BST slowdown

[clinkinfo]

At least you are getting offers! I’ve gotten not a single PM on the last 2 BST postings I’ve had. Not a single inquiry, with pricing that is stupid low.

[MakersMarsh3]

Definitely feel that it's lost some it's value, No feedback makes it way harder

I think a lot of people have left the site because of all the issues in the last 6 months

 

Havent had much luck selling my stuff, even with a lot of interest on the bay, but I still check cause there are some great deals and sellers

[GeorgeHWB]

If you actually want to sell something for a reasonable price take it to ebay. It's worth the 10% final value fee. Many times over.

 

I recently sold about 5 high end putters. DId not even waste my time making a BST listing here. Not worth it.

 

The Gen 2 roll out has ruined the site. Sad but true.

[dcmidnight]

The BST is completely free for you to use - how has it lost value? Can something that's completely free to use lose value?

In all seriousness, I've recommended to anyone that will listen that they leave feedback in users profiles by writing a comment. But instead of doing that, people usually just want to whine about how annoying it is. OK - but something is better than nothing. So, keep doing nothing I guess if that makes you feel better.

Not including feedback on Day 1 was a complete disaster of a decision. The idea that there were not a set of showstopper items that had to be in place before the plug was pulled remains ludicrous and feedback would have been in my Top 3 showstopper items. But again - "site mods" have nothing to do with that. That's a prioritization decision made by site ownership - or the developers hired and managed by site ownership. Either way, your anger is displaced if you think that was on us.

But - all that being said - this kind of happens every single year around this time. There's no golf on TV. Its cold or snowing most places. No one is playing golf or talking about golf or selling golf stuff so the "sky is falling" posts start coming out.

[MakersMarsh3]

Your anger is just displaced pard, thanks for the laugh this am

[MakersMarsh3]

People are saying it's better to sell on the bay now, and that's pretty crazy!

[dcmidnight]

Yeah but - honest question...is it that crazy? I can think of a handful of reasons its always been better to sell on ebay - its really not that crazy when you factor everything in.

But I digress.

[MakersMarsh3]

This site was 1st choice for a lot of awesome people selling a lot of awesome stuff over the years

People would rather donate 10% to eBay which is sad

its my opinion, and seems to be the same as a lot of others. Don’t know why you’re taking offense to that

[dcmidnight]

I'm taking absolutely no offense. I asked an honest question and I'm just stating that as someone with 150 feedbacks here and over 400 on ebay that I think - as a seller - I think there are reasons that its always been easier to sell on ebay. I dont look at it as donating 10%, I look at it as paying 10% for the service of an infinitely bigger audience and virtually none of the grief.

This has nothing to do with the site change, like I said, its been that way for me for over 10 years. If I list a good priced item for $100 - shipped - here, I'm lucky if that item sells for $75-80. And thats probably after days or weeks of weeding through lowball PMs, garbage PMs, requests from a hundred tire kickers that have no interest in the item, dealing with new users who sign up just to send PMs they have no interest in following up on etc. All of that. If its a good priced item for $100 and I say NO TRADES - I'm absolutely getting offers for $40 or trades for some random crap in their basement. If I ship from VA to the West Coast, that eats a huge chunk out of my $ out of that $80 or so. Same item on ebay can sit there forever, I can add the actual shipping cost on and after the 10%, I'm still doing OK even if I have to take an offer for say $90.

I dont think is sad so much as its just reality of the two markets? Dunno. I know some other guys here that sell a great deal on ebay for the same reasons so I know I'm not the only one. If I'm putting up something for sale on BST, I'm always listing it on ebay at the same time.

Anyway, have a good one.

 

[thevaporz]

Even with the new online sales tax laws being enforced people spent $9.4 BILLION on Cyber Monday. But they aren't buying used golf equipment on a forum like GolfWRX, especially during winter. Unfortunately we won't see any worthwhile secondary market activity until April for The Masters and tax refund time.

[jj9000]

You're looking at the BST value though a monetary value lens. If only looking through a monetary lens, sure, free is better than nothing.

The folks that are suggesting a BST slowdown are looking at the BST through a different value lens.

The folks that used to be power users don't list as much, don't sell as much, and the BST buyers don't buy as much. Hell, you've got several guys on this thread suggesting they haven't even bothered to try to sell high-end putters on the BST and that they'd rather pay the fees to eBay b/c they don't even get nibbles on the BST. That's the loss in value they're talking about. What used to be a vibrant BST with cool gear listed every day has slowed down so much that the power users are listing (and selling) elsewhere because their gear doesn't sell here.

Tell you what, you can use me as a test case. Take a look and count my Year over Year BST listings for the last 5 years. Then overlay the number of my BST listings in 2019. There's a definite slowdown on the Sell side on my end, and we haven't even addressed the fact that I'm buying much less as well.

So, the candle is being burned from both ends. Less Sellers listing items, and less buyers buying items. When you have issues on both the Sell side and the Buy side, the BST loses value.

I fully understand it's not your fault, but, it's unfortunate that we're even having this discussion.

[DFS PFD]

Wrx update has fixed my clubho ways, no longer buy/sell on bst and despise the bay. So maybe a blessing in disguise.

[mister2cool]

ROFL.. I have to agree as well.

I had almost 600 feedbacks on the old platform, and have very much removed myself from BST even before the upgrade. At one point, there was a flood of new people, bought their way on here only to use BST for buying and mostly selling. They do insanely rude lowball offers, and judging by a sharp increase of disputes, selling wasn't done quite well either. It got to the point that it wasn't even worth the trouble for me to make up listing anymore, plus I had been busy with a baby. Then the platform change, no feedback system means I have no idea who I am dealing with, and there was no way i would take a chance on that.

But yeah.. I have been hoing much less now..

[bking556]

As a newbie to this forum, it sounds like I missed the good ol days in terms of BST. I have purchased a couple items and asked the sellers how to leave feedback, but after viewing this thread it appears they are out of luck. It's too bad because honest people deserve to be rewarded with positive feedback. Instead, we'll only hear if someone burns someone.

[GoIrish17]

Just as an aside, there is some great conversation in this thread. This is how it's supposed to be done.

 

Thank you Midnight for having an honest discussion on this subject.

[Schnee]

I used to be a fairly prolific ho. Not as crazy as some, but I definitely held my own.

The change in platform totally extinguished my desire to ho. I’ve bought and sold twice since the changeover and it was small, menial items. This coming from a person with almost 200 feedback here, so more like 300 transactions

Its indicative of a change in the site as a whole. I frequent the instruction section a ton. I’ve got a thread that’s 169 pages long with 600,000 views. I used to post an update and 5-10 people would respond in a few hours. Now, I’m lucky if 1-2 respond in a day and it’s posters I have a history with

There’s less topics and less responses. It’s irrefutable. In the BST, we all know how items used to drop to the second page in an instant if you didn’t have a competitive price and a solid listing. Now, it takes much longer to get kicked to the second or third page. When listing, you just don’t get bites like you used to.

The site owners can tell us that traffic is in line with an average transition of this size, but we know it’s just not true. Maybe they’re getting unregistered users to visit the site, but it sure isn’t people participating like they used to. Long term posters have left in large numbers, and there’s just not the same vibe here. It’s a real shame because I feel WRX is a special place. I’ve tried the other golf forums in the past, but they don’t hold a candle to what WRX was and can be.

The core of this site is a streamlined, straightforward platform for hardcore gear junkies and golf nerds to interact. There’s too much emphasis on new editors and flashy new features. Can we just get a dang feedback system and some transparency??! Telling us it’s months out is ridiculous. Vanilla Forums was a mistake and instead of taking steps to correct it , it feels like things are just being strung along while minor fires get put out and other five alarm fires continue to rage.

Im not trying to be harsh to the mods and owners, but don’t treat us like idiots. We’re intelligent people that frequent this place because it’s a respite from the nonsense in our daily lives. We come here because we want to, not because we have to. So level with us and get this place fixed!

[GoIrish17]

I can certainly see some merits to both sides of the BST vs. eBay debate. I think where I come out on it is - I'm almost entering the "nostalgia stage" of my thoughts on the BST, and I am raging against the dying of the light. I can remember when the BST was always my go-to, eBay was where the stragglers went. Now, if I list something on BST it's almost just a token for a few hours before I go to bed to see if there's anyone here that would like first dibs before I list on eBay tomorrow and forget all about the stagnant BST listing I have. This used to be the only place I'd consider selling something that was highly custom, rare, or desirable, because I knew the folks that hang out here knew their stuff and wouldn't ask stupid questions or made insulting offers. Now, it's worse here (not that it's gotten better on eBay).

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I long for the "good old days" and don't want to see the BST die. But, I feel like I am watching that happen. I'm glad a mod here finally took the time to join in the discussion. I sincerely hope the site ownership sees value in a group of members who show this much passion about a large area of their site. I hope they at least pay some mind to opinions that are shared in discussions like this. I say all this with the utmost respect.

[mister2cool]

I just want to say that even though BST has slowed down but it's probably far from dying. Before the glory days of BST, this was a smaller site with a lot less traffic, and it's the core group of user who got the site, including BST, to the glory days of what it was. As the site grew, the mix of user base changed, BST wasn't what it use to be long before the platform change. There's no one to blame because it is how it is when user base expands. Now the lack of feedback system just made it pretty much unusable, especially in today's environment where most of our opinions come from others' reviews.

I understand that it was a necessity to change platform as we simply outgrew the old system, and I am totally fine if it's going to be a while before feedback system comes back. Perhaps during this time the flaky ones can get weeded out and it would turn out to be better off for everyone who's hardcore and pure enough to stick around.

[Tzoid]

Sellers price items high initially because they expect to get Low Balled . There is also a Moderator that acts like it's his Job to act like the Gestapo and Police sellers when they bump their posts and lower the prices. The BST on this Forum has in my opinion gone down the drain. The sellers ratings are gone and the other barriers makes it much more difficult to sell used gear on WRX.

[GeorgeHWB]

It's not a donation. It's a business decision to pay 10% to a company that will put my listings in front of thousands of interested buyers.

 

A couple of weeks ago I sold a Scotty Cameron Studio Stainless Newport 2 (350 gram) putter for over $500 on ebay. I probably would have had to settle for $275 here and I would have waded through a half dozen low ball offers of $150. Listing here would waste my time and cost me money. I'll gladly pay eBay their service fee. It's worth it compared to wrx.

[MakersMarsh3]

Understood

I think that’s what a lot of us are saying. It used to be a better marketplace to me

It used to be my 1st choice. And stuff barely made it to the bay. Now it’s the other way around for me as well

[Viktoryred3]

Sheesh now that you mention it, I’ve been cured too

[third-times-a-charm]

I still ho, but only on callawaypreowned and sometimes ebay

 

I've listed a few things here on the old site, they never sold, so I stopped and I dont take goods payments so I dont sell here with the new rules.

 

ymmv I guess.

 

WRX also did a big push just before the old site went down to promo their classifieds on insta and email, but they stopped doing that.

 

Also theres been a large influx of scammers lately.

[blink3665]

I have almost fully transitioned from being a club-ho to being a shoe-ho. (actually more like a shoe hoarder since I dont actually sell them.) BST was my go-to to buy and sell. It was always a bit of a pain to decrease photo file size and make a solid ad, but it was worth it. Now, it's just not worth my time. If I need to sell something I find value in what ebay offers for 10%. Just a quick point and shoot with my phone and a mediocre description. I cared about the wording in my ads, the format, and the overall quality on the BST. Now if I need to sell something I don't bother with any of that stuff and but it on ebay.
@dcmidnight , I appreciate you coming into this thread. If anything it's nice to know that there is a mod who is willing to engage in discussion.

[mister2cool]

You don't take goods payment? That was the rule at the old BST as well.

[third-times-a-charm]

Was it? Well, moot point either way.

 

Yeah I dont go goods payments due to the amount of buyers who abuse it. I have 100% feedback all over the internet so I dont have issues.

[thevaporz]

^That explains why you never sold anything. 100% feedback all over the internet, sure buddy. Where?

[third-times-a-charm]

lol you serious?l heatware, ebay, ar15, the hull truth, rolexforums....I BST much more expensive things than golf clubs. How can you NOT be a great seller with something as simple as golf clubs and accessories?

[thevaporz]

And you never used PayPal Goods & Services payments? All "gifts/friends/family"?

[GoIrish17]

You buy and sell Rolexes using only friends & family? Are you insane?