Two dozen posts and a week and a half have gone by with no response from the OP. I've got to wonder did cOop3r just quietly walk away which would make any further speculation moot. Sad situation all around...off to greener pastures?

 

While a number of NAM members have posted their opinions about another contributing member being banned from posting on the Marketplace part of the forum, no one from NAM has commented. No rationale for the banning has been stated. No dialog about why the ban was imposed. No consideration about allowing this member to be "unbanned" has been communicated. In short, nothing has changed. There is nothing new for the OP to respond to.

He may be gone for ever - a loss to NAM members in my view, or he may just be quietly waiting for someone within the NAM organization to respond.

 

NAM Guidelines are fairly clear and while my actions require no further explanation to you or anyone else I will for the benefit to those members who fail to realize the three sides to every "story".

What is also obvious are the complainers here have not even the consideration to purchase an Alliance Membership....and yet have over 1000 posts in NAM...Maybe they think their tiresome lamenting here is contribution enough....? Some contribution.

Vendors who pay IB to sell used MINI parts tend to lose business when folks like c0op3r purchase used MINI's part them out and sell those individual parts in our marketplace. IN response to that complaint activity we have taken action against several accounts with their threads temporarily moved to our Under Review Section until such time that a vendor agreement is reached.

That said, this was c0op3r's post in the Marketplace for those who have not read it. His intentions are more than obvious.

Secondly I will not lack or tolerate disrespect to other members. Rules here are the same ( I would hope ) for your own home when someone visits you. c0op3r can cry about the minor infractions he received for the lack of respect all he wants but it was deserved based upon this comment to Joseph. And while Joseph may not be a MINI owner now, he is a respectful member of this forum with an active membership and is welcome back here anytime with or without a MINI.

Quote by c0op3r
And for anyone else here who seems to disagree with my actions well, there are other places you can hang your hat.

Have a Happy New Year!

-Dave

 

Yet another member who apparently skim read our Site Guidelines....it's just like an Owners Manual Flash. Most questions about anything are more accurately answered through research and not the venue you peruse here in this "thread".

 

Redact by OP. Reconsidered to be bellicose.
I would suggest, however a quick review of the term "Open Forum".

 

I also have been accosted by you, I still have yet to hear back from anyone on this site... I respected your request and followed your instruction with no response! All I wanted to do was help fellow mini enthusiasts build their car with quality parts at reasonable prices.

Guess everyone wants to dip their wick in the honey pot these days!

 

Ha! Interesting choice of words

Operating your business under the radar in the shadows selling used car parts in our Marketplace only serves to OCCOST our paying vendors and those members here who lagitimately sell off parts of their modded MINI.....

If no one has contacted you back ( possibly due to holidays ) try emailing again....

 

Where did the other posts go?

 

Hello Gray Raven,
You have shown us the quote from Cooper that I agree was disrespectful and I agree with you. Maybe a temporary suspension from the NAM site is an appropriate penalty? Say, a month or two? Regarding the sale of parts at decent prices to fellow NAM fans, why does the intention as to why the person selling parts bought their parts car matter? He still is an amateur and MINI enthusiast. The businesses you mentioned that pay NAM wouldn't seem to be deprived of much by a fellow MINI owner selling parts occasionally, right? Anyway, I respect you for holding folks to a certain level of politeness, that is sadly almost a pathetically lost characteristic in most people's communications these days; a line has to be drawn at some point, and it is your role to do so, IMHO.

 

For those seeking clarification on the Vendor part of things there are site guidelines that establish the basis, and there are Vendor Guidelines that Vendors must also abide by, which explain things in more detail.

We will start with the site Guidelines:
https://www.northamericanmotoring.com/guidelines
In relation to the Marketplace, the post made is an ad, and ad is short for advertisement, by placing an advertisement in the marketplace you are indeed advertising. But just how this applies is marginally vague, and so after quite some time the Vendor Guidelines were added several years ago to add clarification, which is provided here:
https://www.northamericanmotoring.com/vendorguidelines
The purpose of the marketplace has always been to provide a place for members of the community an area to allow enthusiast to enthusiast sales, as a way to help members of the community further their passion for MINIs.

But as the saying goes, give an inch and take a mile. From time to time such a resource made for enthusiasts gets abused.

• Some people decide that they can flat out advertise in the marketplace, ignore the Vendor requirement, and just put links to their businesses webpage.
• Then we have some that decide they don't want the rules to apply to them, or they've been caught just putting the links in, so they decide to put an ad up for an item they sell, and they make it look like one and just keep bumping the thread selling more and more and more, feedback and posts in the thread like "only a few more in stock!" get these folks called out.
• Then there's those that put up an new ad each time the item sells. And with these, if you're doing well enough then why start your own website that's only more overhead, let NAM foot the bill for it and drive the traffic to you.
• Then there are those that start off having a spare part or two, or their MINI got in a wreck and they decide to part it out rather than take the check from the insurance company, realize the profit to be had then repeat the process over and over again, buying minis from the salvage yard and parting them out time and again running a low stock business. Or the person that makes a part for their own modification, realize a market for it get some extra supplies and start selling it in the market place, some people sell the 2 spare they had with extra supplies dozens of times.

There comes a time where repeated sales of the same items or types of items brings the interest of an individual from a member to member interaction with mutual benefit like purpose of the marketplace into a Vendor to member interaction, where one party has a specific interest in making a profit off of the community. The people in the situations in the list are not enthusiasts trading mods takeoffs and spare parts, these are people that have gone from an enthusiast interest in the marketplace, to retailing products through the marketplace, and they are either overtly violating the guidelines or deceiving members to avoid the guidelines. Such situations hurt the members of the forum that are buying by making it difficult to tell what they are dealing with, they make it much harder for legitimate enthusiast individuals trying to sell a spare part to fund their next mod to sell their item because they now have unfair competition, it makes it harder for the Vendors that have an agreement and must abide by higher standards in the Vendor guidelines, to compete with those that wish to skirt the regulations. Because this is something that hurts the community at large, it's something that we enforce to ensure transparency to provide as level a playing field as possible for everyone. I don't care if someone's an Alliance Member or not, you can't purchase immunity from the guidelines. We're not here to dig into people's book keeping, but when we do recognize patterns (and believe me we have far more people reported than we can actually find a pattern or clear evidence for this on), we do approach individuals and in some cases place sanctions depending upon the severity of that particular situation, and usually delete the post advertisement that's not consistent with the guidelines until and agreement is in place. At which point a dialogue between that person and Internet Brands, and what the scope of the operation is and the goals are, an agreement can be put in place. AutoZone is a different situation than someone making a few spare parts in their garage on the weekend, everyone I've dealt with at IB understands that, once and agreement is in place the removed posts can be restored, the username is in purple and the User title defaults to Vendor and then it can be clear to site users who they are dealing with. As a side note, I worked with IB years ago to develop a program specifically addressing Vendors with smaller scopes of operation, so that you don't have to be a big company to be able to participate as a Vendor.

Within the marketplace, people attempting to skirt the rules and fly under the radar have been tripping up more and more over the last year. Additionally switching to the current marketplace that doesn't delete old ads, makes it easier to track such history and take action to protect the members of the community.

That should help to clear up what does and does not make a Vendor. What happened here was c0op3r described in one of his own posts the extent to which he was operating as a business, taking the scenario of a few extra given in his first post and turning it into a repeat endeavor with making a consistent (although his post did emphasize small) profit through his effort to obtain merchandise, and resell it as a retailer on a regular basis. In this same post the respect guideline was ignored and personal attacks (name calling) was directed toward other users, garnering a response for the respect issues. As part of the guideline explanation, realizing the perhaps small scale but vendor situation nonetheless c0op3r was given the information to start that discussion directly with people that could help him, get an agreement in place proportional to the scope of his activity. Instead of doing that, he started this thread.

And since it was posted as the premise for being able to start this thread, I do not "consider stating the facts" to include
or
And in this regard the site guidelines are quite clear
As far as I am concerned personally, this website is about the community and if you have the level of regard for the other members here that you are unable to address them without attacking them and you don't wish to be here, the internet is a big enough place you're welcome to log out at any time. If you decide you can play by the few simple rules we have (that many have been active over a decade without any issues with), feel free to log back in.
And as the administrator, having reviewed the actions of the moderator and being able to go look at the actual post, the response for the personal attacks was inline with the guidelines that spell out the sanctions for such behavior. Just because you may only have one person interact with you does not necessarily mean that it is only one person looking at, having discussion about or evaluating the situation. I will not be re-posting the original comment that started the course of actions for this whole thread because to do so would be implicit in identifying and furthering the personal attack. However if after all of this you are still reading the thread and have questions about the guidelines my PM box is open or you can fill out the contact us form.

Since there are a number of those that feel this thread is merely an excuse for them to attack and bait a moderator into retaliating against them I am going to lock the thread before their disregard goes any further, even though a few of them have returned to the site to only explicitly request they be shown the door.