(05-18-2016, 01:27 AM)BadDad Wrote: Have I missed something here? I thought the op was about putting a cap on the price of goods sold in the bst on a different forum. Am I wrong?
To that end, it is common practice on all the forums that are owned and/or paid for by vendors. It rides right up there with not allowing honest discussions and reviews. Its just the way it works when a forum is more focused on making money and selling prosucts than it is on forming a community and helping people.
There is an easy way to avoid the bad taste those questionable ethics leave in your mouth...
Sent from my LGL34C using Tapatalk
This is a tough issue to tackle in a forum, no matter who is running it. I have a lot of disagreement with various mods and forums, as well as how they set guidelines/rules that seem to apply unevenly, but this is a case where the rationale makes a lot of sense to me.
Just consider:
- If a forum truly is dedicated to helping out a community and fostering a better hobby and
- If you have a problem with the focus in forums being on making money and selling products...
... Then you need to really consider that there is a very serious issue with M&F markups. Lee is nigh impossible to contact, unless you are one of the "chosen people" who constantly claim they have no issue in that area. To give you an idea on this point, I have had one successful contact, out of perhaps 30+ attempts. My story doesn't seem to be terribly unusual, but then you have folks who seem to buy new M&F brushes regularly and have 20+ brushes.
Whatever the reason, a select few have a seemingly direct line to Lee, which gives them a massive opportunity in an unregulated market. They have the ability to basically flip brushes as a pseudo-vendor if they want (and some have in the past), adding a 20% markup of their own. Ignoring for a moment the grey area created between a vendor and a hobbyist, think about this situation!
By exploiting the unavailability of Lee and by monetizing their own connections to the man, these folks are pricing lots of us out of M&F brushes by hefty margins. How does this foster a better hobby and community? It doesn't, it does the opposite by artificially creating an "elite" product that is only accessible by high prices.
Additionally, you can't criticize a forum for being obsessed with selling products and making money when they are making efforts to
lower prices on products that no official vendor or hobbyist actually sells as a retailer. That just doesn't make sense.
Now, on the other hand, if you want to talk about TSN and how threads critical of M&F or Lee seem to magically get locked and disappear instantly, while threads on others like Tiki or MW or others are gleefully piled on...