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Tradeloop's Member Blog And News: Member Discussion: How Should We Handle Members Who Post Inventory They Don't Have?

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Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Member Discussion: How Should We Handle Members Who Post Inventory They Don't Have?

How many times have you found what you need on Tradeloop and contacted the seller, ready to buy - only to find out they don't really have the product in stock?

That's definitely frustrating and it's also against the rules at Tradeloop to post inventory you don't have in stock. How do you think we should enforce it?

Naturally, we don't mean the member who just sold the part a hour before you called about it. Rather, we're focused on the chronic offenders. Tradeloop is a trading community - not a place for people to advertise inventory they don't actually have.

We're discussing options internally, and we'd like your opinion too:
  1. Should it be an Ethics violation?
  2. How should we police it?
  3. Should we ban someone for it or just delete their inventory?
We urge you to comment here at the blog so other members can review and discuss options. Tradeloop is a community: we want member input before we implement new features and policies.

7 comments:

Tradeloop Corporation said...

Here's what Tradeloop customers are saying:

"Your going to lose at least 25% of your members if you start doing anything like you are talking about. A broker usually is selling someone else's product or inventory and dealers do the same.
Just thought I would let you know." - Robb Adams, Computechsale

"Thanks for asking,it happens on every site and its time wasting and sometimes the phone
number they gave doesnt work,they should be banned that what i think." - Babar Rafiq, AR Trading

"I’m for a “3 strikes your out” style of enforcement for something like this." - Erik Hanaka, NovaStar Solutions

Brian said...

I agree with Robb. Not every company has "real-time" inventory so you will be losing a lot of business. We have an inventory of over 1000 line items and it changes by the minute.

A simple fix for brokers is to make a quick call before you sell an item. More often than not you can do some negotiating on price at the same time.

- Brian Musil, Recycle Your Media / Storage Media Brokers

Tradeloop Corporation said...

Another Tradeloop customer comment:

"Create a tab for positive of negative marks ala ebay. I have a feeling alot of these people would shape up knowing their inventory would be removed after falling to a certain %" - Chris Benson, Flagship Technologies

Anonymous said...

I believe one should differenciate between several distinct situations:
- a broker advertizing other people's stock. I don't see any problem with this practice.
- a member advertizing inventory (eventually hot), which isn't in stock, for the sole purpose of getting hits. This is the problematic situation, obviously.
- a member advertizing inventory which sold within hours.

But bottom line, it will be difficult to enforce these situations, or even to have the capability and resources to investigate and identify the malicious situation.

HASSAN
TEKNO TRANSTRADE In.c

Anonymous said...

There is a distinct line between advertising a “list” for sale, or gathering “bids”. Many companies on Tradeloop consistently blast lists that they don’t have in stock. They do this as an attempt to gather new customers. An easy fix would be to limit the amount of blasts a company can make trying to sell the same product.

Anonymous said...

The first thing that came to mind as a dealer who actually stocks the products listed in inventory, was how frustrated I am to get calls from brokers who just enter my inventory into their databases. It is one thing to source out product for a good customer of yours, it is quite another to dominate a market place with "placeholder" inventory. I think it is disrespectful and harmful to those businesses who actually dish out the money to keep good stock for their customers. It creates a false sense of market availability for hard to find items, and in the long run depreciates our market values. Simple economics: supply up, demand down, price down. Supply down, demand up, price up...

I would like to see Tradeloop investigate this issue further and implement some type of falsifying infraction. Help keep the businesses who mean business alive and quell the abilities of no name startup broker-only companies from gulping up so many of our valuable consumers.

Jerry Roberts said...

Listing inventory you do not have is an ethical violation. If a broker is listing someone elses inventory let the broker disclose this piece of information. If you have been burned by someone like this I would suggest that you file an ethics complaint with the ASCDI. You or the other party do NOT have to be a member to file a complaint.

Jerry Roberts - Chairman Emeritus
ASCDI