To answer some of the questions here:
EF has guidelines to sales, which can be read
here
Alas, nobody ever reads them, so the majority of the For Sale ads on EF wouldn't even attract a fly. Do we care? Not really.
EF does not benefit from the sales made on the forum, unless specified. There have been a few generous donations through sales and auctions though.
We have no policy or rules on sales, for example that tickets or goods are sold at a reduced price or face value. When it comes to event tickets, I do demand proof of purchase and a copy of the ticket at the very least. Then I do what I can to make sure the ticket is sold at face value.
We don't want EF to be used as an auction site like eBay or Ricardo, so any bidding entered into is closed down and a banning usually follows when it is clear that there is no further indication of contributing to EF. We want any sales to at least be flat and transparent.
Because EF does not benefit from sales made on the site, we cannot assume any responsibility for sales, in that we cannot act in any way as guarantor for sales and payments.
Because it is a free system it does leave us open to abuse. We do what we can to curb this but this can be difficult as there is no defined level of enforcement. In an ideal world it would be nice to see the sales benefit the community, helping those who are new to quickly equip themselves with interim clobber or helping those who have to leave in a hurry to off-load their cars, furniture or household items.
We always demand prices to maintain transparency on sales. Particularly with tech items, furniture or cars, we post a link to reliable source such as toppreise so show any prospective buyers what the lowest price of a new item would be. When people ask for too much, we do what we can to push it down to a more realistic price.
In the case of the swimming pool ticket, I still can't understand why everyone got so worked up. If someone wants to buy it at face value and even travel to collect it when they could just as easily get one directly from the pool premises at the same price, they are free to do so.
As long as nobody is being cheated, hurt, stolen from, so long as the reputation of EF is not being damaged or the stupidity of people being abused beyond the boundaries of the law, intervention is not worth the overhead.
We rely on the good will of others and can do nothing more than appeal to their common sense.
We also welcome comments on sales as we feel this is a good balance, however, what we cannot have is the pack-hound mentality circuit court or some self appointed EF consumer council acting as judge and jury when someone wants to sell a ticket to a swimming pool.
I think some perspective needs to be kept. Like with any post, except maybe where free beer is concerned remember:
If your post does not add meaning, don't post. If you are not interested, leave it alone and remember, post count and making posts count are two different things.
If you see something you don't like, why don't you simply report it by pressing this button
rather than releasing the hounds?
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