A question for the forums: What is a reasonable time frame to expect a reply when doing a comic deal? 4 4

[Get Marwood & I]

On 3/29/2023 at 10:15 PM, skypinkblu said:

@Get Marwood & I
Thanks for the well thought out explanation...

I still think communication is important and it might be nice if the seller posts...but I did find myself reading PMs this morning at a Dr's office on my phone, I read a few, but when I went to answer, I could not. Just wouldn't let me.

I've noticed recently we've had a periodic, huge increase in guest users all arriving at the same time - around 500 more than normal, several times a day. I let Dena know, as I recall this type of thing being a drag on the forum in the past. The forums were running nicely at the time but accessing anything personal - profiles, PMs, etc - took a long time to load. So maybe the forum is under periodic seige from Google bots or something like that and it's messing certain things up. Or it may be completely unconnected and you were just online as one of those daily glitches were in play. I don't think I ever saw an explanation for the pms that would go missing, incidentally, so who knows what's going on. The place runs well in the main lately, but there's always some intermittent problem affecting users, isn't there. 

[ttfitz]

On 3/29/2023 at 3:56 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

You @ttfitz are set as visible, so your 'Last Visited' date/time will show on your profile as follows (taken just now):

Thanks for mansplaining all that (). But seriously, it was a pretty complete synopsis of how things are supposed to work. Around 3:30 this afternoon, I got back on my computer for the first time since last night, read some emails, checked my March Madness bracket (even though the Zags losing knocked me out of any more points for the year) just to be complete, and then brought one of the forum tabs to the foreground - but didn't do anything - but since nobody looked and reported back since then, not much was contributed to the experiment.

On 3/29/2023 at 3:56 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

The 'Last Visited' time is not foolproof however. I have reported several instances down the years where a user was showing a 'last visited' time that was earlier than their last post. It may be something to do with cached data but I'm not a technical expert and didn't get a reply from Admin on it. I raised it in respect of a sales thread issue, debating who was first to claim and online at the time. So I personally would never use the last visited time as a silver bullet to determine someone's fate. 

That's pretty much the point that I was making in the other thread, I'm not sure how definitive the "last visited" item is. As I said before, I found it was showing me as "active now" when I hadn't been on here for hours; I guess you could consider my mouse hovering over my user-id as an "activity" but I'm not sure most people would. And I often come back to an open tab here that has been in the background to find I've got a number of notifications, and I don't know whether that's because the system thinks I'm here or not (and if that would reset the clock).

On 3/29/2023 at 3:56 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

But if the user has set external notifications up for PMs, they will receive all messages externally. Thus, it is possible that a member has a read a PM externally but has not read the original forum based one. It is also possible that they can log in to the forum and choose not to read their messages. So I would never say "they logged on but didn't read my message, so there is something iffy going on" as they may have read it via an external notification advice.

Yeah, I get an email when I get a PM (as well as when someone tags me as you did here) so I almost always have read a PM before it shows up that I did here. I think I've possibly got a few PMs that are months old that still show as "unread" simply because I read the email and had nothing else to add.

[fastballspecial]

In my larger sales thread I am not concerned about payment at the beginning. 
I send out invoices to everyone. I ship on who pays me first. So if you want your
books first you pay first. Once I get thru all my paying customers then I send notices to the ones that have
not paid me. 98% of the time that is all that is needed. Occasionally I will have some
weird circumstances like I am on vacation or deliver next week when I am home. 
International buyers are my only real issues and only from new buyer who dont realize
its not cheap to ship overseas.

 

 

Edited April 1, 2023 by fastballspecial

[joeypost]

Life has enough stress. I go by the rules the forum has set up. 

[joeypost]

And, I’m never in a hurry for anything. 

[JollyComics]

On 4/19/2023 at 6:34 AM, joeypost said:

Life has enough stress. I go by the rules the forum has set up. 

Life is at ease while Vintage is forced to take a vacation.

[joeypost]

On 4/24/2023 at 10:44 PM, JollyComics said:

Life is at ease while Vintage is forced to take a vacation.

????

[thehumantorch]

On 4/19/2023 at 5:34 AM, joeypost said:

Life has enough stress. I go by the rules the forum has set up. 

Funny how that leads to no problems 

[JollyComics]

On 4/24/2023 at 10:14 PM, joeypost said:

????

Didn't you notice VintageComics is MIA?

[CGC Mike]

On 4/24/2023 at 10:44 PM, JollyComics said:

On 4/19/2023 at 7:34 AM, joeypost said:

Life has enough stress. I go by the rules the forum has set up. 

Life is at ease while Vintage is forced to take a vacation.

Perhaps, you should do a little fact checking before making these kind of accusations.  No need to reply, as I will not be making any more posts about this.

[JollyComics]

On 4/25/2023 at 6:55 AM, CGC Mike said:

Perhaps, you should do a little fact checking before making these kind of accusations.  No need to reply, as I will not be making any more posts about this.

No accusation. I already checked facts.  I just played and tried to enlighten up here.

[jimbo_7071]

On 3/25/2023 at 6:23 PM, VintageComics said:

This is for buyers AND sellers. 

I preface this thread with the fact that it's not to pick on anyone. 19 years ago, I myself used to be guilty of taking too long to reply and so I speak from my own personal experience of being on the wrong side of this discussion. 

I've come to accept that expecting a reply within 24 hours is considered reasonable. 

Outside of 24 hours it starts to become questionable unless there are extenuating circumstances. 

72 hours when doing a deal is probably a bit too long and outside of that I think sellers / buyers should rightfully be concerned about the deal. 

What are your thoughts?

72 hours seems shockingly tight to me; I often go longer than 72 hours without even going online. If I responded to someone within a week, I feel I was being sufficiently prompt.

[VintageComics]

On 11/22/2023 at 7:11 PM, jimbo_7071 said:

72 hours seems shockingly tight to me; I often go longer than 72 hours without even going online. If I responded to someone within a week, I feel I was being sufficiently prompt.

If you have stuff being offered for sale online, you have an obligation to reply in a reasonable time frame and I think 24 hours is reasonable. 

If someone is reaching out to you unsolicited and you're unavailable, then you reply when you can. 

But if you have a selling thread live or have stuff listed on eBay, I believe it's irresponsible not to be available within 24-48 hours. 

Knowing that you won't respond for a week probably limits the number of people who will do business with you moving forward.

Edited November 23, 2023 by VintageComics

[jimbo_7071]

On 11/22/2023 at 7:14 PM, VintageComics said:

Knowing that you won't respond for a week probably limits the number of people who will do business with you moving forward.

I'm good with that.

[rjpb]

It depends on the context, if you are in the middle of negotiating terms of an actual deal, or responding to specifics about shipping or payment, 24 hours seems reasonable unless there are extenuating circumstances. I give buyers a bit more slack than sellers, as sometimes people agree to buy something, but aren't on the boards that frequently and may not see a DM for a few days. As a seller, one should probably check in a bit more frequently, unless they have posted a caveat that they won't be able to respond right away.

If it's to reply to inquiry about something on a sales thread, then it might be a bit longer than 24 hours, particularly if someone is in the midst of listing. If it's some sort of ridiculous low ball offer, then while a simple rejection is in order, I understand why some people may not respond at all.