I just want to start by saying that I'm not upset by the money itself and am in fact ordering without hesitation from Ragnorock again in his other group buys because I know that he can get things done. Abstractly though, I do understand the moral issues surrounding this and while it's probably too late to do anything about this particular group buy, I wouldn't mind seeing some little things changed in the future for the sake of business ethics.
I don't mean to make this sound offensive to Ragnorock, particularly since there is no way to tell whether he consciously did any particular thing or whether it simply hadn't occurred to him at the time because he was busy organizing the great group buy. I'm trying to just be objective and I don't hold anything against him, but I do see where the fuss is coming from. In the end it doesn't really take away any significant amount of money from any individual person who was in the group order, maybe like $1, but perhaps a little too much ends up in his hands which caused all this fuss.
1. $1 handling fee.
Perfectly reasonable, plainly stated. If you have a problem with this it's your own fault.
2. Shipping costs.
It's likely the price charged for shipping is a little over the actual cost but /everyone/ in charge of any group buy would do this. It's far too difficult to get exact prices for everyone so any money he makes here is reasonable assuming the charged price is relatively close to the actual, within about a dollar or two I'd say.
3. Price breaks.
Here's where I see the first potential ethical issue. There were 94 orders from portal sets and he ordered 6 extra to reach the 100 set price break but we were still charged at the price for 75. Granted this is only a 31 cent difference so it's not the end of the world clearly.
4. Extras.
If the extras were bought to reach a price break and that price break was passed on to those involved (though as in point 3, it wasn't) then of course everyone in the group buy would want him to buy the extras. Of course there's no logical option other than for Ragnorock to keep the extras, unless he was to raffle them off randomly to people in the group buy but I'd actually prefer he kept them. The issue to many here is that the sale of these extras would see all the money go to him.
There are really only two options here. Either he does in fact keep the money for himself, though this high level of reward is contentious, or, foreseeing that he would be making money off the sales of the extras, deduct that amount (or some percentage of it) evenly from the members of the group buy. For example, say he sold the 6 extra portal sets for $20 each, then he would take $120 divided by the number of sets bought and charge each person that much less for each set they bought. This requires a great deal of foresight however so this is not something I would expect of most people running a group buy, particularly for their first time, but may be something to consider in the future.
However, he did say that he would be selling the extras at a mark up in the thread, so people knew to expect this. The problem with this is that you don't really have a choice to argue against this. If you want to get the keys you have to order with him. If you tried to organize your own group buy to combat him it would either fragment the order in two, which would force everyone to pay more, or could potentially kill the order completely. So again, while this was clearly stated, it's like a terms of service agreement that could be construed as unfair but which you really don't have an option except to accept it.
5. Mark up.
On one side I understand that people who didn't participate in the group buy don't have any right to have the same price that people who were in it paid because if they did actually invest with the rest of us, we could have reached another price break and all saved money. The problem comes from the fact that we learned that signature plastics would not be making any more trademarked keycaps in the future. If Ragnorock only had the keycaps he had ordered for himself (i.e. not including the spares) and was selling them for a marked up price it would be perfectly reasonable, as everyone who had been in the group buy would have had the option of doing this.
The problem is that since Ragnorock had all the extras, which were purchased using the money of those in the group buy, none of the other people who helped pay for them see any of the sudden appreciation in value for all of these extras. However, I'm not sure exactly what can be done about this unless either the extras were raffled, some of the sales were used to help fund another group buy (which would allow the group buyers to see some return for the appreciation of the extras) or if a "grace" period were given in which people could buy the extras at a more nominal cost.
6. The argument whether the group buy organizer is allowed to make profit.
Although previous group buys have been cited, I don't think that one wrong is the basis for another, though I'm glad that we ended up having the lesser of two evils, for which we can thank Ragnorock. Although he may be making more than expected off of this, we certainly paid less than we might have if someone else had been in charge. There are other group buys however in which the organizer sells extras at cost rather than profit, namely iMav's poker group buy right now from which I bought extras.
Earlier I had cited the idea of a cooperative and, sadly, it was compared to communism. A cooperative is not communism and I think many people tend to jump on that word too much, especially people from the US as they sort of live in an environment where communism is a sort of negative buzz word. Many famous businesses (WestJet, Desjardins bank, Costco) are cooperatives and the idea is that everyone owns the business equally, which is analogous to everyone being an equal member in the group buy, so no one person makes a huge profit but rather everyone benefits. I'm a member of several cooperatives myself. Everyone owns 1 share and the prices can't be beat compared to traditional businesses.
Even if you look at this from the point of view of capitalism like several people were arguing, it still doesn't add up. Ragnorock is a business. I believe in his business, so I invest in his stocks so he has capital to go about his business. If his business turns a profit, as an investor I either get dividends or otherwise see a return from the appreciation of the stock. Instead the money stayed with him. In a more simple sense, if you give someone money to go buy something for you, yes you might let them take some as a fee but you expect to get your change.
Anyways, that's a really crude look to it (and I'm no businessman so this will be my weakest argument that people can probably peck at, but if you do please don't forget the other points I've brought up) and, rather than to accuse Ragnorock, this is mostly to argue that this isn't exactly capitalism either to the people who brought it up. Anyways, the point is that yes, he is allowed to make some profit, but that profit should ideally not be much more than the handling fee, or if he's going to be making profit from other sources, the handling fee could be removed.
---
In closing, I just want to conclude that there are some things that could have been done better but many of them are only clear in hindsight. I will happily keep ordering from Ragnorock's group buys, and though I don't expect anything to be done retroactively regarding these ones, I certainly wouldn't mind to see some changes for future ones.
