Volunteer vocal Gestapo?
Yeah, I'm done.
I get constant PMs from both sides trying to get me to take care of issues and so I do what I can. I send PMs and I do polite call outs in the thread. Here's the thing though guys: I'm not a mod and I've never tried to pretend to be one. I've tried to remain a presence in the thread, but I have no actual power. All I ever did was volunteer to help maintain the feedback list, because I love this thread.
I have also never, at least to my knowledge, implemented any kind of rules by myself. I have always been an advocate for the community regulating itself and establishing its own rules.
But now I'm done. I'm not rage quitting, I'm just tired of dealing with it.
Let me say this though: Please just attempt to be civil with each other. If you have beef, then send the other person a PM and rage at each other that way. Please don't get this thread shut down, because it's honestly my favorite part of Neogaf.
I'm pretty sure he wasn't referring to you or any of the feedback volunteers as Gestapo. I think he meant people who were calling out sellers regarding lower prices.
That said, I don't think you deserve all the hate you're getting about this; as you said, you're just volunteering to update feedback. It's a thankless job that doesn't have any perks at all. I'd like to thank you for all the work you've put into it.
What makes things worse for Cloggerdude and others is that there's the expectation that some authority/power comes from updating feedback, but there's nothing of the sort, and as volunteers, voicing our opinion carries no more weight than any other poster. It's an uncomfortable position to be in when we have to call people out, as there's really no power as a volunteer, we just want to keep everyone happy.
A lot of the other volunteers, myself included have not been pulling our weight with the feedback list; life just happens and people get busy. For this I apologize, and this thread/community has certainly grown quickly over the last 1.5/2 years.
To the topic on hand; it's really irritating having people do drive by posts; they're not helpful in any way, shape or form and just adds a snarky tone to the whole thread. I understand that as a community, we should be looking out for each other, but it's a free market and people will pay what they want for an item. We can't all expect people to sell everything at MSRP or less, especially if the item isn't easily obtainable. An example: you won't expect someone who has Panzer Dragoon Saga to sell it for $70 (I mean it'd be nice, as we all love deals), but no one would fault them for selling it for higher than MSRP, but less than market value.
I know that there are sellers who do charge eBay prices for items, yet expect to be paid by paypal FF. I think this thread is fairly good about not rewarding this sort of behavior, and these items don't sell. We just have to find a balance in making both the buyer and the seller happy.
If you think that the item is priced too highly, PM the seller and see if you can work something out. I understand that this creates an extra step, but haggling's kind of expected unless the price listing says FIRM. The worst they can say is no, and if no one is willing to pay what they're asking, the seller will be forced to lower the price and go from there.
As for the newegg price glitches, while it doesn't feel great to miss out on a great deal, we shouldn't pressure sellers to sell keys for the same price they bought it at. It'd be nice to get a deal, but we saw that people were happy to pay 10-15 for a Division key, which is still way cheaper than retail. The people who weren't happy to pay this either messaged the seller to haggle or waited for someone with a better price.
This thread is an awesome place to buy/sell and trade, but realize that it's not the end all, be all for this; there's eBay, amazon and all other online stores; as well as CAG, NintendoAge and other forums. I know we've hit a few rough patches lately, which has come from posters not respecting each other. There's a growing divide in buyer and seller expectations and that can be solved by communicating with each other. We need to start respecting each other again. It requires a little bit of work from both buyers and sellers, but I know we can do it. This is a community run thread, and the mods are pretty hands-off on this, because we've shown that we can be mature and figure out our issues. If we keep having issues and have to get mods involved, they may just shut everything down, and that's no good for anyone involved.
Let's appreciate this thread for what it is: a place where we can deal with individuals to get items we want. The customer service is almost always definitely better, but we have to remember since we're dealing with individuals, the efficiency or pricing isn't always going to be that of a online retailer. At the end of the day, we may even make a friend from our transactions, which is not something we can easily say about online retailers.
