Hi all just wondering how to get in contact with people who post things and diisapear a person in wanted for sale section has a Pye 101 TV for sale and I really need it but there is no way to contact them and they havnt been back since they put it up so is there a way to get there contact details again? Cheers

Unless the member unhides their e-mail address or puts contact details in their posts there's no way to go about it unless they come back and see replies from other members.

In this vein, many forums allow posters to optionally request emails when there have been posts (i.e. responses) to their threads. IIRC, such a capability has been proposed here before.

No pye w101 has turned up on gumtree since we spoke, or ebay.
I think the person lives in hornsby.
Not far from there is Bargain hunt Auction house. I'm wondering if he sent the TV there, the guy that runs the auction is called Mark and it might be worth a phone call to see if it was taken there. Its a bit odd putting the ad on but never coming back to check it
Pete

Its a bit odd putting the ad on but never coming back to check it

We've had quite a few "one post wonders" over the years. I think they list an item all over the web scatter-gun style and then forget where.

And plenty of Gumtree sellers forget to mark their items as sold.

I think a lot of people contact us here just to pick our brains on what TVs or Radios are worth and then they drop us like a hot potato and wack the item on ebay to make a buck , Ive seen it happen here before.Thats why I always say to them . We are collectors and the money is not the reason we collect them go look it up on ebay.

I think a lot of people contact us here just to pick our brains on what TVs or Radios are worth and then they drop us like a hot potato and wack the item on ebay to make a buck

Yes, that's certainly happened.

On the question of worth, my answer always is that, ultimately, it is decided by the buyer at the time that you must sell the item.

Yes Ive seen you post that and I agree with you 100 %. Have you noticed they will list the items on here and even put photos on and then the good members here will give their opinions on what its worth and they dont even bother to answer the post or say thank you , they just disapear

Yeah, just users.. tyre kickers and that bunch. I collect because I'm half mad lol, certainly not for money, I've spent more than I could hope of ever making a fraction back, I just love the things, valves.. The sound, the styling and the fact they remind me of the good old days when we manufactured our own stuff and did it very well. Vintage Pete seems to have the best clue for you here, I'd follow that up, otherwise you might be waiting a while, but then, good things come to those who wait.

There's a few solutions to the problem but none are really perfect.

One is to create two extra fields in the Wanted and For Sale forum, one for an e-mail address and another for a mobile phone number. Members posting ads would be required to offer at least one contact method and these methods would only be displayed to members who are signed in to help stop spam robots harvesting the information. The purchaser and the seller would then need to both click on a button to allow the seller's contact information to permanently be hidden and a 'SOLD' tag added to the OP. This is probably the better of these solutions but would take time to put on the site.

Another would be to make the advertiser's e-mail in their profile automatically visible once an ad is posted. This could be easy to implement but is clunky and difficult to enforce as the advertiser could simply hide it again in their control panel or whinge about their privacy being breached.

Another is to reverse the policy of disallowing contact details in the ads (Point 4 above the comments box). Despite the fact that some members do fail to observe this rule it is regularly flouted. I don't enforce it and simply leave it up to those members to take responsibility if they get spammed - at the end of the day it is their problem.

The last thing I can think of is forcing members to engage with the community (by posting a minimum number of comments in other forums first) before having the privilege of advertising in Wanted and For Sale. I don't really want to do this because it goes a long way to defeating the purpose of that forum. In many (maybe most) these people don't collect, repair or restore. They just have some unwanted stuff they want to shift to avoid the need to take it all to the tip.

Thanks Vintage Pete will do, yes Brad I think the last as ive had to do that for other forums you need to comment on 10 posts before you can create a new post. Just unfortunate because I really need that chassis.

Another would be to make the advertiser's e-mail in their profile automatically visible once an ad is posted. This could be easy to implement but is clunky and difficult to enforce as the advertiser could simply hide it again in their control panel or whinge about their privacy being breached.

I think that's the solution. In my experience on here, the great majority of new members don't even realise that their email addresses are hidden anyway and I'd be willing to bet that applies in every case to those 'oncers' we are talking about.

Re privacy, most places where you advertise something for sale require some form of contact information, and it's only logical after all.

As for a minimum count, given that many (most?) of the "oncers" who post stuff for sale have not a clue about the item, then what sort of posts would we expect to get from them? Other sites with that sort of policy often see a series of bland responses posted in threads simply to crank up the post count so that they can post in the for sale section.

Last week a guy emailed me in reply to one of my wanted Ads I Run on Gumtree regarding CRTs,
So he sends me a photo of the CRT and I phoned him and said , yep I will buy it, where abouts are you? I asked, and replied Dundas, so he said come and pick at up at 630pm , well I'm at Dee Why so I packed a lunch and put my passort in the car and headed to Dundas to buy the TV,
The house number he gave me was number 68 . Well when I got there the numbers in that street only go to 37! So I checked his email and it said 68? So I phoned him , no answer , so I hung around Dundas for an hour or so and then phoned him again.
No answer ,, for gods sake! So I drove all the way back to dee why and I sent him an email saying ,i couldnt find the street number ? What number did you say it was ?
He replied number 68, would you like to come at 730 am tomorrow he asked?
Well I checked on the internet and there was no 68!
So I sent a email stating this and I never got a answer!

I reckon Gumtree sellers are our version of USA Craigslist sellers, who are renowned for unreliable and idiotic ads and stupid responses to queries.

I had a similar incorrect address experience to Pete's, except that the seller answered his phone and I told him to stand on the street in front of his house. I eventually found him. He must have been dyslexic because the house number he gave me was a jumbled version of the correct one.

In a more recent Gumtree transaction, I could not get the seller to commit to a pickup time. Eventually after numerous SMS messages I discovered that I was dealing with a school kid and it wasn't until his father replied to me that I managed to schedule the pickup.

I've heard quite a few horror stories emanating from Gumtree sales and whilst I signed up to the site years ago, shortly after Ebay took it over, I've never used it. One thing I have very little time for is being stuffed around by people who don't deserve to own a computer.

Ebay is bad enough with buyers being too pedantic and not reading descriptions in the light they are given - one should remember that most of the radios we put on Ebay are a good 50-60 years old on average and buyers sometimes forget that when they go hell for leather in the final seconds of an auction.

I have about twenty radios I want to sell yet my problem is that I just don't want to go through all that crap again. I may well end up hanging on to them and run a sale at the next RadioFest instead. It'll give me an opportunity to sell some other miscellaneous bits and pieces that in reality I will never get the opportunity to put to good use. I'll give that some thought as the next RadioFest is a long time away.

At the other end of the spectrum, most of my buys and sells over the years have given me the chance to meet some quite decent people in the vintage radio fraternity.