***A guilty party raises his hand on thread bumping***
I have to agree with Craig on this one. Some of us do this because it is competition. When you have several other vendors filling up a whole page and yours get left behind, the nature of the beast is that "you are to be forgotten." I personally don't have the time on a daily basis to update threads and answer questions. Thus, I take intervals and do all the threads in one sitting days apart.
You may believe it or not, but people really do PM us regarding the advertising threads. I average about 30-40 PMs per sitting. These people are known to be lurkers. Lurkers are those who don't want to publicly announce their interest. People who don't want to get involved with the drama. Now these lurkers typically search through the first three pages a.k.a. window shopping. What happens to the thread there after? They're not seen by the same lurkers who have a higher ratio in purchasing than the members who are verbal. I hope my last sentence doesn't offend people, but I'm sure other vendors would agree with me on this one. Majority of our business is from these lurkers. So it is essential for vendors to bump their threads. Thing is it does get ugly.
How do you resolve that? Craig mentioned having devoted subsections per vendor. But if you do that it'll create more stress because the consumer will not have the time to click forward and back through all the specials. It would be unfair to the vendors since we're not "technically" allowed to promote outside of the vendor section. Amongst the forums Euro Dyne is present at (10 forums to be exact: E90post, Zpost, M3post, MFest, Bimmerfest, Bimmerforums, BMWvsMBZ, 1addicts, E60, and M3Forums), Bimmerpost (composed of E90, Z, and M3post) is the most expensive to advertise in. We're just trying to get our money's worth.
So what really is the solution? I think it would be best if the vendors on their own would reach an agreed number on bumps. Is that possible? Unlikely, but it is a free market nation where most of us vendors are based in.
Will I apologize for my actions? No, I won't. I can honestly say I have not done anything wrong since I follow forum sponsor rules by sticking in the vendor section, occassionally show people of our products test fitment results in the cosmetic section, and I dare not PM unsolicitted programs to members. For us vendors to continue supporting the fees to keep forums alive, we would need sell products to justify the sponsorship costs.
Not to go off topic here, but can I ask the vendors how often has your threads been attacked by members with your pricing supposedly being too high or ridiculous? How often have your products quality, fitment, etc been ridiculed publicly? How often have you reported these incidents? Was the admin brisk in taking care of the incidents? I am only bringing this issue up because I think it is also a big issue to be looked into. I'm not pointing fingers here, but all Members, Vendors, and Admin all have to ease up and chill =)...I'll be the first to admit, this is just the interwebs and keeping my cool at times can be so hard to do...but I'll die trying
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