Bartertown.com

Before anything else I just wanna say... THIS PLACE IS TOPS!!
I have been perusing the topics and threads and conversed with several barter-townies and keep finding myself wondering what the eituquette in a given situation is. So I thought I would start a thread for rules of etiquette (Sorry if there is one already). My question is this, how long you give someone to respond to an offer or counter offer before offering it to someone else? Does the first come first served rule apply here? or is it the first person with the cash takes it? or is it a secret handshake thing or what? Thanks all for answering this and feel free to post your own rules or etiquette guidelines too.
Cheers,
Ursidae

I tend to go with the first come, first served philosophy. I do make exceptions if there's someone who wants a larger portion of what I'm offering and they arrive at roughly the same time.

As for response time, I go by 72 hours. If I don't hear back for three days then I move on. I warn the person at least once before I do however. People are busy and sometimes deals take time to develop.

There is one thing that will trump those two guidelines for me though. If one of my well-known and favorite traders comes along I'll defer to them usually. If they take longer than the 72 hours that's okay, I know I can trust them to get back to me. That's something you'll just have to develop as you go along though.

Pretty much as YoungWolf777 wrote with caveats of not counting holidays, weekends or periods of large swaths of unpleasant weather.

One more thing I would add is that you also need to base your time on how you "feel" about the other trader. You get a contact saying "I want this" Start looking at thier history. Check to see if they have a habit of bad communication or not. You as the owner of the items have final say on which trade you want. You can always cancel trades because you get better offers (I've had it happen to me a few times) or becuase you just don't feel comfortable with the other trader.

#1 thing is to cover yer own arse.

As a trader "bidding" on a trade I expect that there are others out there trying to get the same items. 3 days sounds like a good rule of thumb. It seems to me that I tend to gravitate towards that rough time frame.

Then again if your after cash, I'm offering a trade and I'm first, but a guy 3 offers down is offering to buy, well that is what you were looking for in the first place.