I try to be realistic with the forum Guidelines. The moderators have no interest in monitoring private messages of any kind. So there is no way to enforce rules about offers included in private messages.
The For Sale Guidelines state:
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"Please do not post offers to buy, sell or auction items in this forum category. Mentioning that you are looking to sell now or later will be considered a violation of the "no offers to sell" rule. Posting a "PM sent" post will be considered a marker that you have sent an offer to buy and will also be a violation of this guideline.
"Is this for sale?" is prohibited.
"PM sent" is prohibited.
"I'm thinking of selling ..." may be taken as an offer to sell."
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The "PM Sent" restriction is about posting a message on the public forum that says, "PM Sent"
It does not say you can't send a PM, email, telephone or in-person message.
Well that clears it up for me....I obviously misinterpreted the rules/guidelines and I apologize Petropumps, you were right...I was wrong. In my defense I thought (I hoped) that rule was in place to help keep newbies or the uneducated from getting ripped off or given false information for the purpose of deceiving them "in private" because it would never be tolerated in open forum (NOT saying that's what you did). Imagine the grief the guy who offered him 850 for that pump would have gotten if he would have done it out in the open. It makes no sense to me to say go ahead and bombard a guy with offers via PM/email/or phone calls just as long as you don't post "PM sent".....but it is what it is.
