RogueRose - 25-5-2019 at 19:28
I'm wondering what members & mods would think about a dedicated sub forum for members to post their extra items, chems, glass,
electro/techno-chem, etc. I've seen a lot of these types of postings in various forums and there seems no rhyme or reason as to where they are
posted, and not being able to find all of them in one place makes it somewhat a PITA.
Anyone else think this would be a benefit?
fusso - 25-5-2019 at 19:32
Aren't most of them posted in the reagent acquistion subforum?
j_sum1 - 25-5-2019 at 19:45
This has been discussed before.
There are numerous problems -- basically boiling down to SM standing as intermediary between unknown parties. When things go wrong (and they will),
it ends up being a very awkward situation and could potentially lead to some ugly legal situations.
A while back, last time this was suggested, synthsource was set up -- a parallel board with the express purpose of buying and selling reagents and
equipment. It failed after a year for two reasons:
Volume was small. It just could not attract the traffic to be a one-stop shop and so people ended up searching eBay as normal.
It was set up as a discussion board and not a buy-sell platform. That meant completed transactions did not expire -- or it was not even clear
if the item had been sold. there was no search feature. in short, it was really limited.
The current mechanism on SM appears to work ok. People can advertise or ask. There are even some dedicated selling threads. But the transactions
occur in private without SM standing between or appearing to do so. For those who actually make a business of selling equipment or reagents, SM
represents a very small proportion of their business anyway.