Not meaning to cause a fuss, as im sure its been asked before, but why can only gold members advertise?
I can understand it on for parts and wanted ads, but for car sales its seems odd. Whenever Ive looked for cars to buy, one of the 1st places i try is forums, and once purchased ive always carried on using the site as long as ive owned the car, so its would seem to be a great way of promoting the site. Even if the sellers dont stick around, the buyers propabaly would. Even if limited/split so that only Lexus can be advertised by nongold members, but gold members have the right to advertise in another section that is for other marques.

Would also make sence to make the buy and sell achive read only, as i think this can be abused by non members to post in.

May be a wanted section might be an idea too?

In the buy and sell section you can start a thread for wanted items.

Buy & Sell is part of an entitlement which you pay your Gold Membership for each year to have the ability to sell items on the forum.
If it was me I wouldn't be too happy if I had paid to advertise and then someone came along and advertised something but hadn't paid to and we would have people flying in & out just having 1 post which was a for sale post - having to be a goldie to sell means we have more of a community with people who care what they are selling to & buying from other members rather than some dodgy dealer coming in when he/she fancied & ripping people off.

The buy & sell section covers 'wanted' as in "I want to buy" and as Rik says you can put 'wanted' in the title, and there is also the 'swap shop' section.

Most threads in the archive are closed once they are finished with, which stops any further posting on them - although I can't say I have noticed any abuse of the archive section.

Thats a fine argument for trade advertisers (which i would hope pay to advertise anyway, outside of gold membership), and also for non lexus items, but when selling lexus (cars or parts) that is likely to be be of interest to all members, it would seem foolish to cut off possible sellers. If I was selling my lexus, and not getting another one, why would i want to pay £25 for a yrs membership when im not going to be able to take advantage of it when the car is sold.



Its also odd having posts in the Buyers and Sellers Corner (that for some reason cant be read), and then having further subsections.
Just a suggestion, but a more organised way of sectioning classified section would have a seperate subsections for wanted and parts for sale. The way ive seen/used before that works well would be:

Lexus Cars Offered (open to all)
Lexus Cars Wanted (open to all)
Lexus Parts Offered (open to all)
Lexus Parts wanted (open to all)
Non lexus Items (Gold members only)
Ebay Items (Gold members only) (maybe devided in to 'own sales' and 'ebay finds' that arent your own listings.
Trade Sales (Paid Traders only)
Group buys (Gold members only)
(then an archive folder if required, or just lock old threads in the subforum, so they slowly filter down)

Then every post would be in its logical place.



I seem to recall seeing a few in the archive, but maybe the members have since become gold as i cant see them now. But even I abused the swap shop before i was gold!

http://www.lexusownersclub.co.uk/forum/ind...showtopic=47445
As have others.
http://www.lexusownersclub.co.uk/forum/ind...showtopic=46352
http://www.lexusownersclub.co.uk/forum/ind...showtopic=46830
http://www.lexusownersclub.co.uk/forum/ind...showtopic=45339

Yes, Traders come under a completely different category to subscribing Gold Members

Wanted ads are ok for non-goldies as long as the person who has what the other wants is either giving away for free or if offering for sale is a gold member.
& we have prospective buyers coming in and posting threads like this one
TBH there has never been a highlighted problem in the way the buy & sell part of the forum is set out, and we have threads such as this oneSelling guidelines and of course theForum T&C's

I have come across only a few forums who are happy for people to just come in and advertise things 'willynilly' and some even have a specific template for sale threads and if you don't stick to it then it gets removed, or all 'for sale' ads/items have to be sent to a moderator & screened before they are allowed up on the forum
In all honesty if you wanted to sell a car you would have to pay to put it in the Auto Trader or suchlike, its just that here along with that entitlement of being able to sell you get lots of other benefits too.

I can understand your point on people who are selling won't be using the forums again, but the problem I could see happening if the cars & parts offered was open to non-goldies we could end up with anyone (including traders) coming in and abusing our good nature.

Yes people do try & abuse the system & sometimes things get missed (we Mods & the Admin Team are only human (despite the rumours ) and sometimes miss the odd post )

Really when it all comes down to it we are a community, and as I said before I'm sure most people feel far better about buying something off someone who has bothered to become part of that community rather than someone who is just a 'flybynight'

i dont think it would get abused for cars. for parts and stuff maybe?

if you were going to buy a car of an internet forum for £5k+ i dont think you'd buy a lexus of a lexus forum of a member with just 1 post? does that make sense? where as if the car for sale was from a long standing high post non-gold member you would feel that it was a genuine car from a genuine seller not some fly by night dealer.

Its not like ebay though, its just a advertising media, obviously people will go to the autotrader etc to buy a car (like i did) but it gives a nice way to advertised with more information and more pics.

And from the parts side id love that 1 random person come on whos not a 'forum junkie' whose got exactly the part I want within a reasonable distance and at a good price... thats a bonus for both gold and regular members.