member of staff - if we consider that someone is really taking the piss then we can and will intervene.
Here are the situations I have seen transpire:
Scam: Interference is definitely desirable if the seller is running a scam, and we will continue to try to prevent this with the community's help via flag notifications. In the most obvious cases, I would say go ahead and PM the interested buyer and even ignore the etiquette and post your concerns.
Pricing discussion: Situations where people simply don't agree with the asking price turns an advertisement into a debate. This has been the most frequent scenario. There have been instances in the past where doubt was cast on a sale, even though by traditional measures, such as eBay and bricklink pricing, the price was quite fair. Other times, the tone of the discussion isn't as clear, but it's certainly off-topic and distracting from sale.
Intercepting: There have been marketplace posts where a secondary member comments and also offers the item to sell. This is effectively hijacking or sabotage. The proper course of action would be to start one's own Marketplace thread.
Alternate buying opportunities: This is generally done in good faith, but I still see this as a breach of etiquette because it undermines the sale. Instead, I think if people are compelled to educate buyers, they are welcome to post a buyer's guide on where and how to buy current and aftermarket LEGO, and we'll "promote" if it proves useful.
without the ability to call them out on that does a disservice to the community that is much greater than the potential lost sales to the sellers.
While we're discussing these things, whats the etiquette on bumping marketplace threads. Seeing more and more of that recently, given the bumping your thread up bumps everyone elses down. There's one today that's been bumped just three hours after the last comment.
The problem is, most won't have got that far as the first response basically made out like I wanted an extortionate amount of money for it, so less people will have clicked through to see the trade offers.
This is best achieved when buyer and seller can go about their business. As more externals are introduced (commentary, feedback system, etc), the requirement for moderation increases and so too does our unwitting involvement in sales.
All of which illustrates how subjective this is, and hence why if you don't like the price you see then you should just walk away rather than take the seller to task and potentially ruin the chances of a successful transaction taking place, just because you don't believe it's a good price....
I would much rather someone stated a high price than no price at all because it gives me something to work with. I have passed on countless threads selling sets that I'm after because I'm not interested in guessing the number the seller has in their head.
Been meaning to get that off my chest for a while.
I do want to apologise to (he knows who he is, but i'll leave the name out for obvious reasons) that this is talking about a specific offer when the issue has been bugging me for a while. Its not personal.
However, I also find it odd that we are so accepting of a 30% offer that takes it down to £5 over the three current ebay buy-it-now prices. Isn't this what so many of us bitch and moan about Toys-R-Us and their sale practices?
To me, this and the other mentioned no-price-given aren't-i-a-clever-seller issue are indicative of a marketplace being used with techniques that i think fall below that expected within a community. I kind of wonder at the benefit to the community of marketplace sales that are worse than even the average on ebay. But that's just my opinion. The whole, you mustn't question another sale, just seems a little unregulated to me.
Theoretically, I agree with @drdavewatford and @rocao in that there should be minimal interference from all involved in the marketplace if the true goal is to connect sellers with buyers.
And yes, on this forum I would contend that the MAJORITY effectively price compare across retailers/vendors/sites/sellers as @bumblepants notes.
However, the individual that has the highest likelihood to be taken advantage of is the buyer, who may be ill informed of pricing disparities and/or malicious selling behavior. For example, I am curious how the forum would respond to a marketplace listing for this:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2007-LEGO-STAR-WARS-MILLENNIUM-FALCON-10179-1ST-EDITION-MISB-AFA-9-25-UCS-/221118362578?pt=Building_Toys_US&hash=item337bae73d2
So again, who are we trying to protect? Buyers or Sellers?
Grading of sets has its own thread and I personally think the whole idea is crazy......but he only needs one person to meet the valuation.....
There are countless threads where a potential buyer just says "Wanted NYCC/SDCC/Wherever exclusive." With no indication of what they are willing to pay for one.
I actually had one person suggest to me that instead of paying $1000 for a MISB Cafe Corner, I could open it, throw out the box and sell it to them for $400 instead. Seriously (never mind that such a price isn't even reflective of the going used rate for that set).
Basically scammers and thieves are everywhere.
Though to be fair, I was talking about common sense protecting buyers from getting "ripped off" in the sense of paying too much for an item, not being scammed in that quote.
http://photobucket.com/
Price is incredibly subjective, even when you only consider location of buyer/seller.
If I see what I consider to be an overpriced sell or unfair trade request, I am torn between thinking "if you buy that you're a mug who hasn't done their research" and wanting to let any potential buyers know they can buy it cheaper at X store.
If I come across someone buying something blindly in a shop without being educated as to what it can be bought for, i'll have a word in their shell (I just let someone know yesterday that was buying some end grain preserver for £14 a tin in Screwfix that the local timberyard down the road had it for £7.60, as i'd recently bought some), but here I think we should all be aware of what something is worth.
Example I will be swapping with you and I will offer you things that I will buy from [email protected] for you to be delivered to your destination, and you will give me your goods shipped to me.
The bad side example would be you order a brand new set of ebay for under rrp, it is shipped to you direct from [email protected], the seller has purchased with a stolen credit card and drop-shipped directly to you. They disappear with your money and you are left with stolen goods and banned from [email protected] when the credit card fraud is reported.