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Split Marketplace into US and UK/ Europe?

RedTomato

RedTomato

macrumors 601
Original poster
Mar 4, 2005
4,155
442
.. London ..
Hiya,

I'm from the UK and I've brought stuff through the MR Marketplace, and am considering selling other stuff there too.

I'd like to ask about splitting the Marketplace into USA and and UK [+Europe?).

I know MR has a 'forums are non-geographic' policy - I read the discussion about a MR Danish forum, but this case is a little different.

It would be nice to have a quick way of seeing all the UK marketplace threads.

Due to shipping, taxes etc, it's basically very difficult for UK / US people to buy stuff from each other, so I'm not interested in buying from or selling to USA people ( tho they are welcome to check out the UK stuff)

I've tried tweaking MR Google / Search to only show UK marketplace posts, but I don't seem able to make it work.

Currently, around 95% of marketplace threads are USA, but there's always a few UK ones, showing there is motivation and interest there. It is a bit of a struggle for us from UK to wade through all the USA threads.

A UK [+ Europe? ] only forum would help us from the UK to buy / sell more smoothly.

What do you think?

-RedTomato

EDIT: I've added +Europe as it's quite easy to ship stuff across the EU, tho visiting to inspect before buying is a bit harder..

PS. Every UK sale thread seems to get someone from the USA saying they want to buy it / making an offer, then giving up after working out the exchange / shipping rates :)
 
L

Lau

Guest
I can see where you're coming from, definitely, but I wonder if the solution might be to make it standard to put the area in the title of the thread instead? Then searching would be much easier, but you wouldn't have to split the forum.

UK FS iPod
US FT iMac
EUR FS iPod
AUS FS

etc...

And you would just be able to do an advanced search for "UK" in the title.

Actually, I'm quite happy to buy from the US, they just don't seem so taken on the idea of buying from me. Funny that...:D
 
RedTomato

RedTomato

macrumors 601
Original poster
Mar 4, 2005
4,155
442
.. London ..
Lau said:
I wonder if the solution might be to make it standard to put the area in the title of the thread instead?
Click to expand...

That's already an informal standard. Pretty much all the UK posts already have UK in the title (at least I don't see the ones that don't :)

Lau said:
And you would just be able to do an advanced search for "UK" in the title.
Click to expand...

I've already tried doing that, maybe I'm doing something wrong, but it doesn't seem to work for me. :(
 
L

Lau

Guest
RedTomato said:
I've already tried doing that, maybe I'm doing something wrong, but it doesn't seem to work for me. :(
Click to expand...

Ah, good point. I just tried it. I think it's the search engine — it has to be a certain length. That's annoying, because it would be a nice solution. :(
 
mad jew

mad jew

Moderator emeritus
Apr 3, 2004
32,191
9
Adelaide, Australia
I don't use the Marketplace because it makes me sneeze, but is there a message telling new thread creators to include their country in the thread title? I agree that a lot of the threads already have the location added, but if we had a message reminding people to add it, even more people might use this. Of course, finding by country still won't be easy, but it's a start. :)
 
Doctor Q

Doctor Q

Administrator
Staff member
Sep 19, 2002
39,789
7,526
Los Angeles
When this issue came up previously, we decided to ask people to indicate the country in the thread title. The rules currently suggest it as follows:
If you are selling only in a particular country or geographic area, you might include that in the title, e.g., FS/T: 17" eMac (U.K.)​
I don't think many people follow that guideline, however. I don't know if that is because they don't think of it, never noticed our suggestion, don't intend to limit their sales by their country, or another reason.

Do we have a mismatch between people who want to sell to anyone anywhere and those who want to buy only from countrymates?
 
RedTomato

RedTomato

macrumors 601
Original poster
Mar 4, 2005
4,155
442
.. London ..
In my limited experience, people who are happy to sell anywhere are generally professional traders, who of course, are banned from the Marketplace.

I feel that causal buyers/sellers generally prefer to stick within the same location / same legal system for ease of :

1. visiting to check out high value systems before buying.
2. familiarity with local / national payment systems for payment transfer.
3. familiarity with the local / national legal systems in case of conflict / dispute.

Even if MR implements a by continents system, most posts will still be in the USA forum, which anyone can check out.

I'm proposing splitting into USA / Europe but if you wanted greater coverage, then I'd support splitting Marketplace into:

USA-Canada-(+Worldwide Sales?)
Europe
South America
Australia-NZ-Japan

That would cover all the regions that I've seen MR members frequently post from.

Up to the mods really.
 
Mord

Mord

macrumors G4
Aug 24, 2003
10,091
23
UK
It would be nice to have a global marketplace for small things that can be posted everywhere and one for europe and one for the rest of the world.
 
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