Interesting idea.

I used to visit a few photography forums and one had a trade forum where established members (I think required 6+ months membership and >100 posts) could post adverts of stuff for sale, or items wanted. It worked well but required clearly defined rules; the price was the price unless the seller agreed to an offer, seller chooses the buyer and their choice is final, no moaning, etc. Common sense stuff, really.

I think it’s an idea worth entertaining but might not be worthwhile due to the requirement for heavy moderation.

From my personal experience, I have sent several saws to a WWMC member in Belgium because he couldn’t find a seller willing to ship them. I had a few spare, only asked for what I originally paid for them plus shipping to Belgium, he happily obliged and I sent them over. He’s happy because he has saws to sharpen and use, I’m happy because I have more space! I think it’s this sort of arrangement – one person with tools they don’t need, and another who needs them – that could be useful here.

I don’t think the idea of a store in the forum would be suitable though, Tim. If you’ve got a stock of items to sell, and you do it frequently (as in fettling tools for profit), you’d be better off with your own site or you’d risk becoming affiliated with/dependent on WWMC.

George.

Hi guys,

Thanks for the suggestion and comments.

We looked into this but there are complications. Terms and conditions on a site which just deals with digital products are actually somewhat different to when you allow people to list physical products.

Sadly, it is more difficult to allow members to sell to each other without any problems for the site owners. In other words we still have liabilities for items listed on our site. We would have to tie this up with much more complicated terms for the site. Sorry to be so bureaucratic.

We may look into it in the future but for now we can’t put any time into it.

@admin That’s unfortunate but understandable. Legal stuff can be nightmare! However, what about the idea of a ‘Member services’ type system? For example, I’m making a load of boxes in the run up to Christmas and would be happy to pick up an extra board, cut components to rough length, and send it out to someone who doesn’t have a local B&Q if they could cover the cost of postage and raw materials. I also have a band saw, so if people needed components milling to size and could bring the timber round, I could do it for them here. Like many others here, I’ve built my bench so if someone local wanted some help doing theirs I’d be happy for them to come round and give them a hand.

Someone else might be happy for people to pop round and use their planer/thicknesser, drill press, table saw or whatever.

This is probably a wider issue, more like setting up contacts for what are effectively local ‘virtual’ woodworking clubs which we don’t have here in England, but thought it’d be worth mentioning.

Sorry for de-railing the topic!

George.

Hi guys, I would just like to add this, I think its always nice to ask first before putting links to your own blog or website on someone else’s site.

Just my thoughts on it, cheers 😉