Discussion Forum: Messages by calsbricks (8514)
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 Author: calsbricks View Messages Posted By calsbricks
 Posted: Mar 19, 2018 02:20
 Subject: Re: Save Offsite Paypal!
 Viewed: 78 times
 Topic: Suggestions
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calsbricks (8514)

Location:  United Kingdom, England
Member Since Contact Type Status
Aug 12, 2008 Contact Member Seller
Buying Privileges - OKSelling Privileges - OK
Store: CalsBricks
In Suggestions, chetzler writes:
  I'm curious if BL will continue to offer the multitude other off-sites methods.
Anyone looked at what is still available? There's a bunch I've never
even heard of, and seriously, is a Western Union transfer a better option than
PayPal off-site?

Our Paypal account works for both Bricklink and our main company - there is absolutely
no way ever that we would allow Bricklink access to funds in that account or
details of transactions in that account - it is really none of their business.
I am sure that other people who have Paypal accounts and use them for Bricklink
also use those for other things and would not want any involvement with Bricklink
in their account.

This does not appear to be well thought through and even though it says you may
revoke the permissions you have given by signing up to this agreement what does
that mean - do you still have a paypal account for use on Bricklink or not? Is
it online or offline?

Are they going to go through 11,000 stores and remove the Paypal option from
their payment methods when the April date comes around? Stores will wake up to
a 'cannot receive orders as you have no payment methods available' (imagine
the tickets from that !!!!!) or are people going to set up other payment methods
but give Paypal offsite instructions in their invoices. How can they possibly
police this?

The mind boggles .....

All the clamour and yet no response from Bricklink. It is like they are saying
take-it or leave it (which is never a good idea in the best of environments.)

Such a real shame ........
 Author: calsbricks View Messages Posted By calsbricks
 Posted: Mar 19, 2018 01:48
 Subject: Re: Save Offsite Paypal!
 Viewed: 62 times
 Topic: Suggestions
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calsbricks (8514)

Location:  United Kingdom, England
Member Since Contact Type Status
Aug 12, 2008 Contact Member Seller
Buying Privileges - OKSelling Privileges - OK
Store: CalsBricks
In Suggestions, PurpleDave writes:
  Bricklink famously ground to a halt, twice, because it got hacked. The site
may have been restored to working condition, but a lot of us want nothing to
do with risking exposure of our financial accounts to anyone who may be lurking
behind the scenes. Sellers don't want to give Bricklink the level of control
required to accept payments through Bricklink. Bricklink has announced that
in about a month, they plan to scuttle offsite Paypal as a payment option, without
even taking any input from their core membership. The reason stated was that
new, usually one-time buyers, can't figure out where the payment button is
when they select offsite Paypal as a payment option, so they plan to basically
cut off any buyers and sellers who refuse to use any other form of payment, and
who especially want nothing to do with any onsite Paypal options.

Make offsite Paypal an opt-in payment option. Sellers obviously have to select
up front which payment options they will accept. Make all _buyers_ voluntarily
choose to see offsite Paypal as a payment option when checking out. If a seller
does not accept any other payment options, have them flagged as "does not ship
to you", just like if they were from another country and didn't have your
country enabled for shipping options. If a new buyer signs up, they should be
required to read an explanation of how offsite Paypal works, and confirm that
they want to be able to choose that as a payment option before they even see
it appear in lists.

But seriously, don't chase away a bunch of your regular customers in the
hope that you might be able to "grow your business" on the bank accounts of people
who just get sent here to buy a replacement part that LEGO Consumer Affairs can't
provide, or who are looking for just one retired set, and will never log in again
after they receive their shipment.

Couldn't agree more. If they really are having so many tickets about the
Pay button, refer those tickets to the store(s). I am sure there are far more
tickets coming in over issues with other matters on the site than this. For a
payment method which has worked flawlessly for nearly 7 years (5000 orders received
and 1000 placed) it does not seem logical nor to their benefit to stop it. It
could, however be money driven - if you use Paypal onsite Bricklink must be getting
something out of it where as offsite is outside of their earning capability'.
But then so is every other payment method.
 Author: calsbricks View Messages Posted By calsbricks
 Posted: Mar 16, 2018 14:44
 Subject: Change the price guide screen
 Viewed: 97 times
 Topic: Suggestions
 Status:Open
 Vote:[Yes|No]
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calsbricks (8514)

Location:  United Kingdom, England
Member Since Contact Type Status
Aug 12, 2008 Contact Member Seller
Buying Privileges - OKSelling Privileges - OK
Store: CalsBricks
Currently there is no way you can determine easily from looking at the price
guide what currency conversion has been used to determine the move from USD to
any other currency. As this figure has to be held/determined (calculated) somewhere,
whether in BL or by xe.xom it is available to be displayed and updated as regularly
as the price guide.

If Bricklink displayed that figure it would be very helpful for everyone's
use whether buying or selling. This is especially relevant for the last 6 months
sales which is a floating figure and is not easily determined - (it can be done,
but is very long winded and takes a lot more time and effort to get right.

As for the changes this would require, they are absolutely minimal from a coding
point of view and it would help to solve the never ending threads about currency
conversion and the price guide.


It would also help with Brickstock, but I am sure that is of no concern to Bricklink.
 Author: calsbricks View Messages Posted By calsbricks
 Posted: Mar 11, 2018 05:49
 Subject: Must have improvements
 Viewed: 170 times
 Topic: Suggestions
 Status:Open
 Vote:[Yes|No]
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calsbricks (8514)

Location:  United Kingdom, England
Member Since Contact Type Status
Aug 12, 2008 Contact Member Seller
Buying Privileges - OKSelling Privileges - OK
Store: CalsBricks
As there is almost constant changes going on in the catalogue stores need more
features to ensure they are up to date. For example - we received orders over
the weekends for many of our
 
Part No: 3794  Name: Plate, Modified 1 x 2 with 1 Stud, Jumper (Undetermined Type)
* 
3794 Plate, Modified 1 x 2 with 1 Stud, Jumper (Undetermined Type)
Parts: Plate, Modified
pieces which of course have been changed
to
 
Part No: 3794a  Name: Plate, Modified 1 x 2 with 1 Stud without Groove (Jumper)
* 
3794a Plate, Modified 1 x 2 with 1 Stud without Groove (Jumper)
Parts: Plate, Modified
. I had to go to my inventory page for the part and change each and
everyone of these from 3794 to 3794a, That 'dropped 4 or 5 small images -
(we will re-do those photos and submit) but they had photos before we changed
them from 3794 to 3794a.Hmmmm

It is a very simple select and update query in SQL - surely one of the developers
can put together a screen to allow us to update multiple items in our inventory
at once. We are in the dark ages here really.

In addition I noticed yet another quirk which is simple enough to sort out but
untouched

We hold bulk amounts for many standard items (in the thousands of each of them)
and decided to set up a tiered pricing schedule for each of those taking 1p off
at each quantity break. Fine - it was still a manual exercise for over 100 items
but we went through that - only to find that we either had to repeat this each
time we added to that part or we would lose that tiered pricing. The options
on consolidate are far too limited. We need at least another method of new price
and retain old tiered pricing.

Neither of these changes require huge amounts of time or development effort but
both have needed doing for some time.

It may be a question of priorities or design or ????? but surely such simple
mods can be dealt with quickly and efficiently.

It does get exasperating sometimes. And Brickstock will not allow you to make
these changes offline and upload them either. We have tried that and failed.
We have also advised Patrick but he has gone missing at present.

Come on Bricklink - the stores need their tools (just like buyers, if not more
so)
 Author: calsbricks View Messages Posted By calsbricks
 Posted: Feb 23, 2018 10:37
 Subject: Re: Interface improvement
 Viewed: 66 times
 Topic: Suggestions
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calsbricks (8514)

Location:  United Kingdom, England
Member Since Contact Type Status
Aug 12, 2008 Contact Member Seller
Buying Privileges - OKSelling Privileges - OK
Store: CalsBricks
In Suggestions, Teup writes:
  In my opinion, icons that accurately represent functionality are a key part in
having a good interface. It has come to my attention that the icon of the Community
tab is outdated and needs improvement. Briklink has changed alot and the smiley
face simply does not suit a modern Bricklink where a forum is intended for poorly
informing the community of unwanted selfish business decisions only to ignore
the responses.

I've designed a better icon for this tab. Hope to see this implemented soon!

A little while ago when Jaclyn's predecessor was here I got a lifetime ban
from the forum for something similar to this. Fortunately she got the 'move
on out order (P45 in the UK) and Jaclyn re-instated me with full apologies.

Good luck with it.
 Author: calsbricks View Messages Posted By calsbricks
 Posted: Feb 18, 2018 10:30
 Subject: Minor improvements to add inventory
 Viewed: 76 times
 Topic: Suggestions
 Status:Open
 Vote:[Yes|No]
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calsbricks (8514)

Location:  United Kingdom, England
Member Since Contact Type Status
Aug 12, 2008 Contact Member Seller
Buying Privileges - OKSelling Privileges - OK
Store: CalsBricks
I am sure there are lots of sellers who are waiting to see what enhancements
Bricklink as and when the finally release the sellers tools they hafve talked
about..

We would like to see a small modification done now to help on the 'add inventory
screens'. This would take a programmer less than an hour to accomplish and
it would aid most sellers.

When you manually add an item to your inventory you can do it in one of several
ways. When you go this route some things, which are important are missing.

From the main catalogue page for any given part choose Add to my inventory. This
takes you to the add inventory page and fills in some of the details for you
e.g. part no; colour etc, leaving you to add the quantity, price, condition and
any remarks you wish to make. You then click on the review item button at the
bottom and it takes you to the review item page where you do not see all the
relevant information No part no - no remarks. How can you really review the information
if it isn't all presented to review. Good memory? Maybe if you are only doing
the odd one, but if you are using this in anger it would be very helpful if the
review item page had the part no on it as well as the remarks field.

A similar situation occurs with the mass inventory upload. Once you paste your
xml file into the window you choose verify and all the parts in that file are
listed but instead of displaying the part nos for the items it drops them off
despite being in the xml upload.

Again a very minor programming job which would aid the sellers.

Think about it Bricklink. Make the site easier for us to use.

See images attached.
 




 Author: calsbricks View Messages Posted By calsbricks
 Posted: Feb 10, 2018 04:54
 Subject: Re: Please bring Order Download up to date
 Viewed: 28 times
 Topic: Problem
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calsbricks (8514)

Location:  United Kingdom, England
Member Since Contact Type Status
Aug 12, 2008 Contact Member Seller
Buying Privileges - OKSelling Privileges - OK
Store: CalsBricks
In Problem, Minifigforlife writes:
  Agreed. Make this a suggestion post and I will vote yes.

Done

Now let's see what happens.
 Author: calsbricks View Messages Posted By calsbricks
 Posted: Feb 10, 2018 04:24
 Subject: Please bring Order Download up to date
 Viewed: 119 times
 Topic: Suggestions
 Status:Open
 Vote:[Yes|No]
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calsbricks (8514)

Location:  United Kingdom, England
Member Since Contact Type Status
Aug 12, 2008 Contact Member Seller
Buying Privileges - OKSelling Privileges - OK
Store: CalsBricks
To Admin/Development

The order download feature is clumsy and nor set out to work in today's IT
environment. Please bring it up to date and provide choice for which columns
that the user wishes to download. Choosing include details is insufficient. More
people would use this feature if the flexibility in design was improved.

Bring the formats up to date as well as even Excel 2010 is unhappy with the MS
excel download. Stop combining the colour field with the description field etc.,
etc etc.

If improvements here are planned for sellers tools, please let us know and provide
an anticipated delivery date for that. We want to download our orders into our
off-line system and at present this is a totally manual exercise.

Those of us who use off-line systems need more flexibility to deal with data
from Bricklink.

We haven't pout this as a suggestion cause quite honestly we do not feel
that route works very well at all.
 Author: calsbricks View Messages Posted By calsbricks
 Posted: Dec 20, 2017 09:10
 Subject: Re: 'blservice@bricklink.com' as the sending addr
 Viewed: 32 times
 Topic: Suggestions
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calsbricks (8514)

Location:  United Kingdom, England
Member Since Contact Type Status
Aug 12, 2008 Contact Member Seller
Buying Privileges - OKSelling Privileges - OK
Store: CalsBricks
In Suggestions, BigBBricks writes:
  The system works as designed BUT time has moved on and better methods are available.

I believe it works like this...
You will see the buyers email addy and be able to reply back to it if they do
not have their privacy settings turned up

You will see a reply to BL addy if they are turned on


The best method would be to have BL operate an email server of their own which
would convey the messages through BL so that an admin would be able to see the
communications if necessary (same method as BO uses).

I'm sure the people in charge of the future BL seller tools will include
a more modern approach.

Big B

You can get some pretty long, if not very long odds on that happening
 Author: calsbricks View Messages Posted By calsbricks
 Posted: Dec 18, 2017 03:13
 Subject: Re: A better idea ?
 Viewed: 38 times
 Topic: Suggestions
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calsbricks (8514)

Location:  United Kingdom, England
Member Since Contact Type Status
Aug 12, 2008 Contact Member Seller
Buying Privileges - OKSelling Privileges - OK
Store: CalsBricks
In Suggestions, Teup writes:
  I don't really understand what you're suggesting, in particular the combination
of "forcing" and "template" - which as far as I can see is by default something
that can be customised. Are you asking for more macro tags maybe to make these
templates more powerful? If so, which?

My apologies for not making this clearer. I didn't mean the macro tags
at all. I meant specifically creating different templates to handle different
circumstances. Those that have a variety of payment methods acceptable might
need a different template to handle their IBAN payments v Paypal v ????. As for
'forcing' what I meant was the subject line has now been changed to read
order confirmed instead of this transaction has been placed. Not everyone is
happy with that and it was supposed to be for instant checkout orders only but
it is that way for all orders.

Basically we are asking for more flexibility with the use of templates. Macro
tags are only one element of it. We agree there should be a weight one as well
.
  
I personally have always wanted to see a weight macro tag added. That would help
me alot generating shipping costs in my software. Would be even cooler if there
are ways to do computation with this within Bricklink, with some advanced macros.


In Suggestions, calsbricks writes:
  Sine the rollout of Instant checkout and various updates there have been a number
of posts regarding the templates BL are forcing users to use.

Would it not be a better idea for the number of templates to be increased so
the stores can have their own choice of how they want it organised and addressed.

This is a simple code change for the programmers and allow some more flexibility
for the stores in addressing the various issues e.g. IBAN and bank details; etc.

Just a thought

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