Question for mods please...
Discussion
Why do you allow people to put advert's In the Classifieds without a price?. Not just once, but sometimes pages of car's with no cost next to them. Nothing more off putting than seeing so many pictures of car's without a price next to them. I think It's only right and proper that a price should be a requirement of any advert. It Is a fairly basic expectation. Any thoughts please. Thanks.
Hi Bill
We understand your frustration, it can be annoying having to scroll through unpriced ads when you order results by price. Having said that, the very fact that most people do just ignore unpriced ads is a sign that a lot of ads without prices are not like that intentionally. There are a few reasons why ads show without prices.
Firstly, and very often, people don't want a specific asking price, they 'float' cars to see what offers they pick up. On rarer cars or where people just aren't sure what to ask, this is a common strategy, and we have no problem with it.
Another major contributing factor is technical issues or lack of skill. Some people seem to struggle with the very simple form we use to create adverts, leaving out certain boxes. Some put the price in the wrong box (rather than the one clearly marked 'price'!) and some forget to put it at all. You also get some people who don't read the instructions written in several places that tell users to enter a number only (e.g. 2700 rather than £2,700), and this can cause technical errors that result in the user trying to 'solve' the problem by removing the price altogether (rather than just reading the instructions!).
Finally, some trade advertisers have their adverts automatically uploaded to the site using what we call a 'dealer feed'. This automatically uploads their ads usually across multiple sites, but sometimes they don't translate correctly onto our pages. If you see one dealer with lots of unpriced adverts, please click 'report to administrator' on one of the ads and explain the problem to us.
Finally, many sellers' (private and trade) seeming inability to understand the site's rules leads them to place wanted ads, servicing ads etc in the car categories. Again, if you click 'Report to Administrator' we will deal with these immediately.
Ultimately, it would be very difficult to stop all unpriced ads, as some are like that intentionally and with good reason, and many are like that accidentally. We'll certainly think about ways to help users navigate through these, but we're more interested in solving the problems that cause no price to show where one should rather than simply banning all unpriced ads, which would catch out some people who've done nothing wrong.
Regards
Simon
PH Classifieds Admin
We understand your frustration, it can be annoying having to scroll through unpriced ads when you order results by price. Having said that, the very fact that most people do just ignore unpriced ads is a sign that a lot of ads without prices are not like that intentionally. There are a few reasons why ads show without prices.
Firstly, and very often, people don't want a specific asking price, they 'float' cars to see what offers they pick up. On rarer cars or where people just aren't sure what to ask, this is a common strategy, and we have no problem with it.
Another major contributing factor is technical issues or lack of skill. Some people seem to struggle with the very simple form we use to create adverts, leaving out certain boxes. Some put the price in the wrong box (rather than the one clearly marked 'price'!) and some forget to put it at all. You also get some people who don't read the instructions written in several places that tell users to enter a number only (e.g. 2700 rather than £2,700), and this can cause technical errors that result in the user trying to 'solve' the problem by removing the price altogether (rather than just reading the instructions!).
Finally, some trade advertisers have their adverts automatically uploaded to the site using what we call a 'dealer feed'. This automatically uploads their ads usually across multiple sites, but sometimes they don't translate correctly onto our pages. If you see one dealer with lots of unpriced adverts, please click 'report to administrator' on one of the ads and explain the problem to us.
Finally, many sellers' (private and trade) seeming inability to understand the site's rules leads them to place wanted ads, servicing ads etc in the car categories. Again, if you click 'Report to Administrator' we will deal with these immediately.
Ultimately, it would be very difficult to stop all unpriced ads, as some are like that intentionally and with good reason, and many are like that accidentally. We'll certainly think about ways to help users navigate through these, but we're more interested in solving the problems that cause no price to show where one should rather than simply banning all unpriced ads, which would catch out some people who've done nothing wrong.
Regards
Simon
PH Classifieds Admin
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