(05-22-2016, 08:57 PM)Merkur Man Wrote: (05-21-2016, 04:21 PM)NeoXerxes Wrote: Still, whether or not a price cap is merited is a good topic, but my concern is about its application. There is simply no way that it can be fairly applied in my view, so it will always be an arbitrary rule that will depend heavily on the character and quality of the moderators. In principle it would seem to advance the interests of fairness, but in practice I'm not sure that it would do the same.
I guess all I can do is share my own personal experience, but I believe you would find that others have the same experience with the TSN BST.
In my opinion the TSN BST works beautifully with the price caps. It is really quite simple, all you do is post the price you are selling your item for at a price less than or equal to what you originally paid for the item. If I have forgotten what a currently produced item sells for I simply look it up on line, deduct some for wear and tear and post the item and price. If it is an item that is no longer produced you aren't required to sell for any particular price, although I still find it easy to sell even unobtainable things for approximately what I purchased them for. Pretty simple in my view and takes almost no moderator/admin input because the members monitor the BST themselves. I know that member monitoring sounds like an even greater problem than moderator monitoring, however, the few times I have seen a price discrepancy, it is always handled in a gentlemanly way. The process simply works and in the long run I think likely takes up less moderator time. Anyway, this has been my experience with the new system and it has been remarkably positive.
Oh yeah, here is the actual TSN price list for M&F brushes. Not to shabby if you ask me. You can't seem to sell a Chubby Manchurian these days unless you knock $100 off the price tag (I guess this likely speaks to the fact that perhaps the brushes are over priced to begin with). The chart only asks that you knock off ~$25 off of the price of an M&F and it will sell in very short order. Again, the only challenge with this is if you purchased your M&F brush in the secondary market for an inflated price. If this is the case, simply sell it somewhere else.
I understand your point, but the example you cite involves prices that are directly controlled by the mod/admin team, and therefore isn't subject to my critique. The point I was making deals with the calculation of the original price for the purpose of the policy. I'll use an example with fragrances, but this would apply equally to any shaving product:
Let's say I'd like to sell a new bottle of Creed's Pure White Cologne. Directly from the Creed Boutique (at the manufacturer's suggested retail in the USA), a 250 ml bottle goes for $745 plus tax. However, if I were to order this same bottle from a European retailer, say Essenza-Nobile out of Germany, I'd be able to get it for around $520 shipped, depending on the current rate of exchange. At the moment of this writing, the difference in price between the two retailers is ~$225. If I were selling this bottle, what would be the price cap? How would the mods/admins know whether or not I was adhering to the cheaper of the two? Would I necessarily have to keep the price under $520 when most people don't even know about the price differences between Europe and the USA? How would people know exactly what price I paid? Under the policy, there is nothing to prevent me from ordering a bottle at $520 and reselling at a profit. In other words, without articulating stipulations and exceptions that would run multiple forum pages, such a policy is ineffective and not fit for purpose. And as
TXFIVEO points out, in any actual market situation, prices are determined not only by demand, but also by supply. If products are rare, extraordinarily difficult to obtain, and/or require a long wait of many months or even years, it is not unreasonable nor ungentlemanly to place a dollar value on those attributes.
My point is merely that this policy is inherently unenforceable, and any enforceability that it does have is derived from judgments that are necessarily arbitrary. At first glance I might have instinctively supported such a policy, but after consideration, I don't find that price controls are helpful for members.
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