What / Where Should I Buy?

Adapted from the IMPORTANT: Rules & Guidelines. Please Read. sticky by StOo.

With the increase in traffic in these forums, I thought it would be best to riterate some of the trading rules, as seen in the stickies in the Site Discussion forum. Please be aware of these rules and guidelines before posting in this forum.

New Members & Trading

As mentioned here, and here, new members are currently not permitted to trade (ie. Buy/Sell/Ask for price checks) in the forums until they have been registered for three calendar months. If you wish to purchase from these forums, please view the Online Vendors thread, click on a banner, or wait the required three calendar months.

Edit: In the meantime, it may be useful for new members to be acquainted with theTrading Forum's Rules & Policies, as it will mean less reading later on, and also less work for the administration team.

Can't see the Trading Forums?

If you have been registered for three calendar months, and still cannot see the Trading Forums, please be patient and wait for the forum maintenance to be run, as this will update your status. As mentioned here, forum maintenance should be run every couple of days, so your waiting period should not be a long one.

Before Posting Questions...

Is your question a Where To Buy type of question? Is it a Which Store Is Cheapest type of question? There's a saying; Give a man a fish and he eats today. Teach a man to fish and he can feed himself for the rest of his life.

There's an announcement at the top of this forum, an Online Vendors thread, which tells you many, if not all, of the sites of Australian retailers and price comparison sites which may help you out. It's quite useful to go through to compare prices and the like.

This is a very good place to start your quest for better prices, and where to buy products. If you still cannot find what you're after upon reviewing this thread, do a search on the topic and see if that yields any results. If you don't find what you're after, then please feel free to make a new thread asking the question, but please, do some of your own research before asking questions.

Edit: There's also an Online Games Vendor thread to help you in your pursuits of newer, better and more enjoyable gaming.

Edit: This is a funny flash movie about posting. Whilst it wasn't written specifically for OCAU or these forums, it does contain some helpful hints about posting.

Making Offers

The "What/Where Should I Buy?" forum is not a place to offer your goods to members who are enquiring about a place to purchase specific items. If members were after second hand items, they would be posting a thread in the "Wanted To Buy" forum. Please do not offer your items to members who are asking where to buy. If you do have an item to offer, you could send a Private Message to offer your goods.

Vendor Verdicts

I have recently noticed an increase in users making, and/or requesting, Vendor Verdict type responses in this forum. For those of you who are currently not aware of the situation, please see here, namely this section:

The "What/Where Should I Buy" is not intended to be a surrogate for 'Vendor Verdicts', please stick
to the topic, and do not provide 'reviews' of vendors in this forum. Any VV type posts will be removed,
and the forum may be closed again if the new rules are abused.

If you repeatedly break this rule, as a lot of you have done in the past, then you will be recommended for a ban. The admin team have been lenient enough on this, and it's now time to crack down on it. Beware, or be banned.

Mod Chips

The discussion of mod chips is to be limited to their features only, not where they are sold, nor how much they will cost, or how to install them yourself. As Wolfy has mentioned in another part of the forum, Quote: The current legal status of console 'mods' is not for OCAU to decide, nor is it relevant. You may not sell items of this sort on the OCAU forums.

I would like to bring this sort of policy here, to ensure that OCAU does not happen to come under legal fire from any agency. Please be aware that any discussion on, and pertaining to, the sale of mod chips is no longer allowed, and as such, will be deleted.

Linking to eBay

If you find an item on eBay that someone is asking help in finding, then linking to the item is permitted provided that you don't link to the item numerous times in multiple threads. Please remember that this isn't a forum to sell your own items, but rather a forum to guide members in their choices, so please don't turn it into a "For Sale on eBay" forum, and only link to eBay sales where necessary.

Cross-Posting

If you already have a thread in another forum asking for an item, eg. the WTB forum, please don't make another thread to ask here at the same time. Whilst you do get the additional coverage of two forums at once, it's terribly inconsiderate to others, whose threads are obviously no less important to OCAU than yours. So please, a little courtesy in this area would be much appreciated.

Bumping

When you post a reply in a thread, it "bumps" to the top of the list and your thread stays on the first page. This means that it gets seen by more members and as such, you would have more chance of getting the answers that you need. However, because the forum is not a private area and there are other members here, we need to be fair in our "bumping" and allow other, equally important members their fair share of the front page. As such, there needs to be rules and guidelines on how to conduct this business of "bumping".

As in the For Sale forum, "bumping" a thread more than once per day should be avoided if at all possible. As such, posts which read "Bump" or posts which amount to the same thing should not exceed one per day, and should not be used if you have made or plan to make a response in your thread on that same day.

However, unlike in the For Sale forum, you are allowed to post multiple times in a day to ask, answer or clarify questions in a post, or perhaps just to add or clarify information, provided that you do not have two of your own posts in succession, ie. next to each other within the same thread. If you make a response in your thread and find that you do need to add information to your post before anyone has made a reply, please use the edit function to do so, as clicking on the reply button will result in your thread being bumped excessively, and may result in your thread being closed.

As mentioned above, threads which are found to be breaking these guidelines will be closed or deleted, and repeat offenders will be recommended for bans. Whilst some may perceive these guidelines as a little harsh, they are fair, which is how this forum will be run.

Please enjoy your time on these forums, and thank you all for following forum rules/guidelines.