Has the commerce corner jumped the shark at WB?

Hello,
Is it just me or has WB let retailers sell wine on this board/thread? The rules still state no retailers, but I’ve recently noticed several ads from a retailer rather than collectors clearing out wines they no longer want.
I personally love Wine Berserkers and I’m concerned. Am I misreading this seller?

Cheers
Jeremy

Well, technically the rules state no retail unless you are a BerserkerBusiness, in which case your name shows up in blue, but I do think maybe more could be done to identify retail offers so that one can skip over them if he is not interested. They kinda blend in with the other offers. You’re not wrong that there seem to be more and more these days.

So is it time for two CC’s ? one for berserkers selling/trading amongst themselves and one for commercial sales ?

Yes, there’s a larger number of offers from BerserkerBusiness members now than normal, but they are easy to look past if they do not interest you, with the bold blue username. Conversely, many WANT to see them, so they can do the opposite and target them.

Their username is blue before you click on the thread. When you click on the thread there’s a pretty big “berserkerbusiness” banner right below their large blue bolded username.

If we do much more we’ll start cluttering your page with nonsense.

On the “active topics” page in my mobile safari browser, I can see the thread title and the name of the poster for the last post before clicking on the thread. Nothing is there to distinguish the originator of the thread as BB.

Username is blue. The blue really pops out on mobile
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You completely ignored Joe’s point.

Ah I see, ok. Re-read it.

unfortunately that’s how the mobile website renders. If you are scrolling in landscape it’ll show the originator, but in portrait it shows last poster.

Not for everyone. It depends on your screen resolution and it has to be quite high to show it the way you say, apparently. I have an iPhone 6 and I don’t see anything different in landscape.

are you running on safari or chrome? Apparently Chrome doesn’t render it properly. We tested it on a 6plus and it seemed to be fine. Can’t speak to the iPhone 6 on Safari so you might be right.

We cannot make the perfect software to accommodate all the custom utilization we use for all phones, operating systems, desktops. It’s supposedly dynamic, but we are aware certain browsers like Chrome aren’t as “dynamic”.

But also, this issue about berserkerbusinesses is fairly minute in the grand scheme of things. We apologize for the potential extra time wasted on viewing their post on mobile, but it’s something that’s gonna stick. Who knows, maybe you’ll get a good deal!

I’m using Safari. If you’re testing on 6plus you may not be seeing what most people are.

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I’m running iPhone 6S Plus, iOS 12, Safari and landscape still doesn’t show the thread originator.

It’s probably because I’ve got font scaling up at 130% in the user profile preferences. (My favorite feature in the board upgrade!)

I’m all for WB thriving as a business venture but it does feel awful spammy to be repeatedly enticed into receiving a come on to give up personal info in exchange for promises of riches unknown.

I’m a seasoned netizen and have seen all kinds of business models tried. Wine Searcher is among the most clever of all. Both buyers and sellers can get free access to a subset of the two-sided market and each can pay up to reach the full market.

Our fearless mods should pay close attention to this thread because it does feel like something has changed here… The deal used to be that if you payed up as a member here you got a ad-free experience.

Joe, BerserkerBusiness has been this way for 5 years now, just as it is now. No changes in 5 years, other than perhaps LESS visibility of BerserkerBusiness members (not a BB search at the top, you notice). Commerce Corner is the ONE place these BerserkerBusiness listings are allowed - one of over a dozen forums - and they are marked clearly so that those who want to see them can, those who do not do not have to. These are not ads.

Both “nothing has changed” and “it feels like something has changed” can be true at the same time.

If you need me, I’ll be over in Wine Talk.

Seems less an issue of BerserkerBusinesses model and more an issue of some new BBs being super inept at how they market their businesses - for example, see the Tom K contribution above and several times in recent CC threads.

I’m fine with scrolling past … but I do take note of those businesses that show themselves to be so poor in business model and promotion - so I remember not to buy from them.

Learn from the businesses that understand how to participate in online marketing - through authentic participation and contribution to the community.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

I think the only thing that has changed is that one particular member’s posts sound like a used car salesman.

Nailed it!