No, tagging the person he wants to buy from, to skirt around the issue of no pms, before he decides if he wants to pay the $20 is skirting the rules. Either suck it up and pay the money, or don't and put your time in. Don't hedge your bet by trying to have a PM in the open forum to try and buy it. That's a sneaky way to do things and I would hope people wouldn't want to do business with people like that.paying $20 isn't "skirting the rules".
It is LITERALLY following the rules.
People may not do business with someone does that, because there is no "post history", or "just because".
But it's not 'skirting'