RETAILERS AS MEMBERS?

[chet]

Does speedfreke compromise our rules?

"You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening,......."

 

[Drunkskunk]

I'm all for retailers as members. The idiots will expose them selves as idiots in time.

Most of them have been good guys. Justin, Jason, Zev, Ping, Oatnet, That guy from Itselectric who's name i'm forgetting, lynchy, ... I just realized this list of good guys is going to get long.. never mind.

Its anoying when some retailers try to sell there product to people asking questions, especialy when its not the best solution for the question asked, But for the most part, retailers are enthusiests too, and here with good information.

 

[fechter]

I think it's important to allow retailers to post on the forum. As pointed out, any bogus claims will backfire seriously here. It's a good thing for retailers to get feedback about their products and what kinds of things we are looking for.

On thing we had considered is to make a special member group for retailers and it would make their usernames show up in a different color so they are easily identified.

The "For Sale" section is specifically set aside for retailers and anyone else to try to advertise their goods. As long as they don't start spamming other sections, I won't moderate them very heavily there. Sort of like the Cesspool. Pissing matches are not good, however. If necessary, the For Sale seciton could be divided between retailers and regular members just trying to sell their extra stuff. There could be some grey areas in some cases.

 

[Speedfreke]

It's possible but not realistic to paint all retaillers with the same brush. Heck, I even like some of them. In principle the two(consumers and retailers) should be kept separate. It's not like we are all moving together to some ebike heaven. We are at opposite ends. But I suspect that because this business is relatively new, consumers have no where to turn when confused. And I can honestly say that I have never read so much confused crap in all my life (like this post). But this is the nature of internet forums. But what do you expect when hungry consumers have to trust largely untested products fom China of all places. With improper labelling, under-sized wiring, shoddy workmanship, no instructions. So we rely on the retailler's words. And they sometimes are as confused as we are . As far a I know only Justin at ebikes.ca tried to clarify things from the ground up by demanding certain standards from suppliers. Anyways this is my 2 cents. Sorry for rambling.

 

[Lock]

It's not like we are all moving together to some ebike heaven.

How about "wild frontier"? Or Gold RUSH?

 

[TylerDurden]

Seems like somebody has an axe to grind.

Shills and fraudsters are outed in this forum. A number of them have been banned after being extensively filleted.

Reviews are generally unvarnished and retailers are strongly encouraged to be as transparent as possible. Most are.

Don't expect a supplier to openly declare that their product sucks... plenty of members here are willing and able to prove it for them.

Most members providing reviews are doing it on their own dime, too.

 

[liveforphysics]

Just as an FYI, most all automotive forums have a for-sale section that has 2 separate sub-sections. One for vendors, one for private sellers.

Often on automotive forums, each paying vendor gets 1 sticky thread. They have the ability to edit the title and text as often as they like. When they offer a new product or special sale or whatever, then they edit the subject line to reflect this, then in the text they show the details, all other items for sale and contact info for purchases.

This method completely avoids the bumping wars, and it quickly and clearly shows available vendors to site visitors (no hunting 10 pages back to find a part you saw last week.)

Even on forums with hundreds of thousands of active members, this keeps the vendor for-sale section nice and clean and easy.

The private for-sale section is still a bump-war, but they allow the thread starter to delete the posting once the item has sold, which is very nice on large forums where you can easily get hit with 100s of PM's after the item has sold.

I personally think it all works quite fine here, but for larger forums, those above systems help to keep some order.

 

[amberwolf]

I agree a good product sells itself

I too am sick of it. I normally browse a couple times a week but lately it just turns me off.

I also would like to suggest checking IP addresses as I would imagine some retailers are logging in under multiple user names.

Funny, since "ampedbikes1"'s three IP addresses posted from match three of the many IPs you've posted from. Doesn't mean that either of you have anything to do with each other or not...but just to point out that you can't tell solely from an IP address.

 

[darkone040]

you must be bored to reply to a thread thats been dormant for 2 1/2 years quiet day at the office?

 

[amberwolf]

Was nuking spammers, and happened to find one here so replied while I was at it. I'm just wierd like that.

(I often can't get back to sleep easily after some thundering-stereo car drives by or sits down the block shaking all the houses for a while, keeping the dogs and me up. Much of the time I browse the memberlist nuking the hidden spammers in it until I fall asleep again, because I am not really competent to answer technical stuff or actually get up and do anything physical, when I'm in this state).

 

[John in CR]

AW, you're not weird, just unique. :lol: