Limited Sales period

[horizon]

This might have been mentioned before but I feel strongly that 30 days is too short a time period for the For Sale section (certainly for complete bikes). It's often a good reference point with pics and info. Why is the period so short? Why cannot it be 3 months for instance - it's hardly an overlong section with only one page at present.

[Graham]

Noted. Sounds reasonable.
Any other user comments ?

[thirdcrank]

I've not looked but IIRC, there's an invitation to bump ads before they drop of the forum and speaking as somebody who doesn't advertise much, I would have thought that if a FOR SALE hasn't attracted attention eg in the form of posted enquiries after a month, then it's unlikely to attract more attention after a year or two. On a marketing point, a month without signs of interest might be a good time to think whether the price is right.

This thread hasn't revealed a lot of pent-up frustration on the issue so far, but perhaps this bump may smoke some out of the woodwork.

[Heltor Chasca]

I consider myself smoked.

I don’t normally sell on here, but my experience is on eBay. Take from that what you like

I never have to list items for longer than 7 days. If they don’t go in that time, I take it that I have priced, described or listed the item at the wrong time of year. A drop in price normally shifts it along.

If an item hasn’t sold after 30 days, surely the listing needs looking into. Or refreshing so it appears at the top of the forum.

[gaz]

I see one month as sufficient.

[Vorpal]

I don't have a problem with extending it to 60 or 90 days, but TC makes a good point about bumping. If something is on for 90 days, it will have dropped to the bottom of the list. If you bump it, it goes back to the top. Maybe that's a better solution, anyway?

[gaz]

It worked for denrunbike65.
Edit: Link and pic now removed as expired.

[drossall]

I've sometimes gone back looking for an ad. Perhaps I didn't want the item at the time, but remembered it later when a need came up. And it had gone, of course

[horizon]

I've sometimes gone back looking for an ad. Perhaps I didn't want the item at the time, but remembered it later when a need came up. And it had gone, of course

Exactly. Most of the replies so far seem to look at it from a seller's point of view. I'm a buyer and indeed not just a buyer of that particular item but also interested in things I might not buy. There are often pictures of items that never appear on websites or in brochures - the different sizes of bikes for instance that are really useful for comparison. Some I save and some I go back and look at. I cannot save the entire section. It's a really useful resource IMV. I still don't quite understand why posts are deleted at all. Are we short of server space? There are dozens of other threads that could equally be edited out as no longer useful but are now ten years old and more.

[thirdcrank]

This is the way we lost the long-running Primus clip thread which began life as an ad, although I cannot remember whether someone had one for sale, wanted to buy one, or whether the item in question was something completely different.

[Mick F]

Yes, the Primus thread.
Never laughed so much for years. Hilarious.

--------------------------

1. I agree that a month is fine. If it hasn't sold, it ain't gonna do, so re-list it differently and at a lower price if you still want to sell.
2. Horizon makes a very good point. Perhaps we need to look at it from a buyer's point of view, perhaps searching for something?

So there we have it.
Short deletion time for the seller and for the forum to be neat and tidy, or longer for the buyer and for the searcher.

Would the forum get clogged if the deletion time went out to 90days instead of the present 30days?
Somehow I doubt it, so my vote is for 90days.

[gaz]

From the buyers point of view there is the Wanted board.

If you decide you want something that you saw previously on the For Sale board just post a Wanted ad.

[horizon]

Can anyone say exactly why the posts are deleted?

[Graham]

The Small Ads are ephemeral.

Auto-deletion is a bit of easy, automatic housekeeping.

30-days is an arbitrary, but well-proven auto-deletion time limit.

This request for preservation of ALL Small Ads is unusual. A cost vs benefit is being considered here.

A longer auto-deletion time limit is also being considered - but here I find the argument that the OP should be responsible for keeping a Small Ad live rather compelling.

[drossall]

I would imagine that the obvious point is that many items beyond a certain age are likely to have been sold (possibly on eBay), given away or disposed of by other means. Suddenly getting enquiries about purchase of items that they offered five years ago might become a nuisance to sellers. Yes of course they should mark them sold, but...

That said, I did once remember that (presumably on another forum) someone had been offering a JTek Shiftmate six months earlier, that had not seemed to sell. It's still on my Mercian tourer.