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In Reply to: RE: I #%*=ing hate hate audiogon posted by ejlif on July 08, 2012 at 21:51:47
The following has been arranged in chronological order:
JUL 14, 2012 | 06:34PM EDT
Original message, Neil wrote:
Besides the increase in scammers on your new site (despite all your PR about how you're protecting us ;~) there is also a noticeable (to me anyway) increase in the ratio of private-to-commercial advertisers IN THE ACTUAL CLASSIFIED LISTINGS. Many/most of them are simply listing/introducing new products at retail prices (msrp).
If a private party is selling something brand new for one reason or another, then great! Usually it's going for less than retail. But now, having so many commercial listings for retail priced equipment mixed in with private ads for used equipment makes the browsing experience tedious and disappointing; not to mention the fact that YOU DO allow these commercial advertisers to list their contact information in their ads!
Once again, you seem confused about what this site should be! I have no problem with a business model designed to increase revenue; it's the American Way! But you people have gone about it in a juvenile and amateurish way -- starting with those silly transaction fees, which have forced you to police all aspects of the buyer/seller relationship. And along with your specious (look it up!) reasons for doing so, it all leaves a bad taste in everybodys' mouth!
If you wanted to make more money (which you have every right!) you simply should have been honest and up-front about it, and charged listing fees pegged to the asking price of the item, something easy enough to "police" -- instead, you insert yourselves as a third party into your members' transactions in order to make sure you collect those 'back end' fees. If you continue to dig in your heels, and defend this childish arrangement, you will eventually drive most sellers away, because all the people I talk to are getting fed up with your intrusion into what should be LIVELY and PRIVATE negotiations between buyers and sellers ONLY! That was the BEST THING about the original Audiogon site -- IT'S REASON FOR BEING, and the VERY BASIS OF ITS SUCCESS!
You've lost that magic quality for now, and NO AMOUNT of other features can compensate for that loss.
Neil replied:
Louis,
Thanks. I'm going to archive my email along with your reply,
as another classic example of a "non-response" from Audiogon.
I know it will help many others understand, as it has helped me.
very cordially,
NSG
Follow Ups:
I used to be a dealer selling and promoting on Audiogon, in fact all the way back to just a few months after the site began. around a dozen or so years ago, until the big surprise in January. I don't even want to boil my blood again with all the frustrations that hit me then - I'm sure many of you experienced at least some of them.
Unfortunately, the way Audiogon got to be by far the dominant online marketplace for audiophile goods, their change in policies severely affected my ability to earn a living, right at the peak of this already terrible economic recession.
I did try hard to make a go of it, but their new treatment of dealers became almost impossible to function within. Get this: On top of wanting around $300 per month to be a most basic level commercial advertiser with very little benefit over just running conventional ads, they would also take down my ad after the close of just a single sale. Say I was selling cables, which is my biggest speciality. I'd pay $30-40 for decent placement and exposure, then one single sale of a $300 cable, and I'm having to pay another $30-40 to do it again. For $300 a month, they couldn't just let your ad run and collect their 2% all month long?
I don't know how many of you understand the overhead cost of a small business, but wen you give up $40 on an item you've already discounted say 10-15%, and receiving payment with credit cards or PayPal eating up about another 8% of your net, there's really not much left. Never mind the months an ad didn't create a single sale yet cost the big bucks to run just ONE item.
Also, cables are needed in SO many different lengths and configurations, yet they went so tight at monitoring rules so strictly that I could only advertise ONE length and configuration - eliminating the potential to serve more people needing the right length for them. Just nuts. Very greedy. Impractical. Unworkable. How little value they offered us anymore.
And yes, I agree with the previous comment that their fee collection on the sale really changed things a lot as well, in exactly the way he described. Just a note - dealers are required by manufactures to advertise no lower than a MAP price (minimum advertised price), often at retail. MAP is a healthy thing for the industry. It prevents a small few internet advertisers from squeezing out almost all the profit from a item. Dealers are dependent on profit for a living, and good ones make the service worth paying for. When there is not enough to be made on a product or manufactures line to make it worth bothering to carry and invest in, we just drop it. All the hard work a manufacturer puts into building his network of dealers dissolves. Not enough dealers will carry for the manufacturer to stay in business, and the industry becomes that much weaker and less able to serve the community.
Audiogon used to be such a free, open place and a beautiful community that offered a market for individual sellers as well as an opportunity for dealers to reach beyond a narrow local market of audiophiles.
Any good alternatives yet?
Regards, Jeff
Jeff; You asked about any good sites other than Audiogon. Try www.usaudiomart.com I think you will like it.
There is just one word to describe the new Audiogon and that word in FUBAR! I was very active on Audiogon, selling things to places I never imagined doing business with. My last ad was a disaster; the site refused to accept any photos and I had 2 or 3 responses, none serious. At least one was an obvious scam. I use to spend a lot of time on the site, now I hardly look at it. Thank God I sold about $12,000 worth of gear in the last couple of months before the change.
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