Having been recently been looking to get a BTA from an online vendor, searching through lots of web sites for merchandise that comes and goes, I started to think that support of a reverse auction would be a good idea. Here I could put out a request for a my BTA (or whatever product I may have interest in) and vendors that were willing to take the time could chime in with their offering. Vendors could only reply to member requests and must reply with a specific offering that addresses the request (e.g. no dumping of vendor catalogs)
Pros
- better awareness of who has what available ("livestock")
- competitive pricing
- product awareness (I am always stumbling onto some new product
Cons
- potential for less than reputable advertising (although I think there are enough smart people here that could keep vendors from getting away with much of this
- sponsors might feel "cheated" out of a bit of their role. I they would still have their own forum, page banner and I would hope that as a sponsor they would contribute heavily to this new forum where applicable. personally, I do a lot of business with sponsors because the are sponsors and offer quality product and advise (I checked the sponsor list and was surprised to find I have done business with 8 of the 13 sponsors in the last 4 months), I don't see this changing because someone else might be able to meet some of my other needs. I would encourage further exploration on supporting our sponsors though
- there will probably be more vendor (and member) bickering and more administration on the mods part....but it keeps it in its own forum
Obviously I am focused on the positive side of all of this (and a bit frustrated finding a nice BTA
), your thoughts?
- scott-
