Welcome to the Shops and Services Board!

ACC is a thriving community, due in large part to the contributions made by members who volunteer their time to provide Animal Crossing items and all types of services for other members. We welcome you to join in and post your Shop and/or Service thread on this board but first, please read these rules and guidelines to get you on your way.

Some non-AC services are allowed here, as well. These include, but are not limited to:

• Digital art services, including keyboard art
• Subscriptions to user-generated newspapers, newsletters, or magazines

Please see Rule 8 for details.


Rules
1. The Service threads do not have to be based on Animal Crossing but there are restrictions. No service should involve violence, romance, politics or religion. Nor should any service offer tuition in a PT for non-English languages, but may offer tuition in a wifi setting. The Modmins reserve the right to decide what is appropriate and if you require clarification please ask in the Q&A for New Rules and Guidelines - Shops and Services Sticky.

2. All Shop threads should sell only Animal Crossing items. These items should be obtainable through normal modes of gameplay and be in their original state. They should also be items that the game allows to be transferred from player to player. For example, you cannot go to another town and install a fully grown tree or a Town Hall, nor can you offer bugs or fish and you cannot offer items that have been modified.  Finally, only DLC items officially released by Nintendo may be offered.

3. Shops distributing items must not offer more than 100 items per order.  

4. If the main purpose of your Shop thread is to give away Animal Crossing game items without charging an in-game fee, then please post your thread on the Giveaways board. Services, by their nature, may offer free items but they must be related to the service itself. For example, a Pattern Service may give away patterns. A Landscaping Service may give away fruit, flowers, saplings and gardening tools but it must be part of an actual landscaping job such as planting trees or watering flowers.

5. You cannot have more than one company thread offering the same or similar things on this board. This means that Shops may have only one thread. Services may not have different threads for a service that could be incorporated into an existing service thread. For example:
»» You may not have a thread for Pattern Transfers if you already have a Pattern Design thread because one is an extension of the other.
»» You may not have separate Weed Pulling, Flower Art and Landscaping threads. All of these services should be offered in one Landscaping Thread.

6. Since not all services can be incorporated into one thread, you may have a maximum of three Service threads. However, these threads must be distinct from each other. For example:
»» Interior Design, Landscaping and Pattern Design
»» Hotel, Interior Design and Flower Art

7. To ensure that there is no exchange of real world items, non-Animal Crossing related services may not charge for their services. Animal Crossing services may charge bells in-game for their services.

8. All services must be kept on-site or within the AC games. If you want to link to an image, you may do that, but you can not link to external PDFs, web pages, or other services. You may not deliver content via email. You may not offer physical items to be mailed to users.

9. Make sure to post what is being offered by your company. In each thread, you may post this information and you may post two different promotional advertisements once a day.

10. If you wish to post a list of your current employees so that your customers are aware of who works for you, you may do this once a day but this must be in place of one of your promotional advertisements.

11. Do not attach rules for ordering or attach promotional advertisements to the Outstanding Orders List or other such frequently updated information.

12. Do not bump your thread by changing or editing the thread title. Any amendments to the title should be made when you post an update, a promotional advertisement, an employee list or a list of regular offers.

13. Do not post an Outstanding Orders List if there is nothing to update.

14. Do not mention other companies in your posts - this will only lead to flaming.

15. If you wish to recruit, please do not post recruitment advertisements in your Shop or Services thread or post Recruitment threads on this board. Instead, please post a thread on the Recruitment board.

16. Special Characters can be used in thread titles to separate pieces of information but cannot be used as artwork. Special characters used to decorate a thread title will be deemed as Drawing Unnecessary Attention (Rule 2.6) and will be removed.

17. Moderate sized keyboard art is acceptable for a company Logo or to identify different branches of your company, and may be used for regular offers and promotional advertisements. Keyboard art is not allowed for frequent updates such as Outstanding Orders Lists. However, links to other threads run by your company may be decorated with special characters and may be used in every post. If you aren't sure of whether you've overused markup or keyboard art, please post your template on the Markup and Bumping Sticky thread which can be found on the Site Support board. The ACC Staff will advise you by replying in your post and will provide suggestions if required.

18. We do not want to see companies copying from one another. Although we recognize that there are a finite number of Animal Crossing items and many companies will have similar regular offers and promotional packs, there is absolutely NO EXCUSE for copying markup and text from another Giveaway. People work hard on building up their companies and customer base. They do not deserve for their hard work to be taken by others. We find that this isn't in the spirit of ACC and therefore will issue a notification under Rule 1.18 - Copying Others' Work if we find that markup, keyboard art and text has been copied.

19. You should keep the following restrictions in mind when allocating your company threads.  They are as follows:
»» 1 x Recruitment thread on the Recruitment board
»» 3 x Service threads on the Shops & Services board
»»  2 x Item threads so long as 1 thread is giving away items on the Giveaways board and 1 is selling items in a Shop on the Shops & Services board.  A thread selling items on the Shops & Services board does count towards your total of 3 Service threads if you also have a thread giving away items on the Giveaways board.
»» As many Promotional Contest threads as your company can manage responsibly on the Promotional Contests board


Guidelines
• Once an order has been claimed, we highly recommend that employees of the company do not communicate directly with the customer, nor with other employees on the same thread. Communication should be done via PT to avoid spamming. This allows your employees and customers to easily see the order lists and it also presents a professional image of your company.

• When claiming an order it is strongly advised that an updated Outstanding Orders List is also shown in the same post. This cuts down on errors on your list, unnecessary posts to the thread and can avoid being cited for thread bumping.

• Although not essential, we recommend that services such as Hotels, Treasure Hunts and Landscaping be run by more than one person so that customers orders are claimed promptly.

• We strongly encourage you to list a contact for customer queries and complaints. If you do not have a procedure in place, we will not remove comments made by disgruntled customers unless the content is found to be trolling, flaming or otherwise offensive.

• We also recognise that customers sometimes have queries about your services. Once you reply, if the customer acknowledges you, please don't report them for Spam. Sending in unnecessary tickets such as these may earn you a notification for Spamming the User Ticket system.


Remember, this Board is meant to be a place to sell AC Items for an in-game fee and is also a place for both AC and non-AC related Services. Please do not post threads that consist mainly of giving away in-game items unrelated to the service provided.

Please follow these rules and guidelines or your thread may be locked.

If you require advice from ACC Modmins about the new rules and guidelines for this board, you may post on the Shops and Services Board Rules Q&A Sticky.

Good luck with your company!