by cosmicevan » Mon May 09, 2022 11:04 pm
I had forgotten about this thread, but I thought I should share some fun I had not too long ago with TB moderation...
I'm pretty active on TB in the effects forum and am fairly vocal about being super anti flipper. For better or worse, I have given people a hard time about charging even $20 more than MSRP and I've been moderated more than a handful of times for the way I approach the topic and those who openly flip stuff for profit.
In any event, on April 1st (cause deep down in my core, I'm evil and doing this on April 1st made things even more tricky to manage) I posted a bunch of Iron Ether pedals at $1k each and a double pedal for $2k. I had reached out to moderators several weeks prior asking if I could list my collection of Iron Ether pedals in response to Taylor (the builder) very publicly auctioning off a new Arcing Prisms that sold for ~$800. My premise (and I fully intended to follow through with this) was that I was upset at the 2ndary market and as such, I would sell my "collection" for this price and donate the profits above MSRP to Ukrainian war relief - to liquidate my pedals at market while sort of taking advantage of the flipper insanity and current climate and putting the grossness to something good. I offered to share proof of the charitable donations to justify this sudden shift in behavior. The moderators took several days to reply to me and said that collectively, the rules were to list my goods at any price I wanted, but I could not disclose my charitable intentions. As such, I felt that the most appropriate course of action was to list them on April 1st. I did this with the heading/subject saying NOT A JOKE and just had a photo of the 1/2 dozen pedals with the prices of $1k per pedal and a note that if you had questions on the sale that you should PM me and not reply to the thread...basically doing all I could to follow rules and ensure that the pending explosion would leave me without a scratch.
The thread got a bunch of replies within minutes and was immediately deleted and I was moderated with the reason "frivolous pricing"....but wait...I had evidence that this was allowed (even the wording on the thread was approved) as I had permission from moderation (because duh - I knew this would implode, how could it not). In any event, it turned into an admin explosion that took the better part of a week to resolve with several threads created by me and others in the know on this asking about it. I had also created a few threads immediately following my deletion based around "what is the highest markup allowed in the Talkbass classifieds" and the like...those were all frozen.
ultimately I went back and forth with admin (one who I knew personally from local NY get togethers in the past) and they created a cosmicevan ruling that was in place for JUST ME - that I could only charge 2 x MSRP. A bunch of BS. I listed only one pedal since the others would have insta sold at that price and frankly I never wanted to sell anything but would have for the point and to put some money in a positive place...but yeah. BS to the extreme.
It was kinda fun for a few days to cause the place to implode on itself, but as expected, they brushed it under the rug as best as possible as the solution.
•○• cosmically yours •○•