Berkeley Parents Network: About the Marketplace Newsletter

Berkeley Parents Network

About the Marketplace Newsletter

Berkeley Parents Network > Help & Frequently Asked Questions > Marketplace Newsletter

Policies

Guidelines for Buying and Selling

If you are buying
If you are selling
Multiple offers

Questions

Does everyone get the Marketplace at the same time?
How often is the Marketplace mailed?
Can you ask sellers not to use first-come first-served?
Can I post a request for donations?
How can I include a photo of the item I'm selling?
Selling or giving away old carseats
Is it legal to sell/give away used software?
Why do you allow pets to be given away for free?

What goes in the Marketplace newsletter?

The Marketplace newsletter is a way for parents to buy, sell, trade, or give away items directly to/from other parents on the list.

Household items for sale, trade or free, or wanted

Garage sales & moving sales

Requests for donations for non-profits

Marketplace Policy

The items that are sold in the Marketplace newsletter must be items that you acquired for your personal use and don't need anymore, not items you are selling as a way to make money.

Marketplace postings should conform to the policy on advertising and commercial use. In particular, the newsletters cannot accept advertising and they may not be used to run a business.

Marketplace is not a venue for businesses to sell items to Parents Net subscribers, or to buy items at a good price in order to re-sell them later. The Marketplace is meant as a convenient way for parents to buy and sell household items directly from/to other parents. When we discover that someone is posting items for a business, or buying items for a resale business, we unsubscribe the address.

Marketplace is not e-bay. We don't accept postings where people bid on your item and the highest offer gets the item. Sellers should set a price and stick to it.

The privacy policy applies to the Marketplace newsletter, just the same as for all the other newsletters. Members are reminded that they may not send unwanted email to someone who posts to Marketplace, such as complaints about a posting, or anything that could be construed as advertising for a business.

We ask people to please keep in mind that the Berkeley Parents Network has no control over the transactions that arise from Marketplace postings between members. We have no way to guarantee that prices posted in the Marketplace are fair, or that the condition of items for sale is accurately reported. We cannot regulate the negotiations that take place between buyer and seller, or the etiquette that is practiced on either side. While we offer the guidelines below, we must give this warning: Let the buyer beware!

Guidelines for Buying and Selling

If you are buying

If you make an arrangement with the seller to come look at it or purchase their item, stick to your agreement. If something comes up, please phone or email to say you aren't coming. The seller probably has other interested buyers.

Don't expect to get a reply to your inquiry to a seller. If you don't hear back, it's probably because the item is already gone. Many sellers receive dozens of responses and will not have the time to reply to everyone.

Don't count on being able to ask lots of questions or look at it first or think about it for a few days. If it's a really good deal, there will be dozens of other parents who are also interested, and many of them will tell the seller they will take the item sight unseen.

If you are selling

Be specific - include the size, color, brand, etc. so that potential buyers don't need to ask you for details before deciding whether they want your item.

Be prepared for hundreds of emails or phone calls if you are offering something desirable for free or at a great price. A free climbing structure last year had 237 responses.

Be honest with the buyers about your intentions. Don't tell people you'll hold something for them if what you really want to do is to sell to the first buyer who shows up.

Don't post it if you are not sure you really want to sell it at the price you gave in the post. It isn't fair to buyers if you change your mind about selling, or about the price you want.

Tips from subscribers:

Dec 2003

In response to the Marketplace Message from Members about callers not showing up, I'd like to share some info about selling items via the Marketplace newsletter. I call/e-mail everyone who responded to let them know when they can come by, and that the item would be sold to the first person who shows up/buys it (i.e. first-come-first-served).

I too was frustrated with people who called but never showed up even though I have only sold a few items, and I finally gave up on the idea that the 1st opportunity for buying should be offered to the 1st caller (or the 2nd caller when the 1st didn't show up, and so on.) Instead, I now offer everyone the same opportunity and hopefully the seriously interested one(s) will try and show up ASAP.

Multiple offers: first-come first served?

First-come first-served is not always the fairest way to choose a buyer when you have multiple offers for an item you're selling. Keep in mind that many parents don't read incoming email immediately, and some subscribers may receive their Marketplace several hours after others because of delivery delays at their email service. We suggest that you hold off making a decision about whom to sell to for half a day. Then think about what criteria you want to use in choosing a buyer.

Some sellers are looking for a student family or low-income family or non-profit organization when they have something to give away or sell at a good price. Some sellers choose a buyer because their email offer was friendly-sounding or humorous. Some people are looking for someone who can pick up the item immediately. Others choose someone they know, someone who works where they work, or a family that lives nearby. Often sellers will skip over emails that ask for more information if they've received offers to buy the item outright. We think all of these methods are legitimate, and it also fine to use first-come first-served, or just pick someone randomly. We leave this up to the seller.

Another option suggested by a subscriber is to send email to everyone who expressed interest in your item, telling them when they can come by, and that you will sell your item to the first person who shows up and buys it. This takes care of the problem of people who make an appointment to look at your item, and then fail to show.

Prohibited items

In general, we follow eBay's policies for items that can't be sold, traded, given away. For example, we can't accept postings for prescription drugs or for items that are not lawful. See http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/items-ov.html for eBay's policies.

However, we do accept postings for some things that eBay doesn't allow because of our "local community" nature. As is the case for all other items in Marketplace, these must be items that you acquired for your personal use, not items you are selling as a way to make money. Examples that are OK: concert tickets that you bought for yourself and can't use now, and the family dog that you turned out to be allergic to.

Questions

How often is the Marketplace mailed?

Please see Marketplace posting form for info about when the Marketplace newsletter is mailed.

Does everyone get the Marketplace at the same time?

Marketplace is mailed to everyone on the BPN list at the same time, within a few seconds from the beginning to the end of list. However, we have no control over when your email service provider delivers your mail. Some email providers have a history of holding up delivery of BPN newsletters for as long as 24-48 hours. Sometimes, a BPN newsletter is blocked entirely and not delivered, because of spam policies at the email provider. See Delivery Problems for email services that do this. We have no control over this, sorry!

Can you ask sellers not to use "first-come first-served" in fairness to the people at the end of the list?

See the policy about Multiple Offers above. Here's a tip: don't assume that an item is gone just because you are reading the Marketplace a day or two after it was mailed out. Sellers often do not make an agreement about selling right away, and it also happens that agreements fall through and sellers are looking for another buyer. We know someone who recently obtained a free play structure two days after the Marketplace was mailed, because the original buyer had changed her mind.

How can I include a photo of the item I'm selling?

We don't accept attachments for newsletter postings. However, you can put your photo on a website, and provide the URL in your posting. Check the newsletter for examples of this. Or, you can offer to email a photo to interested people.

Selling or giving away old carseats

Please be aware that that you should not recycle, give away or sell a carseat that is past its expiration date. If you are posting a car seat to the Marketplace, please include the expiration date in your post. Expiration dates vary among manufacturers, but you can usually find the information in the user manual online. The expiration has to do with the integrity of aging plastic parts, not how well you care for or how heavily you use the seat. More info here.

Is it legal to sell/give away used software?

In general it is OK to sell software that you bought orginally for your own personal use. Under the copyright laws, the owner of a particular copy of a copyrighted work (a book, a video, a piece of software) is generally entitled to resell the particular copy they own. However, some items are restricted by licensing agreements and are not legal to sell. Therefore they can't be offered on the Marketplace. We follow ebay's policy (http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/hub.html). The following items cannot be sold:

Bundled software (programs that came installed on your computer) cannot be sold separately but it is OK to sell the computer with the software on it.

Academic versions of software can't be sold unless you are still a student/faculty person, because academic versions were usually obtained for a much lower price that non-academic versions based on their use in an academic setting.

Software you didn't buy usually can't be sold. Examples include copies & backups, unauthorized versions, downloaded copies, promotional and beta versions.
Licensing agreements vary; check your license to make sure.

Why do you allow pets to be given away for free?

Every few months we get a letter like this:

"You should not allow people to list "free" cats. Without extremely thorough screening the animal is potentially exposed to being used as pitbull bait, sold to a research laboratory, or worse. Please, is there some way these free animal announcements can be stopped? I do not consider it an appropriate use of the newsletter. "

Many families have or want pets, and it is useful and appropriate for the Parents Net to provide families with a way to find new homes for their pets, or to adopt a pet from another family.

The Parents Net is a private, closed newsletter, so the implication in the letter above is that one of the parents who subscribes to the Parents Net might be reading the Marketplace newsletter in order to get free cats to use as pitbull bait or sell to a lab. That level of distrust of fellow parents on the list indicates a basic misunderstanding of how the Parents Net works. The success of the Parents Net depends on us trusting each other with sensitive information about our children and families. If we don't even trust each other to not harm animals, then how can we support each other in parenting? We make the assumption that the parents who read the Marketplace can be trusted with free pet ads, and we encourage and support these kinds of postings.

Please take note: a couple of times in the past, people who object to free pet ads have contacted the people who posted them to voice their objection. This is strictly prohibited under the Privacy policies for the newsletter. See http://parents.berkeley.edu/FAQ/rules.html#privacy. We take the privacy rule very seriously and, in order to protect others on the list, will unsubscribe members who are unable to follow the privacy rules.

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