Should Audiogon forum dealers be held to a different standard?

No need to stratify the dealers in isolation to John Q Public. In a better world, I would like to see ALL forum participants - dealer and all others - be held to a common higher standard. That embraces not just professional integrity but also the reciprocal benefits of practicing the Golden Rule. We had that basic ethereal “honour code” 15 -odd years ago with a progressive slide downward since then.

Your earlier bad experience with a local dealer is regrettable and understandably a bitter and jaded memory; but that is not representative of the retail business. All my fave local dealers have been gentlemen and scholars in a tough sell business.

Fixing trust is a dog’s breakfast that requires education first. Then it’s logistics with a weeding out the bad actors with highlighting bad actors. Then it’s ,excising the lowlife fringe and extended to the fraudsters in the ads.

Trust is fleeting and fragile thing. IMO 99% of dealers are exempt from any criticism in my experience and have never purposely flogged inferior or poor fit gear. It’s counter intuitive to their expansion model, or even their survival model in current hard times. But yes..the acts of the few can still Instill a distrust for the many ,

But again … the acts of the isolated few can stir memories and steer expectations going forward …

I had a recent discussion about 6 months ago with a rep at CARDAS about a “dealer” ad for a top power cord ad listed on both REVERB and AGON. It had no OEM Certificate of Authenticity (COA) . From the pictures he identified the connectors as bona fide cheap build crap fakes that are never installed on any of their OEM cables. To inspect the actual cable materials and build itself could only be done onsite with a removal,of the plugs and visual inspection .

Intuitively, who the hell would swap it cheap fake plugs on an OEM cable? It was a fake - full stop. He informed me that their research approximately an estimated 20-25 percent of ads on ALL the forums were pirated IP fakes and buyers should ALWAYS request the COA.

He researched the listing seller/ dealer info and concluded that the party was not a current customer of theirs. I emailed the ad Seller with the findings. The AGON ad disappeared shortly but the REVERB ad remained with no response back from the dealer: …. Crickets ..,

As in life , the incidents of bottom-feeders are real that should trigger our collective antennae.. But,,, the one-sided focus on dealers at a higher standard ain’t gonna do it , The overall lack of trust problem extends much further to include to either uniformed , ignorant and also some wilfully blind buyers thinking they are saving a few bucks without doing homework first.

FWIW .,,

{Should Audiogon forum dealers be held to a different standard than other members?

However, I noticed that sometimes when an audio dealer posts, they’re met with seemingly automatic skepticism beyond the usual.} Did you answer your own?                                                                                                                                               Members already have different standards when interacting with dealers etc. And each dealer manufacturer is different some are super helpful and don't shill products some are shilling blatantly and some use a soft shill. 

There's only one set of rules that guide this forum and it applies equally to all. Everyone is presumably held to the same standard.

Not sure what is a higher standard, but to me this is a discussion forum, so it shouldn't be used for industry people just to sell their wares. 

They can and should contribute to the discussions, share info and knowledge, debate, like any other person here on what is being discussed, as they are people too, but I think it is not appropriate for them to post try to sell stuff, whether it is equipment, repairs, tweaks.