About selling fixed weeks and splitting larger shares

The boatshare web site provides a resource for persons to sell shares in (generally) privately run narrow boats in the UK and UK schemes operating in France. 

In order to exist a charge is made for each advert, where the fee paid is for 12 months OR UNTIL THE SHARE IS SOLD, whichever comes first.

Where is gets, shall we say, interesting, is where an advertiser has a share (or shares) for sale in a boat which they might want to "split" to make a sale more likely.

Lets say Mr Smith has two shares in "Dreadnought" a "12 owner" narrow boat based in Cheshire. He advertises his 1/6th share for sale on the web site but says he is prepared to split the share in to 2 x 12th. Mr Jones comes along and buys 1/12th from him quite quickly after the advert is placed, meaning he now only has a 1/12th left to sell.

Mr Smith has paid for his advert for 12 months and now wants it changed. Well, as the initial advert is for 12 months OR UNTIL THE SHARE IS SOLD then to change the overall appearance and detail of the advert it needs to be renewed and a further fee is deemed payable as a share has been sold.

Equally, Mr Smith may think that he would be best off to advertise ONE of his shares for sale as 1/12th, and again sells quite quickly. All he then needs to ask me to do is change the holidays pre-booked against the advertised share but a further fee is deemed payable as a share has been sold.

An advert can only ever have ONE price for a share for sale, so "ask for details" will have to go against the "split" option.

FIXED WEEKS

If you are in fixed week scheme then the same rules will apply. If you have say a week in March and two weeks in August then together it is deemed as "one share" and will be advertised as such and priced as such. If you are prepared to split your holding then for any wholesale changes to the advert should a week get sold a charge will be levied (and the advert extended for a further period).

If you wish to advertise your weeks individually then you can of course do so from the outset on different adverts (and paying an advertising fee for each).

You cannot advertise your share for sale as £X for week y, £Z for week w etc.

Of course if you are selling shares "similar" to those above in principle then you could just not tell me to update the advert and just tell any potential enquirer that "the weeks are now...." which is, of course, fine. BUT as the first thing somebody looks at when they are looking at a share is the pre-booked weeks then you could potentially be failing to attract possible customers.

The ONLY exception to the above rules is where a boat could be considered as a "new scheme".
 

Please note that the fee to make the changes outlined above is at the "renewal" rate which is generally lower than the fee for a full advert for a full year AND your advert on change will be extended for a further 12 months, so if you sold your first share in say 3 months then your advert for share number two would run for the remaining 9 months PLUS another 12 months.

(Updated 21/09/16)