Redisplay Messages: Compact | Brief | All | Full Show Messages: All | Without Replies| Author: | PurpleDave  | | Posted: | Mar 19, 2018 04:50 | | Subject: | Re: Save Offsite Paypal! | | Viewed: | 68 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| 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.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Mar 18, 2018 21:52 | | Subject: | Save Offsite Paypal! | | Viewed: | 321 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | | Status: | Implemented | |
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| 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.
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| 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: | Suggestions | |
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| 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.
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| 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: | Suggestions | |
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| 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.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Mar 6, 2018 04:44 | | Subject: | Re: Search Locally | | Viewed: | 23 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| 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.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Mar 6, 2018 04:39 | | Subject: | Re: Search Locally | | Viewed: | 22 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| 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).
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Mar 5, 2018 18:41 | | Subject: | Re: Search Locally | | Viewed: | 36 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| 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.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Mar 5, 2018 18:32 | | Subject: | Re: Search Locally | | Viewed: | 18 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| 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.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Mar 5, 2018 18:29 | | Subject: | Re: Search Locally | | Viewed: | 23 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| 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.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Mar 5, 2018 18:02 | | Subject: | Re: Search Locally | | Viewed: | 18 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| 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.
|
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Mar 1, 2018 22:56 | | Subject: | Re: Getting Frustrated Now With Bricklink | | Viewed: | 114 times | | Topic: | Problem | |
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| 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.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Mar 1, 2018 20:39 | | Subject: | Re: Getting Frustrated Now With Bricklink | | Viewed: | 81 times | | Topic: | Problem | |
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| 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...
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Feb 28, 2018 21:36 | | Subject: | Re: Getting Frustrated Now With Bricklink | | Viewed: | 62 times | | Topic: | General | |
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| 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".
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Feb 26, 2018 17:13 | | Subject: | Re: Search Locally | | Viewed: | 47 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| 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".
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Feb 23, 2018 20:13 | | Subject: | Re: Inventory Change Request for Set 7735-1 | | Viewed: | 40 times | | Topic: | Inventories Requests | |
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| 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:
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Jan 26, 2018 23:35 | | Subject: | Re: The utter powerlessness of buyers | | Viewed: | 80 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| 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.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Jan 26, 2018 17:57 | | Subject: | Re: The utter powerlessness of buyers | | Viewed: | 87 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| 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.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Jan 24, 2018 20:54 | | Subject: | Re: The utter powerlessness of buyers | | Viewed: | 78 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| 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.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Jan 14, 2018 21:00 | | Subject: | Re: Add option to Exclude Paypal for EU | | Viewed: | 34 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| 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.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Jan 11, 2018 19:18 | | Subject: | Re: Add option to Exclude Paypal for EU | | Viewed: | 32 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| 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.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Jan 11, 2018 15:16 | | Subject: | Re: Add option to Exclude Paypal for EU | | Viewed: | 32 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| 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.
|
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Jan 2, 2018 20:52 | | Subject: | Re: wanted list | | Viewed: | 36 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| 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.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Dec 23, 2017 18:53 | | Subject: | Re: Login problems on ipad | | Viewed: | 28 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| 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.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Nov 30, 2017 21:46 | | Subject: | Re: No Instant Checkout = Force must offer Quote | | Viewed: | 41 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| 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.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Nov 28, 2017 10:00 | | Subject: | Re: No Instant Checkout = Force must offer Quote | | Viewed: | 45 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| In Suggestions, PaulOfBricks writes:
| | I should of made it clearer but everybody seems to be missing that fact I'm
only saying it quote should be 'offered'
|
Yeah, I got that. I didn't at first, but I only had time to read the first
post before I got home. By the time I did, you'd clarified your position.
However, if something becomes a mandatory option, it's very easy to make
it a mandatory process. If someone is forced to adopt to a quote system, they
may find it's too much trouble to run quotes alongside non-quoted purchases,
and start forcing everyone to go through the same quote system even when they
don't want to.
And it's not that I don't care about the shipping prices. I stopped
ordering from Czech stores because of the horrible VAT-exemption laws there (everyone
there charges VAT worldwide, or a hefty flat fee for filing paperwork to prove
exemption status). But I'm not going to freak out over $4 vs $2 for shipping
on an order.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Nov 27, 2017 19:57 | | Subject: | Re: No Instant Checkout = Force must offer Quote | | Viewed: | 57 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| In Suggestions, PaulOfBricks writes:
| | I think it should be mandatory by Bricklink that any seller not using Instant
checkout will
Automatically will have the Quote option enabled.
What is the harm in that?
|
I voted No. On the surface, I don't really care if sellers enable the Quote
function, but I don't want to see it become a mandatory part of my shopping
experience. I have zero interest in Instant Checkout. If someone doesn't
have one key element that is the only reason I placed the order, I'd rather
be able to just cancel out of it without having my money even get involved, much
less having to wait for refunds to clear (something which can take a few weeks
if PayPal flags the refund for investigation like I've had happen a few times
in the past), where IC forces you to pay up front and hope your seller has their
inventory locked down.
For Quote, my main concern would be that if everyone is forced to have it turned
on, and sellers start getting thoroughly sick of having quotes auto-cancel because
elements end up being short due to other orders coming through during the turnaround,
we might see stores restricting sales to quoted orders, preventing me from being
able to just place my order and be done with it.
I'm looking at the amounts you're talking about, and in the one example
all I can see is maybe a $2 difference. I'm not big on just throwing away
money, but I've run into stores where simply placing the order could cost
$20-50 more for very basic parts. $2 extra in shipping costs seems like a bargain
at that point. I've placed orders where the cost of the parts was less than
1% of the invoiced total, not because the seller decided to rake me over the
coals on shipping, but because the order was for maybe $0.25 in parts. Generally,
that would be a very cost-prohibitive way to order parts, but sometimes I find
that there's literally only one store without a massive minimum buy that
has something I need for a MOC, and they have absolutely nothing else I want
to buy from them. So, I can either suck it up and pay shipping on maybe one
or two pieces, I can scrap my plans and see if I can come up with a new design,
or I can play the long game and hope someone else lists that part under more
favorable conditions...and probably cut my output down to nothing in the process.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Nov 27, 2017 19:22 | | Subject: | Re: No Instant Checkout = Force must offer Quote | | Viewed: | 51 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, Bricklord writes:
| | What extra work? One has to calculate the shipping on every order to invoice
for it anyway. This is simply a buffer between the prospective buyer committing
to an order and simply getting a quote. If they decide the shipping is acceptable,
they accept the quote and you are already done. Invoice them from the order itself,
and once paid pull, pack and ship. There is no extra work, and far fewer NPB's.
|
I regularly shop in waves. I might get a Want List notification for something
I _really_ want and just place an order for that to secure it (something Quote
pointedly interferes with because it would leave me hanging out there waiting
for turnaround on a quote while literally everyone else on the site could just
pop it in their cart and buy it while I'm waiting). Afterwards, when I have
more free time, I might browse the store to see if there's anything else
I feel like picking up. When I'm designing stuff for shows, I might order
parts for one MOC, design something else, and order parts for that MOC with open
orders usually getting preference for any additional parts I need to buy. So,
for any orders like that, I'd have to request a quote for each additional
wave of parts I want to order. If any of those parts sell out, I'd have
to request new quotes from that and probably other stores. If it throws the
order too far out of whack, I may have to drop all of my quoted orders and figure
out new options...and request more quotes. And by the time all of those delays
have been sorted out, I'd be lucky to even finish paying for everything before
I'd hoped to display the result, let alone actually have time for the parts
to arrive so I can build stuff.
And of course, if _everyone_ is asking for quotes instead of placing orders,
you're going to have a ton of overlap on certain elements, with only one
of them being able to actually complete the order causing all of the other quotes
to become invalid. So, you might be getting a few quotes that fall off because
the parts got sold to someone else, but if you start quoting every order I suspect
that rate will go up exponentially.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Oct 18, 2017 21:53 | | Subject: | Re: Printed v Stickered Tiles | | Viewed: | 28 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, FergH0va writes:
| | While your suggestion is incredibly helpful and correct, I do not believe it
negates the request. Unless you're savvy enough to know/figure out/remember
your advice, it sure would be a helpful change to the inventory categories!
|
I do remember how to do that sort of thing, sorting by "-sticker -stickers",
sorting by "-female" when I want a male head or torso, etc. I'd still
like to see stickers split off from decorated in all categories because it'd
save me repeating the same step over and over and over and over and over again.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Sep 16, 2015 17:04 | | Subject: | Re: Excluding Sellers with Minimum Order Amount | | Viewed: | 61 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, fosterbengoshi writes:
| | I would like to suggest that this be tweaked so that buyers can input a dollar
value to exclude only stores that have a Minimum Purchase requirement greater
than the amount they input. As it stands now, ALL stores with ANY Minimum Purchase
amount (even if only $1) are excluded if the box is checked on this page.
|
When I do a Store Query from a Wanted List, all of the returns list the store
minimum in the far right column. That space is blank if they have none. It
works for me, and it's more effective than a checkbox. If I have hundreds
of parts in, say, fifty lots of parts to order, a $30 minimum won't scare
me off if the store can fill half of my list. If a store only yields one or
two lots from that list, even a $5 minimum might not be worth the hassle, depending
on whether I can get those parts elsewhere, if I can find other parts I actually
want to pad out my order, and if the store primarily deals in New parts (I hate
wading through pages upon pages of parts when every time I get interested in
something, it's always listed as Used).
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Jul 19, 2015 14:41 | | Subject: | Re: bug | | Viewed: | 25 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, brix4kix writes:
| | Hi I have never posted here but I think this should be looked into. When you
receive a payment with E-CHECK the system should not mark as paid ore received
but it should state under payment status of (clearing) until it actually clears.
so the buyer and seller can see. Also when E-CHECK is used a message to buyer
and seller that order is on hold till payment has cleared.
|
Under the old system, back before I got a Paypal account, every time I put a
USPS money order in the mail, I marked the order as Paid. I no longer had the
money in my possession, and it let the Seller know I wasn't an NPB. I also
marked as Paid orders where I mistyped their Paypal address and the payment was
in limbo, in which case some of them let me know I'd made a mistake (and
I think one seller filed NPB). E-checks deduct quickly (usually within a day)
and pay out a few days later, but to the buyer it's like using a money order.
They don't have the money anymore, even though the seller hasn't received
it yet. For that matter, almost all of my Paypal payments are bank deductions,
and I suspect they show up right away but take a few days to clear because the
few times I borked the payment address, and sometimes when I received a refund,
it always took a few days for the money to be released.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Jul 19, 2015 14:29 | | Subject: | Re: Catalog - listing don't open in new Tab | | Viewed: | 25 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, Brickwilbo writes:
| | Hello,
Is it a new feature or me that clicking listings the VIEW-button doesn't
open a new Tab. (in Chrome).
|
I've never had a new tab open when just clicking any link on BL, whether
using Explorer or Safari. I suspect this is something that may be specific to
Chrome, or maybe even a setting within your copy. I know Explorer and Safari
both have a setting that opens any clicked link in a new window/tab, but I've
never turned that option on. I know that if I really want it in a new tab, I
can force it to open a new tab. The only sites that do it automatically for
me are Hotmail (all links in e-mail, including BL want list notifications, always
open in a new tab) and Brickforge (clicking "Shop" from their home page always
forces a new tab, which is why I finally revised my bookmark to skip the homepage
and go straight to the store).
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Jul 9, 2015 16:59 | | Subject: | Re: Wanted List Suggestion | | Viewed: | 21 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, par016 writes:
| | Please please please
Allow wanted lists to have more than one of the same item on them. This would
make working with Wanted Lists so much easier. I want to be able to have the
same piece in the same color on the same wanted list. I often use different
remarks for these items and combining the remarks and changing the quantities
manually can be terribly tedious, time consuming, and is an absolute pain in
the neck.
Also if a feature could be added so that if I try to add a part to a wanted list
with the same part already on it, it asks me if I want to combine the lots together
and if so if I want to merge the remarks.
|
I tried it and ended up turning it off, but there is a setting that allows you
to get a set of checkboxes for each Wanted List when using that feature within
a store. Check as many as you like, and it gives you results for everything
you selected at the same time. The trick is, it only shows up as two lines of
notes below any shared part, so you do have to pay attention more.
The other workaround is that in the past, it you added 10 of Part X to your cart,
adding 5 of Part X overrode the previous quantity and ended up giving you only
5. This has been changed so adding 5 of Part X actually adds five to the current
total, meaning you can sit there and build up one list at a time and the inputs
will combine for larger totals.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Jul 6, 2015 19:25 | | Subject: | Re: search including parts in a part or in a set | | Viewed: | 22 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, TomHop writes:
| | After a brief search I could not find anything on the following, so there goes
my first post.
Sometimes I have parts like a hinge plate 1 x 2 with 1 finger (the old hinges)
on my wanted list.
This can be found
- as such , just this part
- in a parts assembly (together with the 2 finger hinge plate)
- in a set
If I search for any directly I can find them, no problem.
Nevertheless an option like "include part assembly in search" and/or "include
sets in search" would save me doing 3 different searches, besides possibly adding
all possible combinations to my wanted lists (risking missing out on a good purchase
or duplicating parts).
|
A year ago at the Brickworld roundtable I actually requested this. If I'm
searching for green minifig hands, give me results for any minifig with green
hands. And especially give me those results when I run a Query, since that may
mean the difference between a few large orders and a dozen small ones. I don't
know how interested I am in getting "all sets with" automatically, but being
able to toggle that on when I'm desperate and keep it off otherwise would
work for me.
The other big game-changer I asked for was the ability to select between specific
variants for parts like 1x1 plate w/ clip. I usually won't mind Type C vs
Type D, so long as I can guarantee I'm not going to get Type A or Type B
by accident (this would, of course, work best if all variants had mandatory "undetermined"
listings available for those seller who can't bother to check, and if _I_
can choose to exclude Type U parts altogether).
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Jun 9, 2015 15:07 | | Subject: | Re: Inventories changed, sellers not informed | | Viewed: | 24 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, therobo writes:
| | The type 2 cowl figs could have been aproved 2 years earlier *if* we would have
had images before.
|
Could have been even earlier, but for a while one or both of them was still theoretical.
I know the black I/II Batman got approved very quickly because the Type II was
the only version found in the jet ski set. I know the hard wing version of that
outfit only got one listing because it only came in Arkham Asylum, which came
out after the jet ski. I know I posed the other two as potential Type I/II candidates,
but that all my copies of those sets were obtained right after release, meaning
I had no proof that they were legitimate minifigs. And I know at least one person
claimed to have found a Type II cowl in a set that was released with a Type I
cowl. But I don't remember which of the three affected minifigs it was,
and I know it would be irresponsible to submit the minifigs on a guess. But
maybe that's what the eventual submitter did, and maybe he didn't have
the minifigs to back it up.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Jun 9, 2015 14:47 | | Subject: | Re: Inventories changed, sellers not informed | | Viewed: | 28 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, par016 writes:
| | And the submissions were rejected. You will have to ask the catalog admins why.
I tried.
|
Minifigs aren't allowed to have alternate inventories. Why that is might
be the better question to ask.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Jun 9, 2015 13:35 | | Subject: | Re: Inventories changed, sellers not informed | | Viewed: | 28 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, RobErNat writes:
| | I like the idea as well, the site might stick to minifigs, but it also happens
with other items (I remember a gray train door appearing in a set because the
inventorier made a typo on the partnumber, and several sellers ended up with
that unexisting door in ninventory), so parts should somehow be included as well...
hoewever, if *all* inventory changes are going to be send out then one would
be facing major amounts of mails comming in (just look at the many changes per
year), not even sure it would be pratical to manage such(for sellers), so this
should be elaborated, and maybe it might be good to have the IA's decide
'which' changes are going to be send out to all people...
|
Buyers already might get tons of e-mails due to want list notifications. Not
every inventory change is going to be sent to every seller (just the ones that
matter), so every Inventory Update Notification you receive should be something
that you'll know you need to act on (where I get WLNs for parts and minifigs
that are tied up in massive Superlots, hidden behind bank-breaking Minimum Purchases,
or are listed in huge bulk lots when I only need one). And dealing with it up
front seems a lot simpler than having a peeved customer halfway around the world
claiming you sent the wrong item.
| | + It also doesn't solve the problem *if* someone buys such items and puts
them on resale, as that person wouldn't get a notification, as there wouldn't
be a partout log on his 'account'.
So allthough it seems easy to generate warnings, the reality is that it is much
more complicated and goes far beyond a 'log' of someone having done a
PO...
|
It's very simple, actually. If you parted out a set but sold the affected
item(s) already, you clearly have no need to be notified. You don't have
either version. If you got it loose and listed it that way, you do need to be
notified. Notify anyone selling affected items, regardless of how the listing
was generated. That's how it would be done for Marked For Deletion, is it
not? Why should it be different for Intentory Changed?
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Jun 9, 2015 12:53 | | Subject: | Re: Inventories changed, sellers not informed | | Viewed: | 24 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, renhoffman writes:
| | I will note that this change was made in February of this year, and that I believe
the "(Type 1 Cowl)" part of the item name was added then. This is my issue, I
did not know that this change was made, to an item I had in stock at the time.
I did not even know there where two types of cowls, so seeing the item come up
in an order, it did not even occur to me that the item was different than when
I had originally listed it.
|
This was a change that was a long time in happening. DC Superheroes launched
in early 2012, at which time everything still used the Type I cowl (which was
still just "the cowl"). Late 2012, that changed with the release of this set:
This was the first set to include a Type II cowl from the start. Electrosuit
Batman came with a Type II and was the first minifig to not have a Type I cowl
at all, but for the rest of the 2012 Batmen, it became a bit of a problem. Early
on, only the black/yellow Batman had Type I/II variants listed because each version
came in different sets, but by the end of the year some of the first wave of
DCS sets were starting to show up with Type II cowls replacing the Type I cowls
that they originally shipped with. At that time, I compiled a list of which
Batmen could have TypeI/II variants (2011 SDCC Batman and all the original Batman
theme minifigs only shipped with Type I, while anything newly released in 2013
or later plus Electrosuit Batman only came with Type II). The problem was, nothing
could be added to the catalog until it could be verified, and some ended up delayed
for a very long time due to lack of catalog photos. Early this year, the last
of the Type I/II Batmen was finally approved, and the Type III cowl has not been
used interchangeably with the Type II due to the need for a cowl-colored head.
All told, only three minifigs were affected, with the two already mentioned
and this one:
And with that, there should be no more alternate minifig entries for Batman...unless
someone wants to start tracking down when the Type 2.5 cowl first appeared (where
the Type II sits right on the shoulders, 2.5 sits about 1/16" higher so as to
line up better with the white eyeband). I know it came out before 2014 SDCC
Batman, but beyond that I have way too many Batmen and have swapped parts around
way too much to clearly nail down when it first appeared.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Jun 9, 2015 11:52 | | Subject: | Re: Inventories changed, sellers not informed | | Viewed: | 34 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, viejos writes:
| | However, in this particular case, sh019 and sh025 are (strictly speaking) undetermined
entries that can stand for either type.
|
No, the catalog descriptions for both of these minifigs state quite definitively
that they both have Type I cowls, because that's the only cowl that was available
when they were inventoried. Furthermore, Bricklink does not support alternate
inventories for minifigs, so it is currently impossible to have a minifig with
Undetermined Cowl as an official catalog listing.
For loose parts that may have been the case at one point, but even now Bricklink
has shown an inclination to move away from Undetermined entries in favor of strict
distinction between acknowledged variants.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Jun 4, 2015 19:30 | | Subject: | Re: Issue, I didn't bring up at the RoundTable | | Viewed: | 62 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, FigBits writes:
| | Hmm. Do you have a reference for that?
$0.50 means 50¢, of course.
|
Specifically? No. But "¢" is sometimes used interchangeably with "$", in relation
to USD. When it's written to the right of the number, it means cents. To
the left, and it's basically shorthand for writing "$", meaning dollars.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Jun 4, 2015 14:52 | | Subject: | Re: Issue, I didn't bring up at the RoundTable | | Viewed: | 70 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, BrickItYourself writes:
| | I still see people write .50¢ for 50 cents, and they don't realize they just
wrote half a cent.
|
And even less well known is that ¢0.50 is equal to 50¢. I don't know why
it was decided that left or right placement changes the meaning, but I know that
it does.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Apr 15, 2015 14:50 | | Subject: | Re: Ban sellers asking for Friends PayPal payment | | Viewed: | 37 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, RobErNat writes:
| | He is a buyer only... He means he doesn't use them when he gets them
from sellers, as by using 2 PC's he would need to handcopy them letter by
letter...
|
That's exactly right. And the reason I do that is so any random virus or
malware that I run into while just surfing the internet can't keylog me when
I'm logging into a site that has access to my financials or where I'm
typing in a CC number.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Apr 14, 2015 07:06 | | Subject: | Re: Ban sellers asking for Friends PayPal payment | | Viewed: | 67 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, PurpleDave writes:
| | In Suggestions, mabccc writes:
| | Yes, it is correct. It makes no difference to a seller whether they get a balance
payment or credit card funded payment, if it was a business transaction. They
wouldn't even know. So what reason do they have to ask for balance payments
only?
|
If they mention nothing about Goods vs Friends, it could just be that it's
left in their TOS from the days when the seller got hit with any CC fees, so
Balance-Funded payments actually were cheaper for business transactions. Remember,
Paypal gets charged to process card payments, and there is no way they're
going to take that hit when they only collect 3% of the total payment in the
first place. A few years ago, federal legislation made it legal to pass that
fee on to the cardholder, but before that the only option was to add it to the
regular Paypal fees.
|
Ooh, or they could be registered outside of the US, in which case different TOS
apply, and maybe Paypal _can't_ hit the buyer with the CC fees, so the seller
does still have legitimate reason to ask for balance-funded transactions. If
they're in Europe, they also have the TOS-supported right to throw both the
standard Paypal fees and any incurred CC fees back at the buyer, and letting
the buyer know that up front might be completely legitimate with no intention
of hinting at preferring a Friends payment.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Apr 14, 2015 06:13 | | Subject: | Re: Ban sellers asking for Friends PayPal payment | | Viewed: | 84 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, mabccc writes:
| | Yes, it is correct. It makes no difference to a seller whether they get a balance
payment or credit card funded payment, if it was a business transaction. They
wouldn't even know. So what reason do they have to ask for balance payments
only?
|
If they mention nothing about Goods vs Friends, it could just be that it's
left in their TOS from the days when the seller got hit with any CC fees, so
Balance-Funded payments actually were cheaper for business transactions. Remember,
Paypal gets charged to process card payments, and there is no way they're
going to take that hit when they only collect 3% of the total payment in the
first place. A few years ago, federal legislation made it legal to pass that
fee on to the cardholder, but before that the only option was to add it to the
regular Paypal fees.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Apr 13, 2015 20:34 | | Subject: | Re: Ban sellers asking for Friends PayPal payment | | Viewed: | 59 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, fosterbengoshi writes:
| | I don't know if it still exists, but it used to be slightly cheaper for sellers
to receive balance transfer payments than payments that were funded from the
buyer's credit or bank card.
|
I think it used to be, but now I believe the buyer gets socked with extra fees
for submitting a card-funded transaction. Because Paypal can legally charge
that fee back to them, where a few years ago they could not.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Apr 13, 2015 20:31 | | Subject: | Re: Ban sellers asking for Friends PayPal payment | | Viewed: | 42 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, legoman77 writes:
| | But that is the official rate that Bricklink allows. At one time the seller
could use any exchange rate they want to. Now they cannot. So bricklink does
set something and can be involved in something that has nothing to do with bricklink.
|
Setting the exchange rate and dictating _who_ can set the exchange rate are so
very not the same thing. If BL set the exchange rates, they would likely not
change more than once per day, if not longer. And sellers or buyers who felt
they were getting the short end of the stick would be very vocal about it. It
also eliminates the possibility of a seller allowing buyers to shop in their
store seeing prices in Guilders, when they only accept payment in Florins, and
they use purposefully misleading exchange rates to make the price of their wares
seem extremely low to buyers in a Guilder-based economy.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Apr 13, 2015 20:20 | | Subject: | Re: Ban sellers asking for Friends PayPal payment | | Viewed: | 43 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, mabccc writes:
| | To get no fees, you have to pay with balance, and use the Friends and Family
option. "Balance Payment" is code for Friends and Family, without stating it
explicitly.
|
So if the store terms state that a "Balance Payment" will get no added fees,
and that's all it says, and someone pays as "goods" with "balance payment",
that would satisfy the store terms and make adding that fee a violation of BL
TOS, correct?
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Apr 13, 2015 20:11 | | Subject: | Re: Ban sellers asking for Friends PayPal payment | | Viewed: | 41 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, Brettj666 writes:
| | I've seen one US store that takes no electronic payments, because he doesn't
trust the government.
|
I guess he hasn't heard that the USPS saves data on all 1st class mail that
it has delivered. Sure, they don't know the contents, but they know where
it came from and where it went.
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Apr 13, 2015 20:06 | | Subject: | Re: Ban sellers asking for Friends PayPal payment | | Viewed: | 34 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, legoman77 writes:
| | Does not BrickLink set exchange rates? They did at one time.
|
No. They pull exchange rate data from XE.com on an hourly basis.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Apr 13, 2015 20:02 | | Subject: | Re: Ban sellers asking for Friends PayPal payment | | Viewed: | 45 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, Asterios writes:
| | Actually that also violates PayPals ToC by charging more, no matter what they
call it to pay thru other then personal, also think it violates certain retail
laws too concerning the adding of charges to use a credit card or not.
|
It depends on where the account is registered. US accounts can't tack Paypal
fees on when you pay by Paypal, per Paypal TOS. European accounts are fully
allowed to do so because they have different TOS.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Apr 13, 2015 13:03 | | Subject: | Re: Ban sellers asking for Friends PayPal payment | | Viewed: | 55 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, fosterbengoshi writes:
| | But there is a devious twist to this. Some sellers will embed this in their PayPal
direct payment link without even telling the buyer. For example, some sellers,
when setting up their direct payment links included in their invoices, will describe
or check the payment as one for services instead of one for goods. Goods have
PayPal buyer protection; services do not.
I don't mind waiving my buyer protection rights on most orders with most
sellers. But at least ASK me or be up front about it so I can make that choice
myself. Don't hide and slip it in a direct payment link. That is pretty sleazy
and dishonest IMO.
|
That is pretty underhanded, but not something I have to worry about as I don't
use e-mail and Paypal on the same computer. Embedded payment links are a huge
pain to hand-type, so I never use them.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Apr 13, 2015 06:50 | | Subject: | Re: Ban sellers asking for Friends PayPal payment | | Viewed: | 91 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, mabccc writes:
| | There are still sellers using "Pay by personal payment" or mentioning "Friends
and Family" or "Balance payment" in their terms pages.
|
I get the "personal payment" and "friends/family" issues, but what does "balance
payment" have to do with anything. Doesn't that just mean they prefer you
pay with actual-money from your Paypal or bank account rather than paying by
credit card? Or does that work differently on their end based on whether you
submit it as commercial or personal?
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Mar 6, 2015 00:23 | | Subject: | Re: Inventory Change Request for Minifig sp007 | | Viewed: | 40 times | | Topic: | Inventories Requests | |
|
| In Inventories Requests, LordSkylark writes:
| | How hard can it be to have an automatic system?
|
To message every affected member, right? Because automatically switching store
listings over to the correct version could cause people to sell the incorrect
parts. In this case, maybe a seller built the minifig according to the flawed
catalog listing and doesn't have the solid-stud head anymore.
But yeah, you'd think they would have had something built into the site where
the instant someone deletes a catalog entry, it sends out notifications to anyone
who has some listed for sale, has it want listed, or has bought any recently.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Feb 9, 2015 06:57 | | Subject: | Re: Time to address seller quality issues | | Viewed: | 107 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, QCBricks writes:
| | Way to take the high road...come back and make it seem like there might have
just been a problem when you ordered from us...but you cannot remember.
|
Way to ignore the rest if the post.
Fine. I dug up all my old emails associated with the six orders I've placed
with you (all have been purged). After reading the list of parts I ordered,
the only problem that I can recall is that on the last order you sent the light-bley
6x16 plates that I ordered and not the 8x16 plates that I meant to order. Now,
unless you have established yourself as an expert in long-distance mind-reading,
I have to allow that it would be somewhat unreasonable to expect you to ship
what I really wanted instead of what I actually ordered...but it is entirely
reasonable to expect you not to duck behind that single point and ignore the
rest if my post, so I've left it intact here where you don't even have
to go find it:
| | | | | | I didn't even touch the inference that the drop in quality is solely due
to the "large sellers". There is no real evidence for that and despite the continual
claims here on the forum of "...OMG the huge stores are all terrible, everyone
knows that..."
|
I know that most of the errors I've run across tend to be buried in large
orders. Two issues that come to mind are that some sellers were talking about
dropping the packing list as an unnecessary expense, and some large stores employ
pickers to pull and ship orders (having outgrown the ability of one person to
keep up with the customers). I've found that I'm less likely to find
problems with orders that have packing slips that have been checked off by item
(just one more opportunity to catch the problem before it becomes a Problem),
and no matter how awesome a company is, new employees require training and take
time to learn the ropes, and the person who seemed like the best employee ever
when you hired them could easily just be a very personable but incompetent worker
who burns your reputation (something that's less likely to happen with a
one-person hobby store).
Also, a store that only sees one sale a month can be just the worst, but nobody
will really notice. One hundred such stores will hardly register. One really
huge store that moves tens of thousands of dollars worth of orders every month
can just drop off a bit in quality for a little while and it's going to be
talked about. Regular and major problems, and it's going to become a regular
conversation.
| | This all seems to me to built on some sort of weird assumption that small stores
"care more about Lego" or are "bigger fans" of Lego and those assumptions make
no sense at all. There may be just as many small sellers "in it for the money"...I
don't see how anyone would know that one way or the other.
|
I think the logic there is that someone who isn't really making any money
obviously wouldn't be in it for the money. It's never to say that all
big sellers are just about the money (I've personally seen Troy C. and his
brother display on more than one occasion, and there was a time when Troy had
one of the largest stores in the world), just that it's hard to imagine someone
doing this if it involves twice as much work and half the pay as flipping burgers
at McDonald's, unless they have a more personal interest in the brick.
| | Do you believe that a store that pays $800 a month to a site should have exactly
the same features that a store that pays $1 a month has? (and here on BL there
are many stores that don't even pay a penny)
|
Remember when eBay had a huge scandal because they were seen as protecting Power
Sellers who we're pulling tricks or simply screwing up orders, because they
generated large sums of money in seller fees? While there is an argument for
affording them greater rewards for being so large, there's just as compelling
an argument for greater oversight.
| | I have never said to get rid of the hobby sellers.
|
No, you just suggesting giving stores that might only generate a few dozen dollars
in annual sales a choice between paying $120 per year for the privilege of paying
money to give parts, or being practically invisible and inaccessible to prospective
buyers. When I look in the price guide, AS A BUYER, I expect and deserve to
see all of the options available to me, not just the ones that are profitable
enough to afford a listing fee.
| | I don't care how large a store is, but if they are shipping
10 business days after payment or shipping in a used pasta box, or snapping together
new parts when they are shipped, or whatever, they are bad for Bricklink and
should either be removed from the site or moved to a not so professional Craigslist
style area where buyers know what to expect.
|
And a listing fee will do exactly jack to fix all of that. If a big seller is
screwing up, a $10 listing fee is meaningless if they get to deduct it out of
their three-figure monthly fees. They probably won't even remember that
there is a listing fee after a year has gone by. But all the really small hobby
sellers that help boost the inventory and appeal of this site will evaporate,
leaving no way to replace large sellers when they shut down for good. With that,
the site will rapidly lose appeal.
| | Do you think it is fair that business sellers who must pay taxes have even footing
with people that don't even claim their sales on their taxes?
|
Stores that are large never have been on equal footing with small hobby stores.
By virtue of their inventory, they are guaranteed to see many more orders, and
often much larger ones. By virtue of their higher sales volume, they can replenish
inventory faster and better than hobby sellers.
| | Should stores with a great deal of negative feedback be featured in search results right along
with other stores that have sterling feedback?
|
That is entirely unrelated to the idea of monthly listing fees. Again, a large
store can shrug off a $120 nick in their annual income, and moreso if it's
deducted from their monthly fees. In fact, by driving out all the small hobby
sellers (good or bad), it will just funnel more business to any large stores
that don't have their act together.
|
|
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Feb 9, 2015 01:11 | | Subject: | Re: Time to address seller quality issues | | Viewed: | 51 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, izzi_rust writes:
| | You're right. There's a LUG a little over 2 hours away, and it's
huge from what I've seen on their site, but I'm having issues with traveling
that distance right now, and my window to the world is the one I'm typing
into.
Maybe soon! 
|
Well, there ya go. We have a member who is in a similar situation. We don't
hinge upon him being there, but we welcome him when he is. Hopefully travel
will become easier for him in the future, but I'm not holding my breath.
| | There is a LUG that meets within 15 minutes of me, though. It's 3 guys that
have been doing it forever together. The group itself meets maybe 3 times a
year, and their main focus is playing microspace war. Which is cool, that was
my first exposure, and seeing what they were doing gave me some awesome inspiration.
|
That's...weird. Not bad, necessarily, but weird. To be honest, the son
of a guy I used to work for in college started attending Brickworld a few years
ago, and all his group does is miniatures gaming, but with minifigs instead of
traditional plastic or white metal miniatures. And I've actually met Evil
Stevie (though he's into train/town layouts now). So it's not something
I haven't run into before.
| | They are sort of hostile though to myself and the few other newcomers to the
group I saw for the 1 1/2 years I went to their meetings. What finally through
me off was all of the group events- group builds, small set alt builds (everybody
doing a version of the same), and my absolute favorite instance- LUGBulk, where
reserved exclusively for these 3.
|
Yeah, that's kind of a problem, then. On the plus side, it now takes like
20 participants to qualify for RLUG status, so the only way they'd be able
to get in on LUGBulk would be to join in with a larger LUG, and that means control
would be out of their hands.
| | I was even asked if I would like to participate in order, told them my $ amount,
but along with 2 others, got forgotten when the order was placed by the core
3.
|
Actually, that may be a much bigger problem. I don't think it was ever possible
for any group of less than ten participating members to place an order, so it
could be that what they were doing was padding their list with names so they
could order in the first place, and then splitting up the "extra" shares between
themselves. I know they've cracked down on some non-compliant LUGs, so maybe
they were one of them. The real problem for you is that if your name were to
pop up in two LUGs for LUGBulk, you'll get rejected from both. On the plus
side, you do have to register individually (in the past the LUG rep just submitted
a list of names), so it's a bit harder to fraudulently borrow someone else's
identity for cheating the LUGBulk system.
| | When I'm able to move more freely, though, I'll try ranging out.
|
Soon, hopefully. Worse comes to worst, you also live is relatively close proximity
to Brick Fair. There might be some online-only LUGs that plan group displays
that they would exhibit there. I know the Eurobricks forum and VirtuaLUG both
do elaborate group displays at Brickworld Chicago, even though many of the members
are also members of their local LUGs (and might display with them as well).
| | I actually started a Lego Club at our local library in my initial excitement
coming back to the hobby. I had to back off of that, though, because I was the
only one bringing any bricks and handling the kids. The cost of damage and "lost"
pieces finally became to much for me to absorb by myself.
Plus 30+ kids were kicking my butt!
|
Yeah, we get a lot of queries about that sort of things, but that's a step
beyond babysitting. I mean, we do set out playbrick at some shows, but we just
leave the kids to do their own thing if they'd rather not look at our layout.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Feb 8, 2015 23:38 | | Subject: | Re: Time to address seller quality issues | | Viewed: | 74 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, QCBricks writes:
| | My fault then I guess. I was using "you" in a general sense, and not in a "PurpleDave"
sense.
|
I came close to doing that myself, which I suspect you might have noticed by
your phrasing.
| | Yet, as I said, it was my fault for taking "...because the "businesses" don't
have what I want, charge well more than I'd care to pay, or have a high minimum
and nothing else that I'd care to buy at the moment..." as being anti
"business" or anti large seller.
|
I know I've ordered from you, and I don't recall any problems (at least
none that were critical, but like some other buyers here I have gotten lax about
holding some of them accountable for errors). It's not that I've ever
had a problem with big sellers in a general sense, but that sometimes they're
too big for my needs, or don't have what I need in stock. For instance,
when I built my LEGO Store, I needed five 1x1 round plates in 40 different colors.
I pulled much of it from my own spare parts, and added a large chunk to larger
orders. But I had several colors that I had to order as a one-lot order (often
from Europe). In those cases, minimum purchases would have likely prevented
me from being able to place orders (I actually have five spares in light-lime
because the only seller I could buy them from required x10 increments). And
you may not have a minimum order, but most business sellers do. Sometimes it's
a big store that works best for me, and other times it's a small one. And
that's not even getting into the whole New/Used issue. Variety of sellers
is just as important as variety of parts, since every buyer is looking for something
different every time they log on here.
| | I didn't even touch the inference that the drop in quality is solely due
to the "large sellers". There is no real evidence for that and despite the continual
claims here on the forum of "...OMG the huge stores are all terrible, everyone
knows that..."
|
I know that most of the errors I've run across tend to be buried in large
orders. Two issues that come to mind are that some sellers were talking about
dropping the packing list as an unnecessary expense, and some large stores employ
pickers to pull and ship orders (having outgrown the ability of one person to
keep up with the customers). I've found that I'm less likely to find
problems with orders that have packing slips that have been checked off by item
(just one more opportunity to catch the problem before it becomes a Problem),
and no matter how awesome a company is, new employees require training and take
time to learn the ropes, and the person who seemed like the best employee ever
when you hired them could easily just be a very personable but incompetent worker
who burns your reputation (something that's less likely to happen with a
one-person hobby store).
Also, a store that only sees one sale a month can be just the worst, but nobody
will really notice. One hundred such stores will hardly register. One really
huge store that moves tens of thousands of dollars worth of orders every month
can just drop off a bit in quality for a little while and it's going to be
talked about. Regular and major problems, and it's going to become a regular
conversation.
| | This all seems to me to built on some sort of weird assumption that small stores
"care more about Lego" or are "bigger fans" of Lego and those assumptions make
no sense at all. There may be just as many small sellers "in it for the money"...I
don't see how anyone would know that one way or the other.
|
I think the logic there is that someone who isn't really making any money
obviously wouldn't be in it for the money. It's never to say that all
big sellers are just about the money (I've personally seen Troy C. and his
brother display on more than one occasion, and there was a time when Troy had
one of the largest stores in the world), just that it's hard to imagine someone
doing this if it involves twice as much work and half the pay as flipping burgers
at McDonald's, unless they have a more personal interest in the brick.
| | Do you believe that a store that pays $800 a month to a site should have exactly
the same features that a store that pays $1 a month has? (and here on BL there
are many stores that don't even pay a penny)
|
Remember when eBay had a huge scandal because they were seen as protecting Power
Sellers who we're pulling tricks or simply screwing up orders, because they
generated large sums of money in seller fees? While there is an argument for
affording them greater rewards for being so large, there's just as compelling
an argument for greater oversight.
| | I have never said to get rid of the hobby sellers.
|
No, you just suggesting giving stores that might only generate a few dozen dollars
in annual sales a choice between paying $120 per year for the privilege of paying
money to give parts, or being practically invisible and inaccessible to prospective
buyers. When I look in the price guide, AS A BUYER, I expect and deserve to
see all of the options available to me, not just the ones that are profitable
enough to afford a listing fee.
| | I don't care how large a store is, but if they are shipping
10 business days after payment or shipping in a used pasta box, or snapping together
new parts when they are shipped, or whatever, they are bad for Bricklink and
should either be removed from the site or moved to a not so professional Craigslist
style area where buyers know what to expect.
|
And a listing fee will do exactly jack to fix all of that. If a big seller is
screwing up, a $10 listing fee is meaningless if they get to deduct it out of
their three-figure monthly fees. They probably won't even remember that
there is a listing fee after a year has gone by. But all the really small hobby
sellers that help boost the inventory and appeal of this site will evaporate,
leaving no way to replace large sellers when they shut down for good. With that,
the site will rapidly lose appeal.
| | Do you think it is fair that business sellers who must pay taxes have even footing
with people that don't even claim their sales on their taxes?
|
Stores that are large never have been on equal footing with small hobby stores.
By virtue of their inventory, they are guaranteed to see many more orders, and
often much larger ones. By virtue of their higher sales volume, they can replenish
inventory faster and better than hobby sellers.
| | Should stores with a great deal of negative feedback be featured in search results right along
with other stores that have sterling feedback?
|
That is entirely unrelated to the idea of monthly listing fees. Again, a large
store can shrug off a $120 nick in their annual income, and moreso if it's
deducted from their monthly fees. In fact, by driving out all the small hobby
sellers (good or bad), it will just funnel more business to any large stores
that don't have their act together.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Feb 8, 2015 22:17 | | Subject: | Re: Time to address seller quality issues | | Viewed: | 42 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, cosmicray writes:
| | Oh, and while they are changing things, get a system that collects instant payments
when the order is submitted. That would clean out 90% of the buyer misbehavior.
|
That works really well with eBay because everything is priced with shipping for
single-unit sales. Here, bulk orders are the norm, and I find myself adding
to way too many orders to want instant-checkout to be enforced. Besides that,
I only submit payments from one computer, which I keep at home and don't
use for general surfing. I sometimes place quick orders at work, while visiting
friends or family, and even from shows, where I would never log into Paypal.
EBay does allow you to RFQ for a batch of items, which is being introduced here,
but the difference is that on eBay it's basically treated the same as placing
an order here. It removes stock from salable inventory, and the buyer commits
to buying it without knowing the exact final cost (though they at least know
an upper bound if they add up all the price+shipping).
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Feb 8, 2015 21:46 | | Subject: | Re: Time to address seller quality issues | | Viewed: | 45 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, Spiritparticles writes:
| | Great I'll look into finding out more.
|
Both club sites have contact links, and you might be able to get better information
that way.
Muskegon seems a bit small for one of his exhibits, but I know he's been
bouncing around all over the place for about a decade, where most regular museum
displays might go on a rotation where they tour for a couple years and go back
in the vault.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Feb 8, 2015 21:07 | | Subject: | Re: Time to address seller quality issues | | Viewed: | 37 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, Spiritparticles writes:
| | Hi Purple Dave, how would I go about finding the western chapter? I did a quick
google but only found some out of dat meetings.
|
http://www.michlug.org
http://www.wmltc.org
The top link is the main club, and the second one is the western chapter. Membership
in WMLTC automatically enrolls you in MichLUG, but I don't know if there
are any extra requirements for MichLUG members to join WMLTC. We're working
in making the main site easier to keep up to date (20+ shows and 6 meetings per
year means we are averaging at least one commitment every two weeks), but I think
WMLTC has been pretty good about staying on top of their site.
So, what's coming up is MichLUG has a show in Saline this weekend, will be
appearing at Great Lakes Comic-Con the last weekend of the month, and will be
installing a multi-week exhibit at the Flint Institute of Art. The weekend between,
WMLTC will be down in Indiana (see what I mean about redefining "near"?). I
see that WMLTC has a show in St Joe at the end of March, but I don't know
what MichLUG has on tap after this month. We should have a meeting around then,
but I don't know where, and I have no idea when/where WMLTC holds their meetings.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Feb 8, 2015 17:37 | | Subject: | Re: Time to address seller quality issues | | Viewed: | 57 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, izzi_rust writes:
| | There's no LUG available near me, and no others AFOLs that I know... so this
is my community, too.
|
I don't know where in Virginia you're from, nor do I know if you're
right or wrong, but zoom in on your corner of the map and see if maybe there's
a LUG you aren't aware of:
https://lan.lego.com/lugs
Also, you may need to redefine what you call "near", if you really do want to
get involved with a LUG. MichLUG operates primarily in the Metro Detroit area,
but I joined when I was living in Holland, about 3 hours away, and there were
other members who lived even farther away than I did. Even though we formed
a western chapter, one of their members (probably 3:30 away) still shows up to
some of the regular MichLUG displays a few times a year (bonus: it gives him
a chance to visit the local LEGO Store). Our club president lives about two
hours away from where most of our displays take place.
Again, you may have to redefine "near", but also realize that just because you
live right near the rest of your LUG doesn't mean all your show opportunities
will be in your backyard. I'm lucky in that I'm one of a handful of
members who seem to live within 10 miles of the majority of our shows, but we've
got one coming up next weekend that's about a 25 mile drive (which I'll
have to drive three times), and another show at the end of the month that will
be about an hour drive each way.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Feb 8, 2015 15:46 | | Subject: | Re: Time to address seller quality issues | | Viewed: | 58 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, mabccc writes:
| | Bricklink doesn't look like it does today without small sellers either. I
cannot see how having a minimum monthly fee addresses quality or lack of it.
It address the minimum turnover and penalises sellers that miss it.
|
Yeah, the current fees are what, 3% of total sales? So a $10 monthly minimum
fee means you'd have to clear $333.34 _every_month_ to cover your fees.
I imagine most stores here don't do that by a long shot. And it may seem
that eliminating the small sellers would be beneficial when you're a big
seller, but if you didn't get my order before, it's because you don't
have what I want at that moment. Maybe next month you will, and I'll buy
from you then, but if it becomes harder for me to find what I want, or afford
it when I do find it, maybe all that means is my last round of purchases leaves
me too broke to buy from you anyways. "You" being used in the general sense,
and not specifically referring to the person I'm replying to.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Feb 8, 2015 15:31 | | Subject: | Re: Time to address seller quality issues | | Viewed: | 67 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, QCBricks writes:
| | There has to be some balance between the two. If all types of stores and buyers
are going to exist here on BL, there is going to have to be some give and take.
|
Giving the hobby sellers the finger and taking the priceguide/part listings away
from them is not the answer. Remember, most of what is being said here points
to sloppy business sellers being the source of this grief, so driving the hobby
sellers out of business not only fails to fix the problem, but indeed helps make
it worse!
| | You can be as anti big seller as you want, but without them BL isn't what
it is today and part prices are much higher and part quantities are much lower.
|
I never claimed to be, nor said anything that should indicate that I'm against
big sellers. I don't care about high minimums if I need a lot of parts.
Buying from one store saves on shipping in most cases (though some large sellers
have prices that are at least twice as expensive than anyone else, so sometimes
that backfires). My issue is that removing the hobby sellers from the site makes
it hard for me to get odd parts when I don't need anything else, or the only
big sellers that have them either want twice as much for just the parts as a
hobby seller might ask for parts and shipping, or they don't have anything
that I want enough to meet their high minimum. I mean, if it takes me 20 orders
to complete a MOC, it's okay if a few of them are large, but I can't
afford to be dropping $25 on every order. Granted, some business sellers have
sub-$10 minimums, which is nice, but even with them I've sometimes had to
spend half an hour digging through their entire inventory to pick out every last
part I could possibly want just to get one lot that I really need.
So I really prefer a mix like we have now. I understand that as a business seller,
anything that drives out the hobby sellers seems like it would help steer more
business your way, but it will also drive buyers away, to sites like eBay, Amazon,
and Brickowl.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Feb 8, 2015 15:01 | | Subject: | Re: Time to address seller quality issues | | Viewed: | 48 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, therobo writes:
| | In Suggestions, Biodreamer writes:
| | This report should if it is alterered be sent to the seller with a button click.
The system will then know if the seller is missing out in orders and have to
fix them. it also got a chance to remove item that was incorrect listed from
the priceguide. The seller can then on his side fill in the way he resolved the
issue with the customer. refund, sent pieces etc.
|
You seem to imply that buyers are always correct and never make mistakes when
checking their incoming orders.
I have had at least a douzand buyers who complained about missing parts and after
some back and forth e-mails they found out they miscounted or found them still
in the package, on the floor, in the waste bin etc.
|
If it turns out that it's buyer error, then the seller would be able to note
that they "fixed" it by educating the buyer on why the shipment was correct.
And in cases like that, it should be possible to remove any negative marks attached
to that order.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Feb 8, 2015 09:03 | | Subject: | Re: Time to address seller quality issues | | Viewed: | 68 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, QCBricks writes:
| | I think I see it as a fee to have a store on the main site. If one is not willing
to put $x a month (It doesn't have to be exactly $10...I only picked that
because $5 seemed like too little and $20 seemed like too much) towards their
selling efforts here then maybe selling on BL is not for them.
|
And again, would you see this fee charged to stores even when they're closed?
How about when they're closed but accessible by password?
Regardless, as a buyer who regularly orders from hobby sellers because the "businesses"
don't have what I want, charge well more than I'd care to pay, or have
a high minimum and nothing else that I'd care to buy at the moment, I can't
support anything that makes hobby sellers as inaccessible as removing them from
the part listings and price guide. That is exactly how I shop.
Figure out a solution that only punishes the shoddy sellers and I'll support
it. But the prevailing opinion here seems to suggest that a lot of the drop
in quality has come from big sellers who started cutting corners or just stopped
caring about quality, and those people probably sell enough to generate $10 in
fees each month no problem. This "solution" wouldn't touch any of them,
but it would punish _me_, as a buyer with no store. Justify that.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Feb 8, 2015 00:18 | | Subject: | Re: Time to address seller quality issues | | Viewed: | 102 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, Etown writes:
| | Are you suggesting that the $10 would count the same value against the monthly
selling fees? If so, I think this might be an excellent idea.
Would the fee still be required if the store is closed for whatever reason?
|
That would be a sticky situation. It's not fair to charge someone a full
monthly fee if they aren't even open during that month (it's not a mall
where the space is unavailable to rent to someone else regardless of whether
it's open for business), but I could also see a problem developing real fast
where people close their store but openly post a password to get in and shop
anyways. Sure, it leaves them out of the price guide and part listings, but
it might make sense to impose it on all stores that log at least one sale for
the month.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Feb 7, 2015 22:32 | | Subject: | Re: Time to address seller quality issues | | Viewed: | 82 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, QCBricks writes:
| | The overwhelming majority of BL buyers and sellers are honest people and it
is unfair to lump "Bricklink" in with a few of these yahoos.
|
Until _Bricklink_ does something to at least red-flag them, they are by default
lumped in with everyone else. And the feedback system isn't doing the job.
|
|
| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Feb 7, 2015 22:11 | | Subject: | Re: Time to address seller quality issues | | Viewed: | 59 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
|
| In Suggestions, 62Bricks writes:
| | I don't see that as a problem with the feedback system itself. That's
a cultural thing.
|
You don't see retaliatory negative feedback, retaliatory negative bannings,
and retaliatory (but false) naming-and-shaming resulting in more bogus bannings
as a sign that the feedback system doesn't work? Feedback _is_ a cultural
thing. And this site's culture punishes honest feedback. In some cases,
it even punishes the failure to automatically rubberstamp every transaction with
glowing feedback. There are sellers here who are probably more concerned with
notching their belt with another positive feedback than they are with earning
it.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Feb 7, 2015 22:02 | | Subject: | Re: Time to address seller quality issues | | Viewed: | 58 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| In Suggestions, 62Bricks writes:
| | So there is a culture here where sellers think they have two or three chances
to get the order right, and where buyers have been made to believe it. I got
a second chance on this recent order with the damaged piece, but I'm not
going to assume that the next customer is going to give me two or three tries
to get it right. I don't think other sellers should, either.
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Our LUG does a ridiculous amount of shows (most active in the entire world, with
the only real competition coming from the western chapter of our same club).
In general, if I don't have something in time to do a show this week, I'll
probably be able to display it within a month tops. However, I only get one
shot at Brickworld for the year. If I don't have it by the time I pack my
car, and I haven't made arrangements to accept delivery in Chicago, I've
got a problem that can't be fixed by just dropping the correct parts in the
mail a week later. A couple years ago, I tried to build a second turntable for
one of my cars, and I needed close to 1000 parts to complete it. I specifically
checked with the one seller who could ship the three largest lots I needed, to
make sure I'd have them before leaving for Chicago (didn't even care
if I had to build it on site). With three weeks lead time I was guaranteed that
I would receive them by a specific date. The parts were waiting for me at the
Post Office the day I got back home. The order was all there, but it didn't
really matter anymore, and I still haven't had another opportunity to put
out both turntables at the same time, a year and a half later.
Last year I built a LEGO Store model that ran more pieces than the UCS MF. I
got started on it a few months in advance of Brickworld, and I had to redesign
sections of it at least twice. I got lucky in that I don't think I had a
singe order that was missing critical parts (though one order was entirely the
wrong color), and I think I finished it a week before packing my car. If some
of those early orders had been incomplete, it could have delayed my redesigns
long enough that I wouldn't have finished it in time.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Feb 7, 2015 20:55 | | Subject: | Re: Time to address seller quality issues | | Viewed: | 81 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| In Suggestions, therobo writes:
| | One of the reason why *any* system will not change it, is that buyers don't
read feedback...
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And that's because the feedback system is broken. If a buyer leaves a negative
against a seller for a clear error in shipping, they expect to get a retaliatory
negative, and probably get banned from that store, in return, which could get
their subsequent orders cancelled. And they might find (or fail to notice) that
the seller comes here and complains about an "unreasonable" buyer, and a dozen
other stores will ban them. And knowing that buyers aren't going to be truthful
about bad sellers, what could possibly be the point of trusting feedback scores
to be honest? And then what's the point in paying attention to them?
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Oct 9, 2014 07:03 | | Subject: | Re: Inventory Change Request for Minifig sh025 | | Viewed: | 34 times | | Topic: | Inventories Requests | |
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| In Inventories Requests, randyf writes:
| | A new minifig will need to be created with the new cowl and then added as an
alternate to the set it came from. See and from
and for how to handle this.
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This still isn't fixed yet? I pointed this out for all three if the early
2012 Batmen when I discovered that the Type II cowl was showing up in later runs
of the first wave of DCS sets. This needs to be done for both of these minifigs:
And needs to be updated for all three sets that those two minifigs come with.
Anything from late 2012 on uses the Type II cowl only (starting with the jet-ski
polybag), so fixing those two minifigs and their three associated sets will solve
this once and for all.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Feb 26, 2013 03:52 | | Subject: | Re: Remove from my wanted list on order | | Viewed: | 38 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| In Suggestions, steve000 writes:
| | I think a check box would be handy when placing an order to remove items from
wanted list.
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Figure out how to make it delete items from the _correct_ wanted list first.
Then come back and propose this idea again.
I have items that may be on three or more secondary Wanted Lists, and it'd kinda
suck if every time I bought an item in a store, it deleted every instance from
every list. Well, that's not actually a problem, since _I_ prefer to bump my
list entries over to my .Purchased list when I place an order, so I can double-check
my order against everything that I'm waiting to receive. If I'm only building
one MOC, it lets me know how close I am to getting everything so I can maybe
do a partial assembly. If I'm building more than one, it lets me know which
ones I have everything for and which I don't.
Also, to make this sort of thing work, you'd definitely need to add a new field
to the Wanted List entries, for "quantity desired". Currently there's an entry
for "minimum quantity", but that's to eliminate any listings that don't meet
that threshold (in which case you'd never need to trim down your entry by partial
amounts). There's also a Notes field, but that is not restricted to quantity
desired. I often use it to specify what MOC I need the part for, whether it's
something that I just need to buy lots of, or if it's an alternate part to something
else on my list (like jumper plates w/o groove vs jumper plates w/ groove).
So just because there's a number in that field doesn't mean the buyer wants that
quantity of that part. Maybe he's building a landscape to recreate the battle
in "300", but he only needs 130 of a certain part, and nobody has that many in
one lot. Can't use the min qty field, because he won't get any hits. Can't
use the Notes field, because it wouldn't be able to tell whether you meant the
130 or the 300 (or 130,300!).
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Feb 10, 2013 16:11 | | Subject: | Re: Wanted! Dead or Alive! | | Viewed: | 53 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| In Suggestions, bricksahead writes:
| | I don't even think you have to do that. I think you'll receive a "wanted notification
email" from your own store if it's a new lot.
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Only if you set every Wanted List entry to "Notify", which would constantly flood
your inbox with garbage messages. Also, if you get the notification, so does
anyone else who has it set for Notify, and someone else might place an order
for it before you can strip them out of your store.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Jan 9, 2013 04:00 | | Subject: | Re: Two minor nice touches to see in Bricklink 2 | | Viewed: | 39 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| In Suggestions, billduge writes:
| | I didn't explain myslf very well on the two columns bit. It is not the price
guide page - I get two columns there as well. It is on the item page. If you
go to the catalogue and use keyword 3001 and then select the 2 x 4 brick 3001
you get a page which shows the number of 3001's for sale in the various colours.
After each colour there is a figure in brackets which represent the total number
of 3001's in that coulour currently for sale.
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That's not what the number in the brackets means. It tells you how many _lots_
are for sale. So, for Dark-Purple 2x4 bricks, you currently have a bracketed
number of 307, but according to the Price Guide page, there are just shy of 68,000
for sale in that color. Even just the Used ones outnumber that at 376.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Jan 9, 2013 03:51 | | Subject: | Re: Two minor nice touches to see in Bricklink 2 | | Viewed: | 42 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| In Suggestions, Brickwilbo writes:
| | I always get two colums in the Price Guide.
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I think he means on the Catalog entry page. You get a lump sum for how many
lots are listed for each color, but you have no idea how many of them are New
or Used until you click through for each color, one at a time.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Dec 24, 2012 14:29 | | Subject: | Re: Items vanish from wanted list when bought | | Viewed: | 29 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| In Suggestions, FigBits writes:
| | Why are you cutting all the parts of my posts that provide the context?
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I left your entire question intact. _My_ post is still available directly above
it.
| | For that first statement, the question is, how does the current system protect
against hackers? It doesn't. You wrote that the proposed new system would be
vulnerable to hackers. So is the current one!
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Then perhaps you need to do a better job at providing context. The discussion
and every example I gave was about how to protect against unwanted deletion of
Want List items. My example was about an unexpected system hack that causes
your order to fail to complete but presents itself as having done so, subsequently
causing the Want List items that you thought you were purchasing to auto-delete.
It was never about protecting the system from being hacked in the first place.
The only way to 100% guarantee that never happens is to shut the system down
and never bring it back. I don't think any of us want to see that happen...
| | Every single concern that you have about an automated system for removing items
from a Wanted list is easily addressed.
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So address that last example. You need a minimum of 50 parts. You want an open-ended
maximum. You realize you might need to buy from multiple stores to get what
you need.
The simplest solution, if you really want auto-deletion, is to make non-deletion
the default and only if someone chooses to subject themselves to potential and
unnecessary headaches do the items auto-delete when purchased.
And here's one more for you. You have the same item on ten different Want Lists.
How does the system know which one to delete when you make a purchase? For
me, it will always be more troublesome than it's worth. I prefer to keep my
data management in my own hands.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Dec 24, 2012 01:09 | | Subject: | Re: Items vanish from wanted list when bought | | Viewed: | 33 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| In Suggestions, FigBits writes:
| | LOL -- how does the current system protect against that?
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It doesn't delete the items from your want list. Only you do that, and if you're
thinking ahead, you're moving them to a Purchased list when you place the order,
a Missing list when they fail to arrive, and only deleting them when they actually
show up.
Here's another one for you. You need 50, but are open to buying more.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Dec 23, 2012 20:54 | | Subject: | Re: Items vanish from wanted list when bought | | Viewed: | 28 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| In Suggestions, FigBits writes:
| | Yes, but all of that could be part of an automated process.
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There are too many potential reasons to not want this to happen. What if you
need 200 pieces and you only ordered 50 from the first store? What if it's an
item you want to get notifications for forever, whether you buy them or not?
What if you have a stock list to reorder from when you run out of commonly used
parts? What if the seller screws up and sends you the wrong parts, doesn't send
them at all, or sends you parts that look like they were run over by a tank?
What if the site is hacked right before you push the Submit button and your
order doesn't actually go through, even though it said id did?
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Sep 9, 2012 18:13 | | Subject: | Re: Please add a step to form the contract | | Viewed: | 48 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| In Suggestions, Thunor writes:
| | Please consider this solution as I believe the only ones who would vote against,
would be stores that HAVE hidden fees.
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I just voted No, and I don't even have a store. I have, however, considered
the one issue that all of you sellers seem to have overlooked. If you set this
up, I guarantee that you'll have some punk kids abusing the system just for kicks,
going through as many stores as they can, placing huge orders, getting the sellers
to pull and pack the orders, and then hitting the Cancel button at the end so
their account remains untainted with NPB's and they can do it all over again.
And the entire time this process is going on, parts that _I_ might want to actually
buy are being removed from saleable inventory so I can't touch them.
I agree that it might be nice to have the German "button law" system become universal
at some point in the future (but make sure you get all the kinks worked out before
forcing it on all the other sellers). But the only way to lock out childish
abuse of the system would be to continue to force buyers to commit to the order
when placing the order.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Sep 5, 2012 05:21 | | Subject: | Re: SUGGEST: add "OTHER" as payment method | | Viewed: | 45 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| In Suggestions, BUC writes:
| | Would like another payment method added - "Other" - or something to that effect.
Ran into this scenerio: We only accept PayPal as payment method but agreed to
bypass and accept money order at the request of a buyer. Problem is, when checking
out, their only option is PayPal.
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Bricklink doesn't enforce the choice of Payment Option. You could have a handshake
agreement that the buyer will do yard work for the seller, the buyer could be
forgiving a debt that the seller owes for full value in parts, or any other number
of crazy possibilities. Hey, maybe the buyer has photo evidence that seller
was cheating on his/her diet and the seller is offering free parts to keep the
SO from being informed. The only important thing is that both the buyer and
seller agree that "payment" was delivered in full. So if something like this
happens again, just tell the buyer to click "Paypal" and then go ahead and pay
you by whatever method you've already agreed to.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Aug 29, 2012 15:41 | | Subject: | Re: Unbuyable Item in Custom lot | | Viewed: | 41 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| In Suggestions, Hoschisankid writes:
| | Is it possible to open a Shop only for presentation? I don't want to sell my
Daughter's Pirate Ship but some Feedback from prof. builders would help for Future
development of other Ship's
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I don't know if it would be a TOS violation, but in theory you could set the
minimum purchase way higher than the price of the model so nobody would be able
to place an order (though they could put the model in their shopping cart. Alternately,
you could price it way higher than anyone would ever be willing to pay (say,
one million dollars?) and on the odd chance that someone actually does feel like
biting, you might not mind letting it go.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Aug 7, 2012 04:45 | | Subject: | Re: For consideration in the new Bricklink (when | | Viewed: | 43 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| In Suggestions, Rob_and_Shelagh writes:
| | ...as you suggest a look at the structure of the inventory database itself and what
could be done to make it easier/quicker for those (who don't spend all day in
here and have years of site experience) to find what they want. E.g. the part
variant issue has become very complex and many buyers look for a part or have
it on their WL but miss a variant part when ordering from a store because they
are unaware of it.
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I posted a suggestion recently where I'd like to see the Want List system changed
such that I can do a single WL entry that covers all variants of a single part.
Like if I put the Undetermined listing in my Want List, it will automatically
pull in any A/B/etc. variants on top of any listings that truly aren't sorted.
Being able to combine any two items into a single Want List entry might work
just as well, since then I'd be able to do a single search for either a torso
or any minifig that includes that torso.
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| Author: | PurpleDave | | Posted: | Jul 19, 2012 23:09 | | Subject: | Re: Please consider add reserve function to cart | | Viewed: | 36 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| In Suggestions, Thunor writes:
| | REASON for suggestion: - to improve buyer shopping experience.
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It would also hinder the shopping experience. Speaking as a non-seller here,
if I show up in a store, looking for something specific at a great price, I _DO_NOT_
want to have half of their inventory tied up in other peoples' shopping carts,
especially if one person has the items I came there for.
If the item in question is so important to you, and you have already met the
minimum for that store, go ahead and place an order to get your reserve. Then
go back to shopping and figure out what else you want. I've done this from work
on more than one occassion, just buying one or two items on the fly, and then
checking the store inventory for anything else I want to buy when I get home
and have more time to look through everything.
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USA, Michigan
