Hi. Perhaps this issue has been addressed already, but I couldn't find it. I recently posted some magic for sale and I came to realize that the posts get deleted after a short period of time. I was about to send the tracking number to a buyer and the post had been deleted. Fortunately, I wrote down his magic Café name and was able to send him a private pm, but we lost all the posts in between.

Is there a way to keep a post available until the transaction is completed?
If not, can you suggest a possible work around?

Thanks.

KJ

It would be great if the information in for sale posts could be retained for two or three weeks, rather than the 5 or so days currently being used as a metric for retention of posts.

Travel, work, family, etc can often get in the way of a transaction, and cause information contained in "for sale" posts to vanish before the actual completion of the sale.
Not a huge deal, but it would certainly give both buyer and seller a confidence building reference point, until the sale is formally completed?

We have no way of knowing when a transaction has completed to the satisfaction of both parties, so this is rather doubtful. The information you want retained should be included in the PM exchange where it can be monitored by the parties involved. The issue is conducting your sales discussion publicly rather than privately. It is also possible to screenshot the thread for each party’s records.

Yes KJ, this has been discussed many times. Items for sale posts are kept for 7 days from the date of the original post. A longer period of time used to be in place however after careful review of all the posts in the let's make a deal forum, it was seen that after 7 days, most posts receive no response and there's no point leaving those topics up just taking up space. Even if there are responses, after 7 days, those responses tend to be more of conversation rather than actual sale related posts. The let's make a deal forums also included those looking to buy.

Tom is correct. All the information concerning a transaction whether buying or selling should be in the PM exchange. Those pm's are not removed for 30 days so regardless of the the length of time a let's make a deal topic is up, no information should be lost. Also as Tom said, we have no way of knowing when a transaction is complete. I use the 7 day period or a post saying the item has sold or a bad post report as a basis of removing a thread. Not everyone is conscientious about telling us an item has sold so in theory, an item that has sold, could be showing for a considerable amount of time which would be misleading to other members that may be interested in purchasing the item.

The guideline for removing posts in Let's make a deal is explained in the rules so the deletion of a post should not be a surprise.

A Simple Solution:

Now and then, I have saved a personal copy of a PM conversation with a friend. I simply copied and pasted it into a WORD file, and saved that file on my computer.

The same thing could easily be done with a thread from the "For Sale" section, if you are the seller or the buyer.

Of course, that means that the responsibility is on the seller or buyer, and not on the Magic Café, to keep a record. Which is probably for the best.

- Donald

Thank you for the various comments. In the past my experience was that they stayed longer. In the future, I will initiate private threads with buyers.

KJ

Years ago when there was much more activity in Let's make a deal, the time frame for removal was 15 days. Overtime, it was seen that after 10 days, most topics received no activity and were simply taking up space. A few years later, after a careful review and reduced activity in Let's make a deal, it was determined that after 7 days, the activity dropped off which has resulted in the current 7 day time limit.

Regardless of the number of days allowed, removal was always done at that point. We remove the post either when reported as sold, posted as sold or when reviewed daily. That daily review is accomplished by me and I look at every post in Let's make a deal to insure everyone is treated equally.

Thanks for your input, Dave.

I would like to see an option to delete the post so that if an item is sold here or elsewhere, I can remove it. Forgive me if this exists, but I haven't found it

There is a process in place for deleting or editing a post. It's called "report this post" and is noted above every post. Using this allows us to ensure that the context of a topic is not changed and that the Café remains up to date.

Also, I personally review every post in every Let's make a deal forum every day and make necessary adjustments or deletions as necessary. If the "report this post" feature is not used, all that is necessary is for the seller to post "sold" and I'll take care of it. This process is explained at the top of every Let's make a deal forum.

Hello
I'm new here. I'm an amateur magician but I have just come into a VERY LARGE amount of new old stock of magic tricks; some quite expensive and hard to purchase now (MindPad 2, Sixth Sense 2 are among them). I'm not sure how to go about selling all this stuff and was hoping someone might be able to give me some clue as to the best way to go about it? I have at least 300 unopened magic DVDs/gimmicks to sell. Help!!!

There are sites like ebay, magic auction and I can't help you with those, but here on the Café, you must have 50 posts to gain access to our Let's make a deal forums where all sales must be conducted.