Buying and selling on Bikers Oracle

[Schtum]

Ladies and gentlemen.....

Some members who, I suspect, are unfamiliar with the Bikers Oracle rules in respect of buying and selling have recently made posts offering items for sale, in response to members requesting parts. I have deleted these posts in line with rules which we operate here on BO in respect of buying and selling.

All trading of bikes, other vehicles, parts, accessories and miscellaneous items should take place in the forums of Oracle Central. The forums there are pretty comprehensive and you should be able to find one which is appropriate for the item which you wish to buy or sell.

In order to login to Oracle Central, you'll first need to Register on there, using exactly the same details which you used when you Registered here on BMW RS Club.

Registered Users can make Items Wanted posts in Oracle Central and similarly can reply to these posts made by other members, both Registered Users and Forum Sponsors. Items for Sale posts can be made by Forum Sponsors and Registered Users can also post on these threads if they wish to purchase the advertised item.

For further and full information about using the For Sale and Wanted forums on Oracle Central, please read Wiz's Posting Etiquette.

In order to upgrade your membership to Forum Sponsor, click on the Sponsor the Club link on the top left of the page. This will take you to the Bikers Oracle Shop where you can purchase your chosen level of Sponsorship. Sponsorship will allow you to access all the facilities both here on BMW RS Owners Club and on Oracle Central. Super Sponsorship will also allow you to access the full range of facilities on all the Bikers Oracle sites.

[Schtum]

We get asked a lot why you can only sell things in Oracle Central...

The main reason is to give you a much wider audience for selling your stuff. Lots of things that go up for sale are not bike-model specific, so it makes sense for the whole club to be able to view them. Even with model specific stuff, many members from other forums have second bikes or know someone who has the bike that you’re selling a part for, so it makes sense to have as many people see your ad as possible.

In order for the system to work however, we need to make sure that people get in the habit of looking sale items in one place. If there are no for sale or wanted ads here, then people will be a bit more inclined to look at the Central forum regularly. If ads start being posted on individual forums however, the system won’t work, so we decided that it mustn’t be allowed under any circumstances.

However, you CAN post your ad in Central and then put a link to it in your signature file. That’s much better than posting a single ad here because every time you post, people will see the link to your advert in your sig file AND it'll be seen on Central.

In addition, the central forum is different from this one, it has been specifically designed for trading. Just to help you get the best from it, here are some tips on the differences:

1. You do not have to be a sponsor to post wanted ads in the central forum, only for sale ads. We only allow Sponsors to post for-sale ads in any circumstances, just because we have to pay for servers somehow and if everything was free, there’d be no site for you to use.

2. The Central forum has a trader rating system like eBay, so you can see if the person you are dealing with is an all right geeza and likely to trade fairly with you.

3. Seeing new adverts that have been posted since your last visit is easy. just click the "New Posts" link on the top of the Central forum. That way you'll be able to see offers from other forums that may not be bike specific.

4. If you want, you can set up an alert so that any new posts in a specific forum are notified to you by email. Just go to the relevant forum, click the "Forum Tools" link and the "Subscribe to this forum" and every time a new post is made in that section, you'll get an email letting you know, so for example, you can subscribe to the Tiger section and every time there is a new post in that for sale section, you’ll be emailed a notification.

Any questions about posting adverts please use the forum contact form to send a message to admin.

[Schtum]

NB: Bikers Oracle Central Forum can be found here - http://central.bikersoracle.com/forum/forum.php