Buying in a presale...

[+anne.and.eli]

I agree, reservations are the nice, happy medium.

[+firennice]

Ultimately you have to look at the sellers and your situation. There is no blanket answer.

• Is the seller new with 0 finds? or 200? or 5,000?
  
• Are they new to the forums?
  
• Have they presold before?
  
• Can you afford to loose $12 or $40? (Whatever you put into it?
  
• Is there a benefit to a preorder? (lower cost?)
  
• Is there artwork? Samples?
  
• Not yet ordered? or actually ordered?
  

 

There have been some great designs come through pre-orders. So killing them would not be a great idea. All I can say is, review the entire thing and look at your situation. If you can't afford to loose it don't spend it. Even the best intentioned preorder could fall through when the person dies, or something happened.

 

If there was no benefit (limited quantity, price, etc) I would not jump in.

[+Kealia]

with reservations, no money needs to be "risked" by the consumer

the right number of the geocoin will get made

everybody who wants one will get one

and, if there is not enough demand, the project can be canceled, without any need to refund pre-payments

 

seems like a win-win, to me

 

The problem with reservations is also that life gets in the way. People make reservations for coins, the vendor gets a count, makes the coins, invoices the customer and then gets replies like:

"I forgot I reserved some of these but spent too much on other coins so I can't pay for them"

"I don't want these anymore"

or no reply at all.

 

That's why vendors don't do it much.

 

In short, it goes back to what I said back when this thread came up 3 years ago:

If you can't afford to pay to have a coin made with your own money - don't make it.

 

Is it a risk to the vendor? Yes.

But it's a risk THEY should have to take if they want to make this a business and gain profit from it. the consumer should have to assume no risk. Period.

[+anne.and.eli]

The problem with reservations is also that life gets in the way. People make reservations for coins, the vendor gets a count, makes the coins, invoices the customer and then gets replies like:

"I forgot I reserved some of these but spent too much on other coins so I can't pay for them"

"I don't want these anymore"

or no reply at all.

 

That's why vendors don't do it much.

 

Actually there are generally enough people who missed the reservation that these few cases are covered. The reason *I* don't do it more isn't because of that, it's because it's actually a lot more work to set up a reservation and then bill everyone who reserved. Zencart doesn't have a reservation plugin (that I can find) so I have to do it by hand, which is a huge amount of time. It's way easier to make a guesstimate based on responses to threads in the forum, and just put them up on the store front when they come in, where everything gets handled automatically.

 

Of course, I'm not a real pro at guesstimating yet, and sometimes I under or over buy. But to me the trade off was worth it given my limited time.

 

I have never done a pre-order because I know *for me*, the big "yay" is when the money starts rolling in, and it keeps me motivated to get through the minting process which is not necessarily always that smooth. If I got the money up front, the motivation just becomes guilt in getting coins to people which just doesn't feel good. Also, things NEVER seem to go problem free with the mint.

 

But really it comes down to whatever the vendor and buyers are comfortable with.

[+AtwellFamily]

Cache Addict does reservations and there are always people that back out, around 3-5% but it leaves enough stock to sell over time and to those who didn't get in on the reservations. The risk is all the vendor, they produce samples and take reservations and hope that the customers pay.

 

It is the best for all including the vendor.