Possible New Rule for the FS area

This is just my opion but...........

on another forum some guy sold me an amd xp2000 chip.
but he stated

£18 untested dont have time too.

baicly if it dont work no come back.

and would ya belive it,didnt work. so i paid £18 for jack.

My point being is,ive just see somebody here with a forsale post.
with the item marked as cheap price untested


can there be a rule that states you only sell working goods,
and if unsure the seller resums all Responsibility to either test it,
or offer a full refund if it dosnt work

i just see the whole "untested" thing means it dont work
or buy it and take ya chances and lose ya money

which to be hounest is a car boot sale thing.
and nobody likes being riped off

what do ya think

I agree. Selling someone something that doesn't work is fraudulent and you're just ripping off innocent people :(

I'll go for that. Its one of those phrases that seem to get used all the time and to me it's just a cynical ploy to get you to pay more cash for something they know is broke. I've seen the same sort of ad on ebay loads and when you check into their feedback you find out they've bought it the month before advertised as 'untested'.

Sounds like a good idea but very hard to implement and there's no way for us to thoroughly police the sales in the f/s forum at that level as we only provide a platform for the sales.

Ben

Personally I think you are nuts to buy anything advertised with 'If it doesn't work - tough titties'

I think a bit of common sense comes into play here,
- don't buy stuff that 'might not work'
- 'don't send money upfront to someone who has only just aquired 50 posts or has
no hexus user rating.

you can't stop unscrupulous sellers or buyers from operating , but you can avoid getting stung with a little savvy ;)

just my 2 pennys worth.

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Originally Posted by Bunjiweb

Sounds like a good idea but very hard to implement and there's no way for us to thoroughly police the sales in the f/s forum at that level as we only provide a platform for the sales.

Ben

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Unless there's a mod willing to police... ;)

I think generally the whole e-bayness selling something "untested" or "system pull" is a bit of an odd one.

You can put a corpse on e-bay and put "untested but might be alive" and someone will buy it expecting resurrection.

"Buyer beware!" if you're getting something for a cheap price there is probably a very good reason.

HOWEVER on the FS threads in the boards you should be able to trust someone (hence the Hexus User Trust I guess).

The only exception when someone may sell as item as "Untested" is where the seller either doesn't have have the time nor the equipment to test soemthing before selling it....but this is probably a rare occassion.
e.g. a mate gives you a borked Laptop so you hive off the CD ROM drive and Power Supply...if you don't have a similar Laptop then you can't test them....

Honesty is always the best policy....but greed always gets in the way...Either by the ***** trick who is selling it or by the mug who thinks they can get a P4 3.2 for £40.....

Waffle....

Unfortunately, 'caveat empor', (or whatever it is, my Latins more than a little rusty) applies to all trades. As Skii said, if the seller is saying that if the item is untested and may not work, then you have little come back. And as Bunji said, it is very hard to police the for sale forum thoroughly. The for sale forum is provided as a way for members to trade with each other but we have no way of vetting sellers or buyers other than the trust and feedback system.

In this case, you said yourself that it was being sold as untested and if it didn't work then you had no comeback... I would, however, politely get in touch with the seller and see if you can't come to some arrangement, perhaps a refund less the cost of the postage to you. Of course, the seller has the right to refuse anything as they made the terms of the sale clear and pretty much said that you would be taking a chance on whether or not the chip worked.

Best thing is to put it down to (an expensive) experience and keep it in mind for future trades.

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would ya belive it,didnt work. so i paid £18 for jack.

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A salutary lesson for £18, it could've been more expensive.

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Originally Posted by Howard

Unless there's a mod willing to police... ;)

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there is a mod for the f/s forum but its a busy forums and its gonna be damn near impossible to keep track of every single thread and its contents 24 hours a day, mods sleep aswell yah know ;)

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mods sleep aswell yah know

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I didn't realise they were awake, lol!

Seriously Mods do an excellent job but they can't be expected to police things even when they're referees it's adn excellent extension of the job.....

my point is

dont ya think there should be a rule that says

no untested items
working stuff only

or

untested but if dosnt work will give full refund back

What happens when somebody breaks something and then blames the seller?

The rules can't cover everything, just common sense can.

then it gose back to my point of.

dont sell untested stuff

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dont sell untested stuff

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Easier to say don't buy it, unless you beware.

i think this should be a rule

on ebay, id say 99% of the stuff on there thats sold as untested is broke, i once bought a box of 25 untested CD drives - turned up and they were all dead

needless to say, i had no comeback , and fair enuff it my technically my own fault - but im pretty sure the guy knew they were dead, if the wasnt he would have sold them for more. general rule i go on for ebay now is untested = dead.

Ive sold some stuff as untested before, but thats genuinly untested, like a stick of RDRAM - first of all no RDRAM mobo, secondly i only had 1 stick not a pair, so i couldnt in anyway test it. it could have worked, could have not, thats another story

i think this rule shud go ahead, to stop people being rpped off, im not saying people on hexus would do this, but sooner or later you might have some one new join and sell something untested as dead, annoying ppl on the forums. if somethings untested and it is dead, it just annoys people, they waste money like me and the threadstarter - like paying 18 quid for a dead chip when really its worthless.


itll be hard for the mods to implment , but im all for it you go with it :)

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Originally Posted by Howard

Unless there's a mod willing to police... ;)

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It's not a matter of being willing to police, it's a matter of it simply not being possible. "Your word against theirs" and all that...

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Originally Posted by Creature

can there be a rule that states you only sell working goods,
and if unsure the seller resums all Responsibility to either test it,
or offer a full refund if it dosnt work

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I see no reason at all to prevent sales of "untested" items. Part of the reason is simple acknowledgement of the law when you are buying from a non-business. As Deckard said, the principe is "caveat emptor" - which basically means "let the buyer beware".

My old law lecturer (and she was a barrister) summed it up by saying "when buying a horse, walk round it and count the legs. Make sure there is one on each corner, because you'll have no comeback afterwards if there isn't." That advice might have been given 25 years ago, but it is as true now as it was then.

Your rights when buying privately are minimal. This applies to buying over the internet, from the classifieds in the local paper, a card in a newspagent or a bloke in the pub. The goods MUST match any decription of or claim for them that the seller made, but that is about it. If you buy an XP2000, and it turns out to be an XP1800 you would have a case for getting your money back (Misrepresentation) - though enforcing it to get your money back is another story.

BUT if I were to advertise an XP2000 and when it gets to you, it is an XP2000 but doesn't work, well, I never said it did. Legally, you have little you can do about it.

So, when you buy ANYTHING privately, you are taking a chance. It's down to the buyer to ask questions, and part of that is assessing the person you are buying from. Bear in mind it is YOU that takes the risk if your judgement isn't up to scratch.

This is partly why 2nd hand goods are cheaper than new ones. For many computer parts, a 2nd hand unit will perform just as well as, and last just as long as, a brand new one. Therefore, the reason it is often so much cheaper is that you DO take a risk, and you DON'T have much of a comeback if something goes wrong.

If something says "untested" then you are very definitely taking a chance, and I would assume that the price reflected that. It is down to the buyer to determine if he/she is prepared to take a chance for that amount of money. I, for instance, would not under any circumstances buy expensive items (like a laptop) from a private buyer, sight-unseen. I just won't do it - period. Why, because if it isn't as advertised or promised, I've got a fight on my hands getting my money back and, personally I won't take the risk. The result - I don't get many bargains but I don't get ripped off either. Other people will risk it - either for the chance of a real bargain (and there are some to be had) or because it's as much as they can afford and is the only chance they have of getting a specific item. Fair do's, BUT only if you are prepared to take the risk.


"For Sale/Trade" is designed to simply put members in touch with each other, and in a very pracitcal sense, there is little we can do to protect members from risk, which is why some of the rules say what they do. We only provide limits where :-

1) It is to avoid legal complications
2) It is keeping the trading within reasonable bounds of areas relevant to this forum (after all, bandwidth costs money, so there has to be a limit)
3) Experience has taught us that a rule is beneficial to protecting members

But with private sellers, in practice, you have very little protection anyway.

There are people that sell bits genuinely untested. I've done it myself. If I've been breaking a system I haven't used for a while, I'll sell the components as untested. Why? Because while it worked last time I used it I don't know if it works now - and it isn't worth my time and effort finding out.

So, I flog untested parts and the buyer gets them at a better price than they would if I had tested them. So far as I know, they work BUT once they leave here, so far as I'm concerned, that's it. If there's a problem, I don't want to hear about it and any buyers buy on that basis.

Next point - suppose we had a rule that said "any parts that don't work must be refunded?" Well, there are unscrupulous people out there who will seek to exploit any situation. I can see someone buying an XP2000, spotting one somewhere else a bit cheaper, buying that as well and sending the first one back as defective - or even deliberately damaging it and sending it back as defective - and expecting a refund.


Buying from private sellers is ALWAYS a risk and, in my view, little more so when it says "untested", but precluding people from selling "untested" items actually gives you very little more protection and DOES prevent people like me from genuinely selling untested gear.

Note: I have no personal vested interest in this rule. I have NEVER bought or sold anything via either HEUXUS (or, for that matter, OcUK) and have not even activated my Hexus rating.


However, that leads me onto the HEXUS rating.

The whole point behind the HEXUS rating is to give SOME degree of confidence in the legitimacy of the person you are dealing with. It's no guarantee, and can be abused, BUT if you are dealing with a regular long-standing HEXUS member you have SOME assurance they aren't going to try to rip you off. If you have, in addition, a depth of positive feedback from other people, it HELPS give you some reassurance in buying blind.


But, please remember, caveat emptor.

If you aren't prepared to risk being ripped off, do NOT buy sight-unseen. There are sharks in the water, and if you buy/sell enough, you WILL get done sooner or later. Most people round these parts are genuine and honest, but there ARE sharks out there.