So, something I’ve noticed users doing with this great feature (which doesn’t surprise me, as it’s a tactic used by stores everywhere and has been done for years).
Some sellers will Jack the price of their animal up, and then put the “sale” price as the price it was previously, or within a couple $$ of it. I understand what you’re trying to do, but cmon guys. Where’s the integrity. Please don’t continue to do this and try to wow a buyer into thinking they’re getting a great deal. You aren’t clever, it’s old tactics.
Okay, rant over. Just wanted to share what I’ve seen.
It doesn’t need to be clever, it’s unfortunately effective. Which means it’s something that is always going to be around. It’s also a good way to hide the fact that you just priced an animal too high. My best advice is to pay attention, look at multiple sales and try to ignore the games as best you can.
Oh, I know, I just get a bit fed up with it. I didn’t entirely expect to see it here, but it doesn’t surprise me. It’s used everywhere, so why wouldn’t sellers use it here? I guess I had just hoped that it would stay away.
I think there was some kind of restriction where this can’t be used for more than x number of days per month/year. So I think this would be a temporary thing before that limit takes place. @eaglereptiles would know for sure.
There is, it can only be used once per ad renewal cycle. But they can still go back and edit the ad price before/after the sale ends. Nothing is limiting that.
It’s just the concept of it. It’s a dishonest practice.
The only way around this I can think of is to disallow ads that have had their price edited in X amount of days. But what about the sellers that are legit following the market and update their prices weekly?.. they would be hit by this.
Or, maybe a “sale price must be at least x% lower than the highest historical price for this listing” rule…
What do other marketplace websites do to combat this?
I like the idea of a price history. Because putting that on display would show that the seller is attempting to dupe you on the price.
I haven’t personally checked how sales work yet myself so I’m sorry if this is already included…
I think if sellers are unable to edit the animal’s price while on sale and are limited to a cool down that can help.
If a price history is visible, and you cannot list an animal for sale for a week after a price change that may help? Maybe even have the cool down for price change be for a week after a sale as well?
I just worry a month is a long time and some holiday sales can be impacted by a long cool down. Or if someone wanted to be wild and do a monthly sale like some retail or grocery stores.
Perhaps I’m poorly informed, but are there species where this is actually a thing? As far as I’m aware from watching the market myself, it doesn’t really change that quickly.
“When I was a kid”… and the only information we had for reptiles was the Time/Life nature collection (think books), this kind of thing could work. Today, all you have to do is hit SEARCH, and the whole country (or more) is available to you.
Every price that wins a buyer is a “sale price”. Everything else is just an asking price.
@dlhirst I’m not quite sure how this fits into the topic at hand.
From the sound of it, you don’t think price manipulation is an issue and leave things as is because you can research the prices. Am I reading that right?
Most just trying to see if that would be a vote to do nothing or something Eaglereptiles had suggested.
If you’re against doing anything to stop the intentional price gouging, I just have to ask one thing: why? Why not stop it or attempt to mitigate it if we have the means to do so? There’s a wide range of sellers so the “asking price” for all morphs/species can vary, but why promote a feature that allows for dishonest practices?
I like the idea of price history as a buyer. I have zero problem with it as a seller.
I don’t love this personally. Maybe I just changed prices or entered ads and had a great idea for a sale two days later. It’s happened. But if the consensus is to do this, I will be fine with it. A week isn’t much time to wait, admittedly. I rarely have ideas so fabulous that they must be instantly implemented, lol.
I get it! But if you look at the suggestions Thomas had mad, one was price edited animals could not be put on sale for 30 days.
I was trying to think of a middle ground I guess?
I think this is a great idea, because then you can see if they’re just raising and lower the prices arbitrarily.
While obviously having someone price the animal higher and then use a sale price to try and sell it at the normal accepted value isn’t great, I don’t see how it’s neccesarily tricking anyone when you can compare to other animals on the market. If there are 100 juvenile female clowns on the market, all priced around $400 normally, and someone has one listed as $750 regular price, $450 sale price, I’m just going to look at it, laugh, go “yeah right buddy” and buy from someone else who’s not playing games
Thats my thoughts too. I vote with my wallet and its the same in my industry of work as to pricing and with a little research you can easily see whos playing games with prices. Too many restrictions might not work very well in the end IMO. In the end people have the right to charge what they want but i also have the right to laugh them off and never do buisness with said seller.
Jumping in here a little late.
Showing the price history is a great idea. This is an issue of raising prices then listing as a sale at regular price.
But showing price history will also show the ones that keep changing their prices up and down. I was watching one and thought the price was to high, a little while later the price dropped. While thinking about it and just befor making contact, a couple days later it price changed to more then the original listing. This stopped me from buying all together. I kept watching it and it changed at least 4 times up and down in about a month.
When I see people out there playing these games, it stops me from buying from them all together. No reason to deal with dishonest people. And what kind of guarantee are you really getting from a person like this. The problem is, some people don’t catch it and these people keep taking advantage of others. It then starts to make people not trust others that are not playing games. I can keep going, but will stop here. I think everyone gets it and understands what can happen.
Stealing