NOTES TO SELLERS:
1) READ CAREFULLY. I understand many sellers/dealers are not
necessarily fluent in English, so you must read the entire post
and subsequent replies to make sure you are actually being
accused of something. From my experience on dozens of extremely
high-volume mailing lists, flame wars often start for NO GOOD
REASON, i.e. because the original post was MISUNDERSTOOD.
If you're not certain of a buyer's intent in a public post,
WRITE SO. Do not jump to conclusions about intent because
sometimes it is *impossible* to assess intent without verbal
prosody, and what for those of us familiar with mailing lists,
jokes or innocent questions can sometimes come off as big
insults without that. (Unless it's obvious, like "So-and-so
ripped me off.")
2) You cannot assume a public posting is meant to be harmful.
After all, as buyers, many individuals must rely on third party
information (i.e. internet and its community of strangers) in
order to make sound choices. If you were in the same situation -
trying to buy something which is not sold in your area, and
which few people around you know about, you would obviously
want an answer on such a public forum as this.
3) To expedite the buyer/seller relationship, I would suggest to
all sellers to list as much information about their cels as
possible. For me, I am interested in knowing the cel number(s),
the presence of a pencil sketch or background, stuck or unstuck,
number of layers, and maybe even information on the anime source.
Typically, a seller that has this information available is in
*my mind* knowledgeable of what many cel collectors might expect.
4) This final suggestion is, unfortunately, applicable to ALL
people who deal with international transactions. Strengthen your
English, or whatever language in the international transaction.
Why? If you cannot write properly in a response it is often
interpreted, albeit perhaps unintentionally, that you have not
put in a sincere effort to offer an international transaction.
It doesn't matter if you mean well, if the e-mail response or
post is simply unreadable, all sincerity carried in it is lost.
A post or e-mail message that is extremely difficult to read
is not good business practice for either party involved, and can
degenerate to some pretty bad non-conversation that solves
absolutely nothing. My request for those sellers particularly not
fluent in English/etc. is that they refrain from selling
internationally at all.
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