BrickLink Discussion Forum

In Suggestions, WoutR writes:

Was there not a page in my account settings where I could select my payment methods?
And a filter that hides stores that do not accept my payment types?

I know stores can select which payment options to accept. I also know that when
looking up an item in the catalog, you can filter by any type of payment option.
Once you get to the Wanted List level, the only option I can find is "store
accepts Instant Checkout", which is worthless to me. There _used_ to be an option
there where you could select "store accepts X payment option" I believe, but
it's been geared more towards their vision of the future now. I have no
idea where you can set a global default for buyer payment options, but I'd
really love to know where that might be. Although, in a month, there might be
no point, as I'm not going to buy here if I can't do offsite payment.

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Mar 18, 2018 21:52

Subject:

Save Offsite Paypal!

Viewed:

321 times

Topic:

Status:

Implemented

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.

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Mar 18, 2018 21:36

Subject:

Re: Have all members pay BL $1 to buy and/or sell

Viewed:

74 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, Brickwilbo writes:

Enable instant checkout in your store.

Enable instant checkout, and it won't stop anyone from selecting any other
payment option offered. Restrict payment to instant checkout, and you lose all
the customers that don't trust Bricklink to be secure enough to make exposing
their payment info to whoever might be watching.

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Mar 18, 2018 21:34

Subject:

Re: Have all members pay BL $1 to buy and/or sell

Viewed:

63 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, calebfishn writes:

Your suggestion will not screen out "false" buyers. But it will discourage and
dissuade all the first time people who come to Bricklink to look around. I get
very few orders that are not paid, and the ones that don't pay, are in my
opinion people who are experimenting with the order system.

Some people probably are dealing with people intentionally jerking their chain
when it comes to false orders. Either they said something here that ticked someone
off, or they did something in relation to a previous sale that had the same effect.
Creating fake accounts just to place false orders would be a way to pester someone.
You couldn't really take credit for it (not if you have a valid account
that you wanted to keep clean, at least, though if you'd already been banned
I guess it wouldn't really matter), so the victim would never know _why_
they kept getting bogus orders. But if someone is the sort to go through that
effort for such petty vengeance, I doubt logic and reason really factor into
their decisions.

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Mar 6, 2018 04:44

Subject:

Re: Search Locally

Viewed:

23 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, renhoffman writes:

I agree, an option to show sellers within a certain area would be nice, for example,
within 50 miles. When I lived in western NY, I was probably asked twice a year
if I could meet someone in NYC, a 7 hour drive each way.

My favorite example of misunderstood geographic scale in the US (in part because
it shows how full of it foreigners are for griefing us over lack of world geography
knowledge) was a story that a friend of mine from college loved to tell. His
family lives in western Michigan, and had relatives visiting from Germany. They
thought it might make a nice day trip to go check out the Grand Canyon.

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Mar 6, 2018 04:39

Subject:

Re: Search Locally

Viewed:

22 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, ZacharyWathen97 writes:

7 hours? That is what it took for me to move from Kentucky to Kansas City almost
six years ago. I passed through from the south of Illinois to St. Louis, then
straight across the northern part of Missouri.

Much of that travel time is probably tied up in wading through NYC itself. I
was once in the LA area and suggested getting together some evening with some
friends of mine who were living on the other side of the city. They said it'd
take several hours just to get across town because of how overwhelmed the traffic
grid is there. Parts of NYC can be even worse if you're trying to get around
by car (there's a reason Manhattan's streets are a sea of yellow cars),
and transferring to public transportation would be far more expensive than just
covering the shipping cost. In contrast, Detroit proper is about 1/3 the size
of NYC, but you can skip across it in maybe half an hour if it's not rush
hour due to the more robust freeway system (there being an almost total lack
of useful public transportation in Metro Detroit).

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Mar 5, 2018 18:41

Subject:

Re: Search Locally

Viewed:

36 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, Speg writes:

Other than actually picking the item up from someone in person, even same state
shipping isn't much faster than a state that's 1000 miles away. For example:
if I wanted to mail my immediate neighbor a letter, the mail person has to pick
up the letter, bring it back to the mail hub, sorting facility, then back out
for delivery the next day(s).

That's not true in my experience. Yes, there are sorting hubs all over the
US. If the package is shipped from the same region as the destination, it only
has to process through one regional hub (two of my recent shipments only processed
through the Detroit Regional Hub in Allen Park). If it's from another region,
it has to sort through their Regional Hub, which forwards it to your own Regional
Hub, and generally loses at least a day in the process. If it's shipping
from the opposite end of the country, I find it loses a second day just due to
increased drive time. If I'm trying to build something on extremely short
notice, that's the difference between arriving the day before a weekend show,
and the day after.

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Mar 5, 2018 18:32

Subject:

Re: Search Locally

Viewed:

18 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, yorbrick writes:

Do you pay the same postage prices for both within and between states?

In Europe, the postage cost within a country is often cheaper (sometimes significantly)
than between European countries.

First Class (letter) postage is flat rate. When you get into packages, I know
weight and even size can come into play. I believe distance is also a factor
with certain classes of postage. But for sure it takes longer to get shipments
from across the US than from within your own district.

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Mar 5, 2018 18:29

Subject:

Re: Search Locally

Viewed:

23 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, NicoBuma writes:

I guess that Europe has this option, because Europe is no nation, but a continent
with different countries... We're not a nation with differen states, so shipping
is different for each country and shipping from like Netherlands to Portugal
(both EU countries) can be a different price if I send from The Netherlands to
Portugal, than if I were to send the same from Portugal to The Netherlands. In
the US all shipping is the same (I guess).

Some shipping is the same, like first class stamps. Other shipping costs are
based on distance. But the critical thing for me is that shipping _time_ is
based on distance. For instance, our LUG got contacted on short notice to do
a layout for a Harry Potter festival this past weekend. I spent the weekend
before designing a MOC of the Ford Anglia flying car, and spent a few hours building
a Want List and finding stores in nearby states on Sunday night. I sent e-mails
requesting invoices be sent immediately, and paid them at my earliest opportunity.
Out of the eight initial orders, I received five of them by Friday, one of them
on Saturday during the first day of the show, was informed right away that one
of them would be significantly delayed, and I'm still waiting on the eighth.
For the delayed order, I placed two more, neither of which I've received
yet. I'm in Michigan. The two "emergency" orders that have not yet arrived
are from New York state. They may have been significantly delayed by the massive
snowstorm that pounded the area going into the weekend, but even if that weren't
the case one of the initial orders was also from New York, had a full day head
start, and didn't arrive until Friday. So, the best I could have expected
from the other two was apparently arriving on Saturday with the other "late"
order. That order came from North Carolina, which is even farther away than
New York. And the other missing order didn't even get handed off to the
Post Office until today, but coming from Connecticut it should have had a fair
chance of arriving alongside the first New York order. Mostly I try to stick
to Michigan (obviously), Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and maybe expand out into
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin if I need to. Unfortunately, needing a small pile
of assorted Medium Blue parts means I had to go farther afield. Fortunately,
even though I only had half of my orders arrive by Friday, I was able to figure
out some substutions to get the model built well enough that I could display
it for the whole event.

I can however see you'd want an option like that.
As a seller I would also like an option to set prices automatically based on
the last 6 months of sales in my country and not worldwide; which I haven't
found yet, or it doesn't exist either.

I have no idea about that, as I've never set up shop as a Seller. But like
the OP wanting to be able to buy locally, and me wanting to be able to buy from
nearby states the way you can from nearby countries, I doubt this is something
they would ever set up without being asked.

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Mar 5, 2018 18:02

Subject:

Re: Search Locally

Viewed:

18 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, leopard37 writes:

If you navigate through the following you can filter by your own state. It doesn't
help you with what pieces those stores have but you could at least choose the
largest.

SHOP - Stores - Find Stores - choose your country, it then lists all stores
within that country - Filter by your state

I know how to get a list of all stores in the US split up by state, but that
has zero compatibility with the Want List. So, yeah, you're pretty much
shooting blind with the biggest stores in-state until you either find what you're
looking for or hit the point where you run out of enticing options (about the
point where you go from having a single clear "next" to 1-2 dozen). Or you can
search by Want List, filter by country, and keep opening stores until you find
some that are within striking distance. Even being able to _see_ which state
a store is located in from the Want List result list would be helpful as I could
then quickly scroll through and either select a store or dismiss it.

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Mar 1, 2018 22:56

Subject:

Re: Getting Frustrated Now With Bricklink

Viewed:

114 times

Topic:

Problem

In Problem, tEoS writes:

It seems that I don't have a choice of what I offer for PayPal payments,
even though BL says I have a choice between onsite and offsite.

So...if someone switched to Onsite Paypal, it sounds like that's been shut
down to force users to sign up for Marketplace. If you have Instant Checkout,
I'm assuming the same applies. For Non-Broken Paypal, they probably shut
off the ability to add it to your store as an option if it's not already
there. But I just placed several orders last weekend, and all of them were offering
Actually-Works Paypal as a payment option. And of course, since that's what
I selected for all of them, all I had to do was log onto that site that didn't
grind to a halt after being hacked...twice, type in some payment info, and wait
for the shipments to arrive.

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Mar 1, 2018 20:39

Subject:

Re: Getting Frustrated Now With Bricklink

Viewed:

81 times

Topic:

Problem

In Problem, leopard37 writes:

I've had two quotes within the last two days and the quotes have been accepted
and the system has created blank invoices send to the customer multiple times.
I then have to send an invoice manually afterwards for them to pay.

It is most definitely not working fine.

It's working fine for me. All I do is select standard "Paypal" as the payment
option (or empty my cart if it's not available), wait for the invoice to
come in, and then log in to Paypal to submit payment. Now, come late April,
it'll be jacked twelve ways from Sunday...

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Feb 28, 2018 21:36

Subject:

Re: Getting Frustrated Now With Bricklink

Viewed:

62 times

Topic:

General

In General, SylvainLS writes:

With New, you can easily part out sets into your inventory. With Used, when
you don’t know which sets the parts are from (and whether they are all there),
it’s more work.

Exactly. New, you part out and list an entire set all at once. Used, you track
down and list a single piece. Then the next one is the same piece, but you have
to list it differently because you want to note differences in condition and
price them accordingly. The only reason I can figure that people can make any
money at all on Used is they can often get hugely undervalued lots on sites like
Craigslist or by hitting up garage sales. Or, you know, you can price it higher
than New and hope people will buy it without paying attention because "Used is
always less expensive".

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Feb 26, 2018 17:13

Subject:

Re: Search Locally

Viewed:

47 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, RobNeptune writes:

As someone often buys pieces for a project in progress, I wanted to suggest that
the search feature allow you to filter by local sellers. This typically provides
a faster delivery, including occasions where I have been able to meet someone
nearby the same day.

I'd be happy enough with being able to filter by state, or cluster of states
in the US. Europe has something very similar to this in being able to search
by individual nation, but for US or Canada, that's functionally no different
than being limited to "Europe in general".

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Feb 23, 2018 20:13

Subject:

Re: Inventory Change Request for Set 7735-1

Viewed:

40 times

Topic:

Inventories Requests

In Inventories Requests, CrazyChris writes:

It is common knowledge that the hinges with hollow studs were introduced around
1987.

Introduced =/= exclusive. Old molds can be run alongside new ones for various
amounts of time. Old parts can be in inventory for years as they bleed the stock
down, and until the stock hits a low threshold they might not order up a new
run of parts using the newer mold in that color. I shouldn't own one of
these in dark-bley...but I do:

4085b Plate, Modified 1 x 1 with U Clip Thin (Vertical Grip)
Parts: Plate, Modified

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Jan 26, 2018 23:35

Subject:

Re: The utter powerlessness of buyers

Viewed:

80 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, undetected writes:

Wouldn't this mean that feedback would be even more valuable here?

It should. And maybe it would be if the feedback system wasn't abused by
individuals on both sides of the transactions. As it stands, there's a ton
of retaliatory feedback out there, on top of complaints that a lot of people
assume the neutral feedback is for when an order proceeds uneventfully (nothing
wrong with it, but nothing "above and beyond" about it either), while sellers
will tell you that a neutral is just about as bad as a negative because they
both count equally against you on your feedback score.

There's even a rule about not coercing the buyer/seller with the threat of
negative feedback, and they tell you to report it so they can hand out some discipline...but
then tell you not to bother if the communication took place via private e-mail
instead of through the Bricklink messaging system. So obviously anyone who chooses
to make such threats just has to go off-site with them in order to make it impossible
to report them for violating the ToS.

Same here. I sent my payment through paypal, three weeks before the seller shipped
it, after weeks of me urging him to ship it.

No, by that I mean you on Amazon the payment is how you place the order. Here,
there's no guarantee that a buyer will actually pay for an order once they
submit it, and some will try to weasel the seller into discounting the order
with the threat of negative feedback if they don't. And sometimes I'm
guessing they succeed, because there are sellers who are paranoid about picking
up a negative.

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Jan 26, 2018 17:57

Subject:

Re: The utter powerlessness of buyers

Viewed:

87 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, undetected writes:

If this is a problem unique to Bricklink, I wonder why. I do have to say, the
first year, I made a bunch of purchases and didn't even know that there was
a feedback system. I got positive feedback as a buyer, and I didn't even
realize it. I had great experiences then, and I would have gladly left positive
feedback.

Bricklink is a community on top of being a place of business. I suspect that
influences decisions very differently than being purely profit-motivated. They
also never handled the money until recently, which is something that exposed
sites like eBay and Amazon to much greater risk, which can be reduced by improving
the quality of the transactions. For the part about buyers trying to blackmail
sellers into providing a discount after the order is placed, I think that's
also something that's a lot easier to attempt here. On Amazon, you have
to pay for the order to place it. On eBay, you can win the bid before paying
for it, but since eBay owned Paypal, and eBay initiated the payment process,
it was a lot easier to keep track of whether payment matched the price. Here,
once the invoice is sent out, Bricklink has no way to observe the payment as
its made except for during Onsite Paypal and Instant Checkout, vs the dozens
of other forms of payment that can be accepted.

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Jan 24, 2018 20:54

Subject:

Re: The utter powerlessness of buyers

Viewed:

78 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, undetected writes:

On Bricklink, there is a number associated with a seller, but that number doesn't
indicate whether the seller has 100% positive feedback or 30% negative feedback.
It's just a number of feedback.

When you're shopping in a Bricklink store, the feedback percentage is visible
in the upper right. The problem is the feedback system here is so unreliable
that many of us don't even bother to pay attention. Follow the posts on
this forum, and you'll see a buyer complain about a seller threatening to
leave retaliatory negative feedback if the buyer leaves anything but positive
feedback (even if the seller had truly terrible service). Then you'll see
a seller complain that a buyer is threatening to leave negative feedback unless
the seller gives them a discount off their entire order. And after reading about
both of those, and realizing that these stories pop up with alarming frequency,
you'll also start to wonder why anybody actually cares about the feedback
system here, too.

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Jan 14, 2018 21:00

Subject:

Re: Add option to Exclude Paypal for EU

Viewed:

34 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, Teup writes:

However, I ship without tracking all the time and accept PayPal payments. In
reality it's really no big deal. I've never once had a malicious buyer.
It seems like a far fetched and inefficient way to make money, going through
all the negativity of arguing with the seller, claiming through PayPal.. no person
- decent or otherwise - will be interested in that hassle, unless the order
is valuable. But in this case you would likely ship it with tracking anyway,
and the relative cost of the tracking would be much less.

I know someone who got scammed, once, in a way that tracking probably wouldn't
prevent. It was for a set, and I suspect those are more likely to be targeted
by scam buyers because they're easier to flip afterwards. I heard someone
ask advice on whether to sell sets or parts at an AFOL event, and the response
was that parts are more profitable, but sets will always sell. Now, I just peeked
in both of your stores, and while you have a much higher part to set ratio, his
sets are only about half a case of CMFs from a couple years ago. I didn't
browse his parts, but the account is only two years old, and the store has only
34 sales. Either this seller has actually been hit with a scam already, or it's
just a case of being new-seller cautious.

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Jan 11, 2018 19:18

Subject:

Re: Add option to Exclude Paypal for EU

Viewed:

32 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, SylvainLS writes:

Anyway I don’t very much like the “I want to block buyers who could pay the way
I want but won’t” attitude, I’d rather see a “I give perks to buyers who pay
the way I prefer.” But I guess it’s because I’m a buyer

I don't really have to worry about that, since anyone who wants US buyers
pretty much has to offer Paypal. But what I miss now is the feature that I very
briefly was able to enjoy, where I could search by stores that accepted _regular_
Paypal. The last time I tried to use that, all I could select was "Instant Checkout",
which just compounds the problem of Onsite Paypal. I don't load Bricklink
on the computer I use to do financial stuff, and I don't do financial stuff
on the various devices I use to shop Bricklink. Kinda hard to make either of
those work under those circumstances.

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Jan 11, 2018 15:16

Subject:

Re: Add option to Exclude Paypal for EU

Viewed:

32 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, yorbrick writes:

Yes, that would be fine. When sellers say EU countries must pay via bank transfer,
I often leave the store as UK-EU transfers can be more costly than by PayPal
by the time the rate has been factored in. Especially if I already have EU funds
in PayPal.

Heh. I hadn't ever thought of that, but it does sound inconvenient to have
a Paypal account that's flush with Euros if you can't find anyone in
the EU who accepts Paypal or anyone outside the EU who accepts Euros.

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Jan 2, 2018 20:52

Subject:

Re: wanted list

Viewed:

36 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, esprob writes:

allow options for purchased items in wanted list to be removed.

When you submit an order, there's a link on the next page that brings up
any and all Want List items that are included in the entire order (not just the
latest batch). You can then shuffle them around to other wanted lists, delete
them, adjust the levels, etc. Many of us prefer to maintain a separate Want
List for items that we've purchased but that haven't yet arrived. When
they do, if they're the correct item in the correct quantity, then they can
be deleted from that list while we're also updated the order to Completed.
If there's something wrong and we can't get it resolved with the original
seller, we can return any missing items to an active want list to repurchase
without having to go to the hassle of rebuilding the missing parts of the want
list from scratch.

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Dec 23, 2017 18:53

Subject:

Re: Login problems on ipad

Viewed:

28 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, drclarkjr writes:

In this day and age, a 10.5” tablet isn’t really a mobile device. In my case
it’s my main computer. Gotta believe that is true of an increasing percentage
of people.

Inside it's just a regular old iPhone with a bigger battery and screen.
It even runs the same basic OS as an iPhone. It's a mobile device, and,
as Apple seems to be fond of pointing out via Scout, it's not a computer.

Your best bet is to log in from portrait mode and save your password while doing
so. Thereafter, whenever you click on the login box it should give you the link
to enter the password for you on the top of the keyboard, and it really won't
matter where the window appears on (or off) the screen in the future.

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Nov 30, 2017 21:46

Subject:

Re: No Instant Checkout = Force must offer Quote

Viewed:

41 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, bagelboybugle writes:

Some sellers dont like it apparantly. Incidentally, a similar % of sellers were
well set against introducing a multi-currency platform, funnily enough not many
of them packed up shop in protest when it was implemented. Its a different idea
of course.

Multiple currencies cease to be much of an issue when, as a seller, you can choose
to only accept the one you actually use on a daily basis, and when, as a buyer,
you can usually let PayPal deal with the hassle of currency conversion. Quotes
are absolutely going to mean more work for sellers. And the more orders they
process on a daily basis, the more often they'll end up with quotes that
become voided when other buyers buy inventory that's included in those quotes.
The simple way to make the quote system not cause you headaches as a seller
appears to be exactly what so many sellers have chosen to do: Leave quotes turned
off.

Author:

PurpleDave

Posted:

Nov 28, 2017 10:00

Subject:

Re: No Instant Checkout = Force must offer Quote

Viewed:

45 times

Topic: