BrickLink Discussion Forum

In Selling, infinibrix writes:

It does'nt necessarily mean that Bricklink are going to be heavilly involved
with monitoring us all to ensure we are complying by the rules after all it would
be difficult to know if a seller is exceeding their vat obligations if they only
exceed this amount when combining sales accross multiple platforms and so its
down to individual sellers themselves to ensure they are complying by the rules
though if the authorities, Bricklink or any other online market place deems this
not to be the case then they would all be obligated to take the exact same action!

The problem is that the BL statement is more strict than the actual laws: They
apply it to last year as well, and it's uncertain which sales they are counting
as the statement doesn't unambiguously say they purely count the sales that
really are relevant for the €10000 threshold.

Obviously, everyone has to act in accordance with the law, but we don't need
Bricklink to nag us about one random specific aspect of that in a way that is
more strict than the law itself.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 14, 2021 06:11

Subject:

Re: EU Vat e-commerce email

Viewed:

49 times

Topic:

In Selling, patpendlego writes:

In Selling, Teup writes:

In Selling, patpendlego writes:

In Selling, Teup writes:

In Selling, patpendlego writes:

In Selling, Teup writes:

In Selling, Abels_Bricks writes:

Just got the email from bricklink stating that all Members selling to the EU
must now register individually and supply bricklink the OSS number.

So Lawrence at brickowl was able to deal with this and set it up so brickowl
takes the VAT required from sales and pays it to the relevant tax authorities
(just like Ebay, Etsy, displate, cgtrader) and I`m sure most other online sales
portals. But Bricklink once again has to be a little different.

I really want to rant about this, but what's the point. My trade has been
moving from BL to BO more over the past year anyway.

David.

I guess they are. BL is now VAT liable, so... yes they interfere.

But that's not really logical. Why check this one thing when in general sellers
have full autonomy over their bookkeeping? Either you take control, or you leave
it to them. To check this one random thing makes no sense - sellers could still
simply not use their registration, or simply not report some of their orders
at all.
This is like frisk-searching all visitors but only checking their left pocket.

If Bricklink would force you to register for OSS, you could simply do it, get
the number, and then not use it. It doesn't make sense.

OMP's get more responsibility and hence also more power due to the new laws
and regulations, it's the way things go right now. EU wants a piece of the
pie of online trading, and it is a big pie really big. Last time I read 700 billion
euro per year, do the math how much VAT that is

Well, in the case of levying VAT between tax communities, yes, that is something
that makes sense to do. That is a decently closed loop.

But I don't see how they're getting any kind of control with this OSS/VAT
registration obligation. You can simply get the registration and not use it,
or not report your sales, or change your records, the sky is the limit. It's
like putting up 1 small piece of fence that you can easily go around. Now, if
they would take responsibility over the entire bookkeeping, then yes,
that would be the only way to close the loop. And that would be the best thing
that could happen

Means we don't need to keep our records. I'd definitely
be in favour of that

I read it like this: if your sales through BrickLink will exceed 10k then
BrickLink might suspend your store if not VAT/OSS registered. Also if the TAX
agency gives BrickLink notice that your total sales exceeds 10k BrickLink might
be obliged to suspend your store as well.

I mean you can still choose not to report any of it. Getting the registration
isn't really proof of anything. If Bricklink wanted/needed to know their
sellers are acting in accorandance with the law, the only way to do that is to
do their tax reporting.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 14, 2021 05:38

Subject:

Re: EU Vat e-commerce email

Viewed:

56 times

Topic:

In Selling, patpendlego writes:

In Selling, Teup writes:

In Selling, patpendlego writes:

In Selling, Teup writes:

In Selling, Abels_Bricks writes:

I guess they are. BL is now VAT liable, so... yes they interfere.

Means we don't need to keep our records. I'd definitely
be in favour of that

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 14, 2021 05:19

Subject:

Re: EU Vat e-commerce email

Viewed:

70 times

Topic:

In Selling, patpendlego writes:

In Selling, Teup writes:

In Selling, Abels_Bricks writes:

I guess they are. BL is now VAT liable, so... yes they interfere.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 14, 2021 05:03

Subject:

Re: EU Vat e-commerce email

Viewed:

65 times

Topic:

In Selling, Stellar writes:

In Selling, Teup writes:

In Selling, Abels_Bricks writes:

The thing is, how are they going to check each store sold 10.000€ EUR in total
to the other EU members?

Yeah, I get the impression they don't have one clear way of figuring that
out:

"If BrickLink determines or receives notification that you are not meeting your
VAT obligations..."

I haven't checked my books but in case I was over the limit last year, I
am just telling Bricklink right now:

I am not going to do it. You can suspend me all you want, I am just not going
to do it.

I am not able to do it. This would cause different VAT percentages and
that is not supported by my software right now. I will rewrite my software in
december. I already have that planned. I cannot do it now, and so I am
not able to accept and process orders with different VAT percentages.

I am perfectly able to make sure I stay under the limit for this year. I am completely
complying with the new laws. If that means you're still going to suspend
me, let me know and I will simply restrict my store to domestic customers, problem
solved.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 14, 2021 04:44

Subject:

Re: EU Vat e-commerce email

Viewed:

104 times

Topic:

In Selling, Abels_Bricks writes:

I'm fine with the new VAT rules but....

"If your sales in the preceding 12 months are above the new EUR 10 000 distance
sales of goods threshold, you will need to register for the OSS or in each individual
EU Member State where you sell on BrickLink.
If BrickLink determines or receives notification that you are not meeting your
VAT obligations within 30 days after receiving this notice, this will result
in the suspension of your selling abilities on BrickLink. "

I'm sorry... what?
Bricklink is going to do my accounting now? Bricklink never helps, which is 100%
fair, but why do they interfere now? This is completely up to the sellers and
Bricklink has no business checking sellers administration like that.

Bricklink's rules are more strict than the legal bounds:

- Is it EUR 10000 total sales, or only foreign EU sales? The phrasing is ambiguous.

- If someone sold that much in the past, it doesn't mean they are going to
do so this year, but still Bricklink requires that registration even though they
don't need it. (This is also required in Germany but not in every country
- not in the NL for example)

Plus: Bricklink doesn't indicate how much you have and who is qualifying.
So sellers should figure out by themselves when Bricklink wants them to be registered,
otherwise they're gonna find their store suspended? It's weird. Bricklink,
can you please just offer the tools for sellers to do this correctly, and let
them decide for themselves how to do their accounting? That's how it works
in general, so why be inconsistent now? If you would go that way, then you must
also check all of the tax reports and suspend sellers who didn't do their
administration correctly. It's either the one or the other.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 13, 2021 09:08

Subject:

Re: BrickLink Designer Program Round 1

Viewed:

66 times

Topic:

In Designer Program, Marina108 writes:

Regarding shipping-if you did not know EU is considered single market/country,
so to exclude just a few members from shipping (Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria...)
is just a clear case of DISCRIMINATION and one of many proofs that some are created
more equal. There can be no business justification for this - delivery routes,
cost of postage, they are the same for all Europe. For us discriminated Europeans,
the only way to buy any of the sets was to ask a friend, for example in Slovenia,
to order it for me, so thank you very much for limiting number of sets to 1 per
person. Now we can be sure that we cannot buy any.

Businesses are free to determine what countries to sell to. Just not what nationalities
to sell to - that would be discrimination, this is not. I understand it sucks
but I don't really see some real legal fault by BL here.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 11, 2021 10:21

Subject:

Re: BrickLink Designer Program Round 1

Viewed:

77 times

Topic:

In General, SylvainLS writes:

In General, Teup writes:

[…]
Still don't
completely see why Bricklink should be tasked with it rather than Lego.com, but
at least that difference makes sense.

It’s because of the ADP (the 2018 version). It was for any design, not Ideas
(and it was a test-run of collaboration between BL and TLG and ended with TLG
buying BL).

This BDP (the 2021 version) is some kind of test-run too, now that BL is in TLG.
But they wanted to go faster on the first stage, the choice of designs, and they
already had many designs that were supported by the target buyers, so they made
it an “Invitation” version: there was no months-long submission stage and pre-voting
like for ADP.

They don’t yet know (or at least not told us) if the next one (if there’s one
and TLG doesn’t scrap the all thing because grown-ups acting like toddlers deserve
to be treated as such) will also be by invitation or by submission, or both,
or neither….

(Another question is whether the next one will stay BDP or become CDP, then DDP,
EDP….)

Yeah, I know about the previous run, but yes since now it's part of TLG,
putting this in Bricklink seems like not the most efficient way to do it, given
that there are resources and expertise over at Lego.com. And as far as I can
see there isn't really a Bricklink-specific ingredient to it. For example
if the parts were sourced from Bricklink's sellers it would make a whole
lot more sense to me...

I know that Bricklink had previously said that the ADP was necessary to be able
to make ends meet financially... but if that is still an issue, implementing
payment methods would have been a much simpler less labor-intensive way to generate
significantly more revenue, plus TLG could help out because they want a healthy
Bricklink.

Not saying Bricklink has to stick to it's core business 100% of the time
(although, as long as there are unresolved problems... it would not be a bad
idea) but just wondering if the right resources are employed for the right things,
TLG-wide.

Well, I don't know how it works behind the scenes - just hope Bricklink is
getting plenty of helping hands from TLG to handle all of this as it's a
pretty ambitious project.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 11, 2021 07:38

Subject:

Re: BrickLink Designer Program Round 1

Viewed:

60 times

Topic:

In General, wettfink writes:

In General, Teup writes:

The Lego Ideas team choose a winner after a long and complicated process. Afterwards
they redesign the whole set to comply with Lego's rigorous standards (that
is the line, right?) and bring it to market. In the Bricklink Designer Program
31 (now 26) rejected Lego Ideas submissions (that got 10.000 votes, but were
not approved) got a chance to become real sets. The models had to be built with
available parts, so the fan designers had some work to do. Then there was a test
building phase, crowdfunding and now we're here. Without this program these
sets would never have existed.

Aha, thanks, so I guess the difference is with Lego Ideas they come up pretty
much just with the idea (since Lego will go and redesign the whole thing) and
with the designer program they really come up with the exact model. Still don't
completely see why Bricklink should be tasked with it rather than Lego.com, but
at least that difference makes sense.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 11, 2021 05:26

Subject:

Re: BrickLink Designer Program Round 1

Viewed:

89 times

Topic:

I have no interest whatsoever in this Designer Program so I ignored everything
about it, so forgive the absolute n00b question guys, but what actually is the
difference between the Designer Program and Lego Ideas? Looks like it basically
does the same thing?

I don't see why an overburdened understaffed website for trading loose parts
that has plenty of issues to solve should do something so unrelated, especially
if that something already is being done through LEGO Ideas with a better infrastructure.
I see a lot of complaints, so why not just release these sets through LEGO Ideas?
Wouldn't that make everybody involved happier? It all sounds a bit like going
to a gas station to do grocery shopping or something like that, but maybe
I'm missing something about what this project is really about? They aren't
sourcing the parts from Bricklink sellers as far as I know...

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 9, 2021 09:07

Subject:

Re: Bricklink Part Out feature

Viewed:

46 times

Topic:

Problem

In Problem, calsbricks writes:

The Bricklink part out feature needs work and a revisit

For almost 10 years we have been using Brickstock to do our part outs and then
uploading the xml file to Bricklink. Due to the recent changes to the catalogue
surrounding minifig to minifigure this has become laborious (Minifig images and
price information will not load into Brickstock). I know about Brickstore and
am considering it but the part out in BL is archaic to say the least. No permanent
record of the parting out other than a part out log which says you parted out
this set with no backup information whatsoever. It also causes problems with
pricing because you cannot see your existing prices without a lot of fiddling.

Bricklink needs to combine the features of the 3rd party products to offer a
fully functional part out facility and it needs to store the results of the part
out not just a date in the log.

I wonder if this is in the “sellers tools” functionality that has been talked
about for 8 years now and really has not materialised.

Lots of development time on conformance – fine that is required but what else
is going on? Please do not tell me it is XP

You're right, this is long overdue. It's error prone and doesn't
offer a lot of functionality. But since it apparently takes 10 months and counting
to even fix parts appearing in the correct order like they have for 20 years
(e.g. plates in ascending dimensions), I'm not even in the mood to start
brainstorming on what needs to be done. However, if LEGO wants my input, on a
panel or something, they can ask for it and I will give it.

For one thing, it's just silly that there even are boxes for things like
prices or remarks when on the previous screen you've said you want to use
the old data. So that's a whole lot of UI greebles that don't do anything.
Just a small thing but it contributes to making it confusing.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 9, 2021 03:49

Subject:

Re: ERROR: EVERY STORE SHOWING 0 LOTS/ITEMS!!

Viewed:

59 times

Topic:

Problem

In Problem, hpoort writes:

In Problem, magicalbricks24 writes:

I was shopping and every store (including my own) shows as 0 items and lots.
I checked on multiple devices and nothing works. Is anyone else experiencing
this or know when it will be resolved?

Thanks!

-Nicholas
magicalbricks24

The problem appears to be due to a limit on the number of store pages you may
visit in a day. It will be resolved automatically, until you browse 'too
much' again.

Please raise a helpdesk ticket as it appears the limit (to prevent web scraping?)
is set too low, causing problems with normal shopping like yours.

This scraping prevention is annoying in general, they should simply allow it,
up to a fair limit. Doesn't even need to be much, but right now it blocks
you way too fast. I've been doing it for many years to find what sets to
part out and sell on Bricklink, and I'm not apologising for it. Just how
are sellers supposed to find what sets to part out? Are they expected to manually
check the part out value of every single set that is on the market? Useless questions
of course, because Bricklink doesn't use Bricklink and doesn't realise
what sellers need to be able to sell... IMO they should simply allow for example
up to 100 visits a day with, say, 2-3 seconds interval in between, I don't
think that's too much asked. If that's a problem, then improve the API!
So you don't need scraping limitations.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 8, 2021 10:04

Subject:

Re: BrickLink Designer Program Round 1

Viewed:

79 times

Topic:

In NEWS, Admin writes:

Thank you for the incredible interest you showed in the BrickLink Designer Program. We have been blown away by the response. As with any new endeavor, some things went well, and others don’t go to plan.

What worked

Based on our first round of crowdfunding, we believe the BrickLink Designer Program has strong potential. Your interest exceeds all our expectations. The portfolio of products is strong, and the designers are a joy to work with. We are looking forward to preparing for rounds 2 and 3.

However, there are a few things we need to address urgently with Round 1.

What needs to be improved

Thank you to everyone who has shared comments and feedback with us over the past week. While we understand many of you are frustrated, we are grateful for your quick and clear input.

There are four areas we want to address:

Site performance

Limited production of 5,000 units of each set & ordering glitch

Order limits of 5 sets per customer

Shipping limited to countries serviced by LEGO.com

Site performance & server capacity

When the crowdfunding went live on Thursday July 1 traffic to the site overloaded BrickLink’s servers. This meant some users couldn’t place their orders in time and for many, the site ground to a halt. We apologize for any disappointment this caused. We are currently reviewing server capacity.

Limited production and ordering glitch

The limit of 5,000 units per set was based on the AFOL Designer Program run in 2019. For that release, we produced 2,500 sets which didn’t all sell out. We obviously underestimated the appeal of the Bricklink Designer Program sets and because of that, we will double the limit for future releases.

The high level of demand was compounded by the site performance issues. An ordering glitch meant that people were able to pre-order 5,000 additional Castle in the Forest sets, which means we’ve received orders for 10,000 sets.

We have talked to many of you in the community about how to address this and have decided on the following actions:

Produce 10,000 of the Castle in the Forest sets so we can deliver to everyone who ordered.

Re-opening pre-ordering for round 1 on August 3rd to allow the four projects Kakapo, Great Fishing Boat, Sheriff’s Safe and Pursuit of Flight to also sell up to 10,000 sets.

Increase production for Crowdfunding rounds 2 and 3 to 10,000 each to meet demand.

We appreciate that this approach may not satisfy everyone, but we had to balance meeting users’ expectations with offering a fair outcome, so all designers had the chance to sell the same number of sets and the potential to dilute some of the exclusivity that comes with doubling the number of set available. We hope you understand.

Increasing production will delay shipping and future rounds of crowdfunding. Since we are doubling the production run, the additional 5,000 sets for Round 1 will be shipped in June 2022, as opposed to January 2022. This will also delay the release of Rounds 2 & 3. The final plan for this will be communicated at a later stage.

If, because of these changes, you wish to cancel the sets you’ve pre-ordered, please contact LEGO Customer Service.

Order limits of five per customer

We initially set the maximum order quantity at five per customer. Unfortunately, we saw a very small number of opportunistic customers hoarding sets and re-selling them for inflated prices. We’re disappointed by this as it wasn’t our intention to enable such behavior. We want everyone to have an opportunity to get a hold of a set, so going forward, we will set a maximum order limit of 1 set per customer. This will apply from when we re-open Round 1 to additional orders and to future crowdfunding rounds.

It’s important to point out that 75% of orders for Castle in the Forest were for one set– so we’d like to thank you for being considerate of other fans.

Shipping limited to LEGO Shop countries

We have decided to sell BrickLink Designer Program sets through the LEGO.com shop to give you a smooth shipping and support process. Unfortunately, this also limits the countries to which we can ship. For now, we plan to continue to use LEGO.com and not offer additional shipping destinations.

In summary

For Round 1, we will increase the number of sets available from 5,000 to 10,000. Castle in the Forest has already reached this amount. The four other sets will re-open to additional pre-ordering on August 3rd, but it will not be possible to pre-order additional Castle in the Forest sets. The additional production run will delay in shipping and release dates for crowdfunding rounds 2 and 3.

All future pre-orders will have a quantity limit of 1.

Unfortunately, in the current LEGO.com setup we are not able to ship to additional countries.

Again, we apologize for any disappointment and hope that the steps outlined above go some way to address the concerns raised.

Thank you for your patience, feedback and support for the BrickLink Designer Program. We look forward to building a better experience moving forward.

Sincerely,
The BrickLink Team

Wow. Came to the forum and it's just non stop rants about this thing. Glad
to see Bricklink managed to create some problems for itself with some side project..
would be a shame if the team had to sit around and be bored with no bugs, problems
or legal problems left to be solved

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 6, 2021 11:58

Subject:

Re: Lack of Features and UI Design / Difficult

Viewed:

46 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, SylvainLS writes:

In Suggestions, jennnifer writes:

I love when brand new people come through... look at stuff for 5 minutes, and
then decide they know everything they need to know.

Really, the site is built on ASP, a really old language? No way! I bet none of
the owners, developers, contributors, volunteers, and members had any idea. Now
we can fix it!

{Insert sarcasm emoji here}

It has a name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Weeelll let's not be mean and take it out on the new guy. Usually it's
extremely helpful to have a pair of fresh eyes look at such things. I think this
is more an acclimatizing process where new users learn to leave their conceptions
about what is generally normal UI and functionality at the door in order not
to go crazy here

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 6, 2021 08:05

Subject:

Re: Lego Images?

Viewed:

48 times

Topic:

Searching

In Searching, SylvainLS writes:

In Searching, Admin_Russell writes:

[…]

Well, there’s this: https://help.bricklink.com/hc/en-us/articles/360035979134-Can-I-use-BrickLink-Catalog-images-on-an-external-site-

Thanks, SylvainLS! I didn't want to use something without confirming first,
and I greatly appreciate the link you sent!

That help section is misleading and will be changed shortly. The contributors
own the rights to the images on BrickLink and the images may not be used by other
members without the consent of the owner.

Oh, sorry for pointing to a misleading text.

What about Fair Use for (nonprofit?) educational purposes?

Or just go to Rebrickable - those are free to use even for commercial purposes.
Rebrickable mostly has the official Lego images that Bricklink uses as well.
It's just pictures of minifig parts that are significantly clearer on Bricklink,
the rest is pretty much the same.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 6, 2021 06:55

Subject:

Re: Lack of Features and UI Design / Difficult

Viewed:

70 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, azbricker writes:

I have been using BrickLink for about a week or so now and as a software developer
and systems engineer and someone who grew up building with Lego's I have
to honestly say, what Dan Jezek build was good and what he family has done since
then has been decent and I applaud their efforts however, the site appears to
be owned by Lego Group now and I think it's time that they dump some real
money into it. The site is extremely difficult to use (others on the Internet
have the same sentiments that I do) and it lacks a ton of features. For example,
looking through the gallery I would like to add them to my wanted list or "save"
them somewhere but I cannot do that. For the ones that have the studio files
available, I can download the files however, most of the ones that I have looked
at (I am into the City-type sets) do not so I would like to reach out to the
creators to see about purchasing their files so that I can build their models
as well but again, this is extremely difficult to do and requires a lot of clicking.
At times, the site is also extremely slow (I see it's also written in ASP
which is a very old language). I know there are some competitors out there but
to be honest, building another one with the community behind BrickLink and Dan's
legacy, just isn't really an option. I would love to help (even for FREE)
build a new website using more modern languages and frameworks to make the site
cleaner, easier to use and have more functionality. Likewise, the Discussion
Forum is absolutely terrible. I still has the UI design of a message board /
news group from the 1990s. I am not trying to be rude and I apologize if I am
but I see so much more potential here. It wouldn't take long for someone
to build another competitor website that works better and has more features though
it would be extremely difficult for them to get the following that BrickLink
has but, it can be done. Please let me know if I can help in anyway. Thank you!

Of course everything you say is 100% correct, but keep in mind you're trying
to apply logic to a website that does not have timezones, that solved large partout
timeouts by recommending users to do the part out in two halves, ie. manually
selecting 500+ checkboxes, submit, part out again and again select 500+ checkboxes....

And that does not apply dimensions of parts to printed variants, meaning the
community has to manually submit data for all, etc... I could go on....

Best
solution is to stop thinking about these things

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 5, 2021 09:37

Subject:

Re: parts staying in stock after sold

Viewed:

41 times

Topic:

Technical Issues

In Technical Issues, Mmartin1980 writes:

i don't know if this has happened to anyone else, but on more than one occasion
i've sold some elements, knowing they are all of them i had in stock and
listed, then another order comes in for the same part even though i had none
left and had not relisted them.

And two different orders coming in with the same part for all my stock of ..
on both orders, meaning i have to explain to one that the parts are not available.

ive a large amount of stock and don't want to have to recheck it every time
i get an order in.

any help or explanation would be great
Cheers people!
Mat

To anyone who has this problem and also runs a store on BrickOwl: BrickOwl has
a history of each lot. This allows you to see (fairly) exactly what happened.
Unfortunately it's another one of those things missing on BL.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 4, 2021 12:01

Subject:

Re: IOSS number and CN23

Viewed:

66 times

Topic:

Help

In Help, Yourbricks writes:

Hello

If I have to send a letter inside EU from outside EU.

Brickink have collect VAT. Ok.

What I have to write out in the letter, so they dont will charge again VAT when
it arrive to the buyer country.

It is send without tracking number and I dont have option to give IOSS number
to the carrier. I just fill customs declaration CN23.

Thanks

Probably attach the document you received from BL to confirm the VAT has been
paid in an envelope on the outside.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 3, 2021 04:47

Subject:

Re: Credit Card required to sell on BrickLink

Viewed:

50 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, wildchicken13 writes:

In Suggestions, randyipp writes:

In Suggestions, chromeking71 writes:

This is a horrible idea. This site has been hacked a few times in the past under
previous ownership. Why make this site a target with worthwhile incentive...a
trove of credit card info with matching names and addresses. Nothing I've
personally seen or heard here has led me to believe that Lego has significantly
improved security here. Hopefully I'm wrong about this.

This topic is 10 years old...

Who doesn't enjoy a long conversation every now and then?

I like how the reply points out it's a bad suggestion by referring to events
that happened after the suggestion was made

Hard to argue with someone who's
seen the future

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 2, 2021 11:57

Subject:

Re: In a nutshell

Viewed:

57 times

Topic:

In General, calsbricks writes:

In time maybe the missing features will be added, only Bricklink knows that at
present.

Come on, don't overestimate Bricklink

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 1, 2021 07:53

Subject:

Re: New EU Marketplace Tax Solution is Now Live

Viewed:

58 times

Topic:

In Administrative, SylvainLS writes:

In Administrative, Stellar writes:

[…]
Yeah, as I expected Bricklink to not comply with EU law to this date that is
what I thought to do too. Hope no worker from EU VAT compliance checks Bricklink's
big sellers and they don't display prices with the correct VAT...

I’m not sure that’s a big problem until the buyer checks out: when I go to amazon.de,
prices are shown with German VAT (19%) even though they know I’m in France, it’s
only at checkout that the VAT is changed to French VAT (20%).
So I guess it’s okay to use seller’s VAT rate for listings.

Well, what you see is what you pay, so that part is still OK. The only mistake
is the message that states that prices in the store include "xx%" VAT, when really
it includes your domestic VAT percentage (assuming that what the seller will
do is take the inc.VAT amount and calculate the correct VAT out of that). So
at least for consumers, who don't care what percentage of what they pay is
VAT, it won't matter.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 1, 2021 06:32

Subject:

Re: New EU Marketplace Tax Solution is Now Live

Viewed:

62 times

Topic:

In Administrative, kaat writes:

In Administrative, Teup writes:

In Administrative, Brick.Store writes:

Affected are all sellers in the EU that are over 10,000 €.

Although there's no excuse for it not working, as far as I can see it doesn't
need to be a serious problem, right? I mean, you already had to do your invoicing
outside of Bricklink (if only for the fact the invoice on Bricklink cannot include
an invoice number). So you can also apply the buyer country's VAT percentage
manually. So, the inc.VAT amount would remain the same for all EU buyers but
on the backend you charge a different VAT percentage.
Also, I think the sales up to July don't count for the limit, so you still
have some time to use the old system (if not the full remainder of this year,
and a part of next year if your book year starts in January).

This is exactly what I end up doing. Simply remove 21% dutch VAT for non-domestic
EU sales and readd the correct EU VAT myself. This means I'll lose a bit
on sales to countries with a higher VAT % and gain a little when the VAT % is
lower. At least then you can track sales with the correct VAT in your own book
keeping and report it at the end of the quarter.

OneStopShop is voluntary when below 10K but I already subscribed simply because
I don't want to have to start using all the different VAT percentages in
the middle of the quarter (when you're about to go over the threshold). And
when you already know you need to do it sooner or later, better do it from the
start.

So you need to work around it for now

Most likely automate it, as it's
not funny doing this manually.

Yeah, besides the fluctuating turnover (which may or may not matter to a seller)
maybe Bricklink failure to fix this on time doesn't make that much of a difference?
I mean, you need to write your own invoices anyway, the only difference is you
cannot take the VAT amount as quoted by Bricklink, you have to calculate it by
yourself (in your own system/software/excel/etc).
But even if Bricklink had a functional setting to charge the correct VAT amount,
you'd still need to keep your own administration right: do your invoices
and keep track of how much you sold to which country (because I don't assume
Bricklink is going to offer some kind of report on this). So it seems to me it's
just the VAT field being filled with an incorrect VAT amount which you should
just ignore...

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 1, 2021 05:50

Subject:

Re: New EU Marketplace Tax Solution is Now Live

Viewed:

66 times

Topic:

In Administrative, Brick.Store writes:

In Administrative, Teup writes:

In Administrative, Brick.Store writes:

Affected are all sellers in the EU that are over 10,000 €.

It is no more time to use the old system because:

Determination of the turnover threshold 2021
For the assessment of the place of supply in the taxable period 2021, the following
must also be included to be included, which were executed in the calendar year
2020 and in the 1st half of 2021.

This means that if the turnover threshold has already been exceeded in the calendar
year 2020 or in the 1st half of 2021, from July 1, 2021 onwards, from the first
turnover onwards, for all within the EU

or

Do I fall under the obligation to report to the OSS if I have already exceeded
the threshold of 10,000 euros in 2020?

Yes. The supply threshold of 10,000 euros (net) also applies in advance. If the
threshold of 10,000 euros was exceeded in 2020, then the obligation to report
to the OSS applies from July 1, 2021.

Here is an excerpt from a FAQ

3. from when is the tax liability due?

The sale that leads to crossing the delivery threshold is the sale from which
the tax liability becomes due. If the threshold has already been reached in 2020
or in the first two quarters of 2021, then any sale will be subject to tax from
July 1. If the delivery threshold of 10,000 euros (net) is not reached until
September 2021, for example, then tax is not due until then.

4. When must the first report and the first payment be made in the OSS procedure?

The first report covering the 3rd quarter of 2021 (July, August, September) must
be submitted no later than October 31. 30 days after the end of the reporting
period, the payment period ends.

5. Is it possible to waive claiming the delivery threshold and pay tax directly
from the first euro in the destination country?

Yes, this is possible.

6. Do I fall under the obligation to report to the OSS if I have already exceeded
the threshold of 10,000 euros in 2020?

Yes. The supply threshold of 10,000 euros (net) also applies in advance. If the
threshold of 10,000 euros was exceeded in 2020, then the obligation to report
to the OSS applies from July 1, 2021.

7. Are shipping costs used to calculate whether the delivery threshold has
been exceeded?

Yes.

8. I have already exceeded the delivery threshold of 10,000 euros in Q1 2021.
Do I now have to report every remote sale through the OSS starting July 1?

Yes. If you have already exceeded the delivery threshold in 2021 or already in
2020, then you must report through the OSS starting July 1, 2021 if you want
to use the OSS.

Example 9: A German trader sells goods to Austria and France. When does he
become liable for tax in the two EU countries?

As long as the sales to Austria and France together amount to less than 10,000
euros, the German VAT rate of 19 percent or the reduced rate of 7 percent applies.
As soon as the sales to other EU countries exceed 10,000 euros, for example if
the entrepreneur has sold goods worth 6,000 euros to Austria and goods worth
4,001 euros to France, the entrepreneur becomes liable to pay tax in both countries.

Then each additional euro must be taxed in France at the French VAT rate (usually
20 percent). Each additional euro earned in Austria must be taxed at the Austrian
rate (usually 20 percent).

However, reporting and taxation can be done together via the One-Stop-Shop and
the taxes for both Austria and France are then forwarded to the Tax Office, which
handles the distribution of taxes to the respective EU countries.

Quelle: https://www.haendlerbund.de/de/news/aktuelles/rechtliches/3769-faq-one-stop-shop-umsatzsteuer#meldepflicht%202020

Thanks for that info, I just studied the page of the Dutch tax agency closely
and it seems these implementations vary per country. According to the Dutch tax
agency, you must use VAT per coutnry once you have passed the 10.000 limit in
that booking year. So, technically, you could use domestic VAT every year until
you reach the limit and then switch to VAT per country (it says you would need
to do so starting from the first invoice that exceeds the limit in that year).

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 1, 2021 04:59

Subject:

Re: Nieuwe EU VAT e-commerce regels

Viewed:

70 times

Topic:

In LANG Nederlands, wpbremer writes:

Goedenavond allemaal,

is er iemand die mij in het kort kan vertellen welke wijzigingen ik al BTW plichtige
verkoper op BrickLink moet doorvoeren van 1 juli wanneer de nieuwe EU VAT e-commerce
regels ingaan?
Ik kom er met alle info helaas niet meer uit.

Alvast bedankt voor de moeite.
Groeten Wiebren

Hoe zit dit?

https://www.bricklink.com/message.asp?ID=1278481

Moet je je dus ook aanmelden voor de unieregeling als je VORIG jaar boven
de limiet verkocht? Staat daar ergens iets over vermeld bij de Nederlandse belastingdienst?

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 1, 2021 04:38

Subject:

Re: New EU Marketplace Tax Solution is Now Live

Viewed:

92 times

Topic:

In Administrative, Brick.Store writes:

Affected are all sellers in the EU that are over 10,000 €.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jul 1, 2021 04:23

Subject:

Re: New EU Marketplace Tax Solution is Now Live

Viewed:

88 times

Topic:

In Administrative, Brick.Store writes:

In Administrative, Bad_Girl writes:

In Administrative, Stellar writes:

In Administrative, Admin_Russell writes:

Hello everyone,

We have just launched the new EU Marketplace Tax Solution and have confirmed
that it is working. Please report any bugs or unusual behavior to the Help Desk
(customersupport@bricklink.com) or reply to this message.

Here are the relevant Help Center pages:

EU Marketplace FAQ:

https://www.bricklink.com/help.asp?helpID=2518

Official Help Page:

https://www.bricklink.com/help.asp?helpID=2517

Thank you,

**If seller exceeds distance selling threshold of €10,000, seller must collect
VAT from buyer.
This will be implemented at a later date.

Excuse me but... What?

**If the seller exceeds the distance sales threshold of €10,000, the seller must
collect VAT from the buyer.
This will be implemented at a later date.

and

*EU marketplace rules state that the seller must collect VAT in the buyer's
country. At the moment BrickLink is not able to support this feature, but we
are working on supporting this.

When will this function be available?
Is there a timeline?

On 05.12.2017 this was decided.
It was delayed from 01.01.2021 to 01.07.2021.

So enough time for implementation, now we have 01.07.2021 and it is not working

Affected are all sellers in the EU that are over 10,000 €.

Okaaaay.

I don't actually care because I only use Bricklink for hobby selling now
and don't take it very seriously, but it's funny how it's really
the first time in a couple of years that Bricklink actually does less
than I expected it to do. Taxes was their one thing they were working on, it
seemed. But apparently even that is not working out. Proves again that using
Bricklink for business is not the smartest choice!

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 30, 2021 17:38

Subject:

Re: PayPal price increase

Viewed:

121 times

Topic:

Payment Methods

In Payment Methods, cosmicray writes:

In Payment Methods, wildchicken13 writes:

In Payment Methods, racerxmtb writes:

Hi

Just received email that PayPal is increasing fees from 0.30 to 0.49 per transaction.
Grrr

$0.49 + 3.49%, no less (currently $0.30 + 2.9%)

It's too bad. PayPal seems to have a monopoly on the North American payment
market here on BrickLink. Due to the whole sales tax thing, the only viable alternative
seems to be Stripe, and they also charge a 2.9% + $0.30 fee. I wouldn't be
surprised if they raise their fee to match PayPal! Maybe someday, BrickLink will
have it's own payment processing system. But given the slow pace of progress
on this site, I don't think that day is coming anytime soon…

You need to dig into the PayPal fee change page. My impression is that the fees
we will be charged, will vary between 2.9 and 3.5%, based on the payment type
the buyer presents. for the first few months, this may be a learning experience,
to see what blended number we need to use, to calculate our overhead.
Another site I sell on, has had a variable FVF for quite a few years. My sales
fee is either 0.0%, 2.9%. or 5.9%. depending on how the buyer gets to my product
page.

This is going to make it really hard for sellers (in other countries) to calculate
the PayPal fee in advance, if they want to pass it back to the buyer.

Nita Rae

Yeah, PayPal does everything to hide their fees. Once they updated (=increased)
their fees, and I couldn't find anywhere in their terms what the new rates
exactly were for each (buyer) country. It took several calls with the PayPal
helpdesk to figure it out, it ended up to be listed in a table as something completely
different (I believe credit card charges) which happened to match the fees that
had been charged in my recent payments.

Recently I commented on a PayPal facebook ad that they're not a viable option
since the fees are just too high, and they removed my comment and banned me from
liking or responding to their posts. Pretty sad if you need to act like that
as part of your business model.

Meanwhile, they do everything to appear on top, even though they're not a
good option. They have a clause in their terms that you're not allowed to
make other payment methods more visible, or say anything bad about PayPal
(like I'm doing now), or your account can be terminated. While at the same
time they don't follow their own standards, because once you enable PayPal
payment in a Wordpress webshop, the whole thing gets plastered with yellow banners
that are like "USE PAYPAL! WHAT IS PAYPAL? CLICK HERE FOR PAYPAL! YOU CAN PAY
BY PAYPAL DID YOU KNOW THAT????"

What a lame and childish company.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 30, 2021 05:46

Subject:

Re: Nieuwe EU VAT e-commerce regels

Viewed:

49 times

Topic:

In LANG Nederlands, patpendlego writes:

In LANG Nederlands, Teup writes:

In LANG Nederlands, Stellar writes:

In LANG Nederlands, Teup writes:

In LANG Nederlands, paulvdb writes:

In LANG Nederlands, brickconnector writes:

Dit zou leidend moeten zijn voor je, de info van BrickLink is internationaal
gekleurd en lastig te doorgronden.

https://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/bldcontentnl/berichten/nieuws/douane/e-commerce-belangrijkste-veranderingen-per-1-juli-2021

Maar hoezo is dit eigenlijk op ons van toepassing?
Bent u e-commerce ondernemer en levert u goederen van buiten de EU aan consumenten
binnen de EU? Dan krijgt u vanaf 1 juli 2021 te maken met veranderingen.

Wij importeren toch geen goederen van buiten de EU die we hier vervolgens in
de EU verkopen?
Dit is dan toch helemaal niet van toepassing op ons?

Die link is inderdaad niet van toepassing op ons. Deze link van de KvK gaat over
de wijzigingen die wel op ons van toepassing kunnen zijn: https://www.kvk.nl/advies-en-informatie/internationaal-ondernemen/e-commerce/btw-regels-voor-e-commerce-in-de-eu/

Dit begrijp ik niet helemaal:

"Vanaf het moment dat je boven het drempelbedrag van 10.000 euro komt, breng
je het btw-tarief in rekening van het EU-land waar je klant gevestigd is. Dit
geldt voor de factuur waarmee je het drempelbedrag overschrijdt. Wanneer je al
voor 8.000 euro aan consumenten in andere EU-landen geleverd hebt en voor 3.000
euro aan een Franse consument moet factureren, dan is de factuur van 3.000 euro
belast met Franse btw."

Het systeem gaat pas in zodra je daadwerkelijk het drempelbedrag overschrijdt?
Dat is verrassend en raar. Betekent dat dan dat verkopers telkens twee systemen
moeten hanteren - het eerste gedeelte van het jaar NL BTW en het tweede gedeelte,
zodra ze over de limit zijn, ineens de buitenlandse BTW, en dat elk jaar weer?

I think after 10.000 it is a must, but before is optional, so if you want, you
can always charge the VAT of the buyer even if you don't meet the 10.000
threshold.

Hope so! It would make sense, and probably it will be like that, but it would
be nice to see a confirmation of that somewhere - it doesn't say anywhere
that you can choose. Would be a pain for sellers to determine at what exact order
they passed the limit, and change their setting, every year again.

Betekent wel dat je BTW-geregistreerd moet zijn in elk land waar je aan verkoopt,
klopt?

Nee, je kunt gebruik maken van de 'Unieregeling' - dan doe je via de
Nederlandse belastingdienst de aangifte. Wel moet je zelf bijhouden wat de BTW
percentages van de landen zijn. En je moet je wel eerst aanmelden voor de unieregeling.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 30, 2021 05:17

Subject:

Re: Nieuwe EU VAT e-commerce regels

Viewed:

49 times

Topic:

In LANG Nederlands, Stellar writes:

In LANG Nederlands, Teup writes:

In LANG Nederlands, paulvdb writes:

In LANG Nederlands, brickconnector writes:

I think after 10.000 it is a must, but before is optional, so if you want, you
can always charge the VAT of the buyer even if you don't meet the 10.000
threshold.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 30, 2021 04:51

Subject:

Re: Nieuwe EU VAT e-commerce regels

Viewed:

50 times

Topic:

In LANG Nederlands, paulvdb writes:

In LANG Nederlands, brickconnector writes:

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 30, 2021 03:14

Subject:

Re: Nieuwe EU VAT e-commerce regels

Viewed:

62 times

Topic:

In LANG Nederlands, SylvainLS writes:

— starting July 1st, BL seems to want you to set your prices excluding VAT, and
BL will ADD it for your EU buyers.
But we are not sure.

I noticed this part was removed from the statement in the e-mail. So probably
this won't happen, which makes sense because it does not achieve anything
except for making things difficult for Bricklink, and things that are difficult
for Bricklink rarely happen even if they are useful

They still haven't told us anything about how/where sellers can specify which
VAT amount to charge in the new system. Either it will be self-explanatory
or they will come up with an additional statement tomorrow or something like
that (wouldn't surprise me)

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 29, 2021 10:08

Subject:

Re: Minimum buy option for Domestic/International

Viewed:

36 times

Topic:

It works, but it doesn't update the minimum order amount on the customer's
side, so unless Bricklink fixes that, it's a bit of an ugly workaround. Buyers
will come to your shop, put things in their cart, then notice they get an error
when they check out even though they met the minimum order restriction. Not fun
for them and probably not fun for you because you're going to get messages
asking what's wrong etc.

In Suggestions, wildchicken13 writes:

In Suggestions, infinibrix writes:

It would be useful if there was an option to set a separate minimum buy option
for selling to international customers. For instance whilst I might be happy
to have a minimum buy of £3 for domestic (UK) customers I would prefer to discourage
small purchases from overseas not least because they require more handling time/customs
paperwork plus with the new VAT restrictions on how much you can sell within
the EU before needing to register for VAT I would prefer to be more selective
when it comes to choosing the type of international transactions I'm willing
to accept

It already exists! In your store settings under the shipping tab, you can set
a minimum buy for each shipping method. You can even set a maximum buy if you
would like. Note that you will need separate shipping methods for domestic and
international orders for this to work. Also note that the minimum buy shown to
customers in your store will be the one set for your entire store, not each shipping
method.

It amazes me just how often you get overseas buyers ordering one or two items
even though the shipping is double/trebble the cost?

Sometimes, you just need that one part and it's only available at a few stores.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 29, 2021 08:43

Subject:

Re: Minimum buy option for Domestic/International

Viewed:

37 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, infinibrix writes:

In Suggestions, Teup writes:

I would say, they can just take it or leave it. And your intentions are legitimate
because you legitimately consider blocking such orders. So we're really talking
real costs here. But I guess the problem here is that Bricklink suffers from
this "actual postage" tradition that it once had, but to be honest I wouldn't
care about it. I've also been having several euros of handling fees in some
shipping rates, and I don't apologise for anything (without it it wouldn't
have been worth it for me because I needed to write software to accomodate to
new shipping rules, which took a lot of time, as well as buy a new labelwriter
for those shipments).

I get what you're saying, but as for me, I guess I just don't want to
make Bricklink's problem my problem. It's perfectly normal for any webshop
to charge whatever administration costs they want, so it should be here too..

Well I already charge an international shipping/handling charge which is a little
over the actual shipping cost by a couple of pound or so but if you want an international
order to be a minimum of say £10-20 you can't really incorporate that kind
of amount onto your invoice without it coming accross to the customer as a substantial
and extortionate fee and whilst you may feel its perfectly normal to choose what
you charge it should also be normal to not have to feel the need to charge fees
too!

Fair enough, yeah, then I guess it would be best if the settings of the shipping
methods would automatically result in a minimum order amount. Otherwise we'd
need a box per country/region (because what is "international" - it's a gradual
concept). And I wouldn't want to see yet more "minimum order" boxes, as the
ones from the shipping methods and the store minimum are already causing conflicts
sometimes. This is still something Bricklink needs to look at, but they won't.

The other important thing is that any selling options that aid sellers so they
don't need to incorporate hidden fees is better for all and clearer for buyers
to understand as many dont always have time to read lengthy store terms!

Yeah, definitely. Ideally the whole money topic would be removed from terms completely
and the actual shipping rate be visible to the buyer at all times while they're
shopping.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 29, 2021 06:47

Subject:

Re: Minimum buy option for Domestic/International

Viewed:

32 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, infinibrix writes:

In Suggestions, Teup writes:

In Suggestions, infinibrix writes:

Well, you could set up a shipping method that charges whatever you need to charge
to make it worth it for you. That way you lose less business and buyers still
have an option.

The thing is increasing shipping and/or adding fees for international transactions
is'nt an ideal soltution especially as it may not always go down well from
a customers perspective nor reflect well on the seller

At least with a minimum buy the customer gets extra parts for that additional
spend whereas by just adding fees those extra charges become extortion! Yes it
would be the customers choice to make but then many customers may not always
fully understand or agree with the sellers motive for such fees resulting in
a higher liklihood of feedback issues!

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 29, 2021 05:27

Subject:

Re: Minimum buy option for Domestic/International

Viewed:

48 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, infinibrix writes:

Well, you could set up a shipping method that charges whatever you need to charge
to make it worth it for you. That way you lose less business and buyers still
have an option.

I think the best thing Bricklink could fix is making it so that when you set
a minimum order amount for your international shipping methods, then that value
automatically is displayed as the minimum order value to those buyers. So it
elimiates scenarios where buyers get this error that there are no shipping methods
available. But it's just one of those many things that would be too logical
for Bricklink to ever implement

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 26, 2021 18:59

Subject:

Re: Parting out 71741 Ninjago City Gardens

Viewed:

54 times

Topic:

Help

In Help, Papabricks writes:

Additional Notes: Collapse ▲
Due to the massive number of lines (1000+) in the inventory of this set, the
BrickLink system will time out during the part out process. You must part out
the set in two different halves.

Oh my god

I could hardly believe this was real, had to check it with my own
eyes. So that's how Bricklink fixed it huh, casually telling its users to
click 500 individual boxes (on a page that you don't check when you do a
part-out)

Haha that's really beyond ridiculous. This is a known problem
for at least years 3 years now... and in all this time, this is what they came
up with

Dan made the entire part-out system from scratch in less than that
time, 20 years later there's a whole team of people telling you to check
500 boxes because nobody can figure out a fix

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 24, 2021 08:25

Subject:

Re: BrickLink and the new EU VAT e-commerce rules

Viewed:

66 times

Topic:

In Administrative, kaat writes:

You mentioned the new law about VAT per EU country, but you did not mention the
most important part of it: Charging the VAT rate of the country of the buyer.
So, as the users have already pointed out, what they need is a system where they
as sellers can choose between A. charging the domestic VAT rate or B. charging
the VAT rate of the buyer's country - depending on whether their foreign
sales exceed 10K or not. I am assuming you are saying that this is coming, but
you didn't mention it explicitly, so maybe good to confirm that this is indeed
what's coming?

This EU VAT change has different angles. Let's focus here on the question
above, as I think it's a good one and relevant for every VAT enabled EU seller.

Given a VAT enabled store, that sells to buyers in the EU. What VAT percentage
is used? Currently, it is the VAT percentage of the country the seller is located
in. I'm located in NL, so it displays 21% VAT.

In the new situation we indeed have two options. Does BrickLink provide an option
to choose between the two? You should even be allowed to switch from 1 to 2 during
the year, as soon as you approach the 10K limit, aren't you?

The new options are:
1.EU sales excluding domestic are below 10K
Then I still need to do the same as today: charge 21% VAT to EU customers (based
on the VAT percentage of the sellers country). Report and pay to domestic tax
office, simple. No change.

2. EU sales excluding domestic are 10K or more
Now I need to charge the VAT % of the country of my buyer. Will BrickLink handle
this? So when I list an item for 1.00 euro, it will charge 1.19 to a German buyer
and 1.25 to a buyer from Croatia and 1.21 to a dutch buyer (etc etc).

As Russel mentions, either you register in every EU country you sell to (no one
will do that I guess) or you apply for the one-stop shop and do it in a single
country of choice. However, this should not make any difference for BrickLink.

Yeah, Bricklink should just offer both options and I assume that's what they
will do. It's not a lot of hassle for them, because the whole VAT issue isn't
their problem. If someone would change the setting halfway the year, it becomes
quite messy for them and they have to write suppletive tax reports to correct
the tax already reported, but Bricklink will have nothing to do with any of that.
They just have to offer the two options.

About pricing:
Currently VAT enabled stores list their prices VAT inclusive. Do I understand
correctly we should reprice to prices excluding VAT?

So the example item that is now prices 1.21 will need to become 1.00. Is this
changed automatically when you release this update or do we need to do this manually?

What price will a buyer in the EU then see at a listing? It should be VAT inclusive
and not be simply added in the end.

Thanks for the info!

If that is indeed what it means, I think it's a terrible idea. I don't
see any advantage. Why not just let sellers enter the VAT included price like
they have for the past decades? If they would change this there would be absolutely
no benefit. The system can easily infer the ex.VAT price, the same way it has
always done.
There may be unforseen consequences for sellers (e.g. syncing inventory with
BO through Bricksync will be ruined). But I assume we misunderstood the post,
because this change wouldn't have a single benefit to Bricklink. Probably
they mean non-EU sellers or something like that.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 23, 2021 19:27

Subject:

Re: BrickLink and the new EU VAT e-commerce rules

Viewed:

56 times

Topic:

In Administrative, SylvainLS writes:

In Administrative, Teup writes:

[…]
Right now
everybody understands that prices include VAT, so there is no inconsistency in
the priceguide.

No, no one understands because no one knows which realized sales (last 6 mo)
included VAT or not, so averages are not predictive.

That is:
1. seller is EU & VAT registered, buyer is EU, VAT is included,
an(other) EU buyer would have paid the same price,
a non-EU buyer would have paid less,
2. seller is EU & VAT registered, buyer is not EU, 0% VAT,
an EU buyer would have paid more,
a(nother) non-EU buyer would have paid the same,
3. seller is EU & not VAT registered, VAT not applicable,
any buyer would have paid the same price,
4. seller is non-EU,
any buyer would have paid the same price… and EU buyers would have paid VAT
on reception, maybe.

Anyone looking at the last 6 months sales, and using it as gospel, thinking it’s
more “real” than the “for sale” prices, is sadly misguided.

(And if it doesn’t work this way (as it didn’t because, according https://www.bricklink.com/message.asp?ID=1272079
, 2. was presented as 1.), then it’s even more broken and useless.)

And for “for sales” prices, non-EU prices don’t include VAT, EU prices do, and
so EU sellers are disadvantaged (look more expensive).
And as for removing VAT from everyone, I don’t think it’s legal to show EU prices
to EU buyers without VAT for items for sales, especially if you don’t say VAT
is excluded, but IANAL.

Yeah, I understand the PG is always a compromise and I also understand you can't
*display* ex.VAT prices (nor does BL intend to do that in stores, and also not
in the PG I think, because they're going to add VAT to the numbers depending
on who views it). But - and I may have understood this wrong - the idea is that
sellers' prices are now going to be ex.VAT - so they enter EUR 1 and it will
display EUR 1.2 to the EU buyer and EUR 1 to the ex-EU buyer. Instead of entering
EUR 1.2 an having that display EUR 1.2 to the EU buyer and EUR 1 to the non-EU
buyer. So basically switching things around from substraction to addition. That
will cause confusion with some sellers understanding it and some others having
missed the update. But maybe I misunderstood the point, but then it needs clarification
because that's what it says right now. Maybe they meant ex-EU sellers only?

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 23, 2021 18:54

Subject:

Re: BrickLink and the new EU VAT e-commerce rules

Viewed:

43 times

Topic:

I keep saying it, Bricklink is doing it backwards. First force sellers to go
with the few (two?) onsite payment methods they offer and THEN look into expanding
the payment methods... how about FIRST adding relevant onsite payment methods
(this is literally an hour of work at most) and THEN see if there's anyone
left who's not on board with onsite payments? Don't know about other
countries but I'm pretty sure most countries have onsite payment in their
local webshops. I don't think there are many countries where people have
to go into their online banking in order to pay for orders they placed in webshops.
For example, you can abolish offsite payment completely for the Netherlands,
when you add iDEAL. This would be a much easier kind of transition.

But I've been a stuck record on this for many years.. seems it's too
logical for Bricklink or something...

In Administrative, SylvainLS writes:

In Administrative, jancg writes:

SylvainLS,

Thanks for your painful 'spot on' response.

Sorry that my answer was painful / sounded sarcastic, it wasn’t intended (bad
habit on my part I guess: I phrase everything sarcastically

).

My question can also be reversed: How many buyers in “tax-collected” countries
would want to pay with bank transfers?
BL collects (or will soon collect) taxes for USA, UK, and EU. But there are
other countries with marketplace laws, like Norway, New-Zealand, South Africa,
and more will follow.

So knowing how many sellers offer bank transfers for those buyers should be interesting.

Also, we have had several discussions here about “on-site” IBAN/bank transfers,
and not only because of tax collection. So if there’s a significant portion
of transactions on BL that are or were made by bank transfer but are or will
be “tax-collected,” that would be a reason more to have “on-site” bank transfers.
(Not even taking intou account the belief that forced tax collection will one
day be generalized.)

I completely overlooked the "non-EU" in "non-EU sellers".

@BrickLink: You may disregard my request/proposal.

Kind regards, Jan.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 23, 2021 18:41

Subject:

Re: BrickLink and the new EU VAT e-commerce rules

Viewed:

77 times

Topic:

Good timely update, better than I expected it to go, although it's still
not very clear:

Most of all:

You mentioned the new law about VAT per EU country, but you did not mention the
most important part of it: Charging the VAT rate of the country of the buyer.
So, as the users have already pointed out, what they need is a system where they
as sellers can choose between A. charging the domestic VAT rate or B. charging
the VAT rate of the buyer's country - depending on whether their foreign
sales exceed 10K or not. I am assuming you are saying that this is coming, but
you didn't mention it explicitly, so maybe good to confirm that this is indeed
what's coming?

In Administrative, Admin_Russell writes:

3) Sellers should list the items in their inventory exclusive of VAT and any
other taxes/fees to ensure price consistency in the Price Guide.

Say what? So we're switching to pricing WITHOUT VAT now, instead of VAT being
deducted FROM the specified prices? That's a pretty major change. It sounds
like a bad idea, if it really means what I fear it means
- so sellers all have to suddenly switch to setting ex.VAT prices? That's
terribly confusing, nobody thinks in ex-VAT prices.
- if you want to keep the priceguide consistent, then why change it? Right now
everybody understands that prices include VAT, so there is no inconsistency in
the priceguide.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 19, 2021 07:51

Subject:

Re: PayPal to increase fees in August.

Viewed:

98 times

Topic:

Payment Methods

In Payment Methods, infinibrix writes:

In Payment Methods, Teup writes:

Blows my mind that PayPal is so popular in America. Here it accounts for 5% of
all e-commerce transactions. It's just not competitively priced and the "protection"
is mostly just annoying.

What you have to remember though is that the option to pay by Paypal gives buyers
confidence and confidence means peaople are more likely to place orders in your
store and by not offering such a payment option orders would drop off significantly
so as a seller you could say that what your really paying for is a marketing
tool that generates added sales potential and until other payment companies match
the same levels of buyer protection I fear little will change in that respect

It depends on the store of course. In the US it wouldn't be doable to disallow
PayPal probably. But I'm selling full time for over a year now practically
without PayPal and I'm pretty happy about it. For some customers PayPal means
protection, for others it means involving a commercial company into their finances,
which feels less safe, so it goes both ways.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 19, 2021 05:33

Subject:

Re: PayPal to increase fees in August.

Viewed:

84 times

Topic:

Payment Methods

In Payment Methods, godfrey writes:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-paypal-rates-idUSKCN2DU1V4

Above is the article from Reuters.

Is there any alternatives we can consider moving to? This is getting ridiculous.
With competition we should be expecting cheaper fees not an increase in fees.

Need help!

Bricklink is/was working on adding better payment methods, but that's already
more than a year ago and who knows how much longer that will take.. for now you
can use Stripe's card method for those who have a compatible card. I've
stopped accepting PayPal payments.

Blows my mind that PayPal is so popular in America. Here it accounts for 5% of
all e-commerce transactions. It's just not competitively priced and the "protection"
is mostly just annoying.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 19, 2021 04:50

Subject:

Re: Packing Dimensions - Seller Tools

Viewed:

37 times

Topic:

https://www.bricklink.com/message.asp?ID=1222702

In Catalog, Admin_Russell writes:

And more is yet to come!

With any luck that will include fixing this problem of parts appearing as a chaotic
mess in inventories and partouts because they're not sorted by dimensions
anymore, which you were going to address "next week" 9 months ago

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 18, 2021 19:15

Subject:

Re: Has anyone checked PG(dark version) to...

Viewed:

47 times

Topic:

Colors

In Colors, dcarmine writes:

I'm wondering if anyone has compared the dark version of Pearl Gold in this
part to the new Metallic Gold on this new set?

47457 Slope, Curved 2 x 2 x 2/3 with 2 Studs and Curved Sides
Parts: Slope, Curved {Pearl Gold}

47457 Slope, Curved 2 x 2 x 2/3 with 2 Studs and Curved Sides
Parts: Slope, Curved {Metallic Gold}

76191-1 (Inv) Infinity Gauntlet
590 Parts, 2021
Sets: Super Heroes: Sculptures: The Infinity Saga

And then to this color?

44815b Bionicle Mask Kraahkan, 4 Hole Chin
Parts: BIONICLE, Kanohi Mask {Flat Dark Gold}

I do have examples of the Flat Dark Gold and the darker version of Pearl Gold
and they are defiantly not the same.

Thanks,
Donna

The parts from that set are 100% sure metallic gold. The other kinds of gold
are not metallic (ie. they are mixed into the plastic, not a metallic coating).
The metallic ones are probably tan or gray underneath.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 16, 2021 03:07

Subject:

Re: Please add "i no longer want this order"

Viewed:

66 times

Topic:

In Feedback, zorbanj writes:

In Feedback, Teup writes:

IMO it's really spoiled behaviour from sellers. Did you think e-commerce
just magically got that big, just like that? That you're able to make a living
just like brick-and-mortar stores that need to pay rent and have employees present
all day long? It's because of distance selling consumer rights, guys. Please
be a little bit thankful that we have this e-commerce system and respect consumer
rights, which you already agreed on doing when you agreed with the Bricklink
terms of selling.

If I ordered 500 lots (the maximum) from your store and then wanted to cancel
because I was "impulse buying" or didn't have enough money, you would have
no problems with that?

Honestly, no. Would I be disappointed? Sure. But I would think: Ok, this is *that*
order that you just get once a year, being a seller. My prices are high enough
to survive this.

I kind of picked your reply semi-randomly because it summed up some points I
wanted to address, but (again) I'm kind of responding in general.

The reason it triggers me is because to me it shows a clash of two cultures:
amateur and professional. 10 years ago I was an amateur, and I would have been
totally upset about it. It would have meant I "lose" a lot of money and time.
But over the years, you start to realise that you don't actually even want
a business model that relies on sending stuff to people who regret buying it,
and that it's actually not a big deal in the big picture.

I think it's a non-professional way of thinking to say "changing your mind
is not cool, therefore we shouldn't do that kind of stuff around here". For
non-professional things like friendships that's totally fair. It's nice
that people are advocating for high moral standards - I have to give the posters
that. But when it comes to professional e-commerce, that kind of reasoning just
doesn't apply IMO. Customers will change their minds and return stuff, and
respecting these rights make for a professional and safe platform where people
like to buy. It would be a bit like saying "puking on airplanes is gross, we
shouldn't have puke bags".

For me this is really one of those things that keep Bricklink stuck in being
this hobby place that doesn't reach the casual consumer market. And yes,
it's cool to have a community where people are well behaved and don't
cancel, but at the end of the day I would simply prefer a platform that attracts
the casual consumer, even if they sometimes make some crappy decisions. It's
just more profit in the end.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 16, 2021 02:56

Subject:

Re: Please add "i no longer want this order"

Viewed:

77 times

Topic:

In Feedback, SezaR writes:

I don't know if there are rules for international sales. But here, things
look to me simple:
- The buyer orders and then wants to cancel. Ok. BL allows this but the seller
can complete an NPD agianst the buyer.

By now, some sellers see the feedback of buyer and add him to their stoplist.
This is LEGAL and their RIGHT!

- The buyer orders again.... second NPB.

More seller spot the feedback record of buyer and he/she is added to more stoplists.

- The buyer orders again.... the third and last NPB.
Now BL revoke his buying priviledge forever. BL has RIGHT to refuse giving service
to this individual.

Well yes, that is of course true. As I said, sellers have every right to be unhappy
about it if it took a long time to sort the order for example. But there are
some limits - here the buyer was just requesting a reason to be added that is
valid and relevant, and in response to even just that sujggestion, some people
already go and stoplist them.
They can do this, I wasn't saying it's not legal, it's just that
it makes Bricklink look like an amateuristic place where sellers don't accept
cancellations. If I would come to Bricklink for the first time and see this discussion
on the forum, I'm not sure if I'd want to buy here.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 15, 2021 18:49

Subject:

Re: Please add "i no longer want this order"

Viewed:

79 times

Topic:

In Feedback, qwertyboy writes:

In Feedback, Teup writes:

So what's the law in Canada?

IANAL, but here is my CAD 0.02.

Consumer rights are largely governed at the province/territory level. There is
no Canada-wide legislation concerning Internet sales and when / whether an order
can be cancelled unilaterally by a consumer:
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/oca-bc.nsf/eng/ca02478.html

For Alberta (OP's province, as well as Bricklord's) consumer rights are
described here:
https://www.alberta.ca/consumer-bill-of-rights.aspx
In short, the amount of consumer protection is pitiful. Specifically, in Alberta
there is practically no legislation about consumers wanting to get out of an
Internet sales contract. Above may (will?) vary across other provinces and territories.

Niek.

Thanks! I was already searching a bit out of curiousity. Interesting to know.
Seems the philosophy is to leave it up to the market to create good protection
policies. But whether such competition philosophies match reality is always the
question..

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 15, 2021 18:39

Subject:

Re: Please add "i no longer want this order"

Viewed:

61 times

Topic:

Again: At the very least, *you* need to adapt to your foreign customers, instead
of the other way around. Because they are protected by rights wherever they buy
online.
Your reaction to the OP's suggestion gives very little hope that you intend
on doing that (or that you have been doing that).

It is you who are imposing your way of operating (again, assuming that there
indeed are no consumer rights in Canada), by branding the OP's suggestion
as something crazy when it is a valid cancellation reason in at least parts of
the world, and a relevant addition to the current list of options.

Besides that, the US and EU (and UK) is not a small part. It makes up the majority
of Bricklink.

In Feedback, Bricklord writes:

'Smells like bluf.'

I do not often post on the forums, but I do follow them. For years I have perused
the various threads and noticed your propensity for commenting on a wide variety
of topics, always pronouncing your views and opinions, invariably stating that
something described is not how it is done in your country, and therefore is wrong
everywhere else. The recurrent theme of your posts is that the rest of the world
does not operate the way your small part of it does, therefore the rest of the
world is wrong. Yes, the rest of the world does not always operate the way it
does in your home. That is the way the world works.

In this instance, you have professed an opinion as fact. I have simply asked
you to prove this fact. If there are any smells to be had, they do not emanate
on my end.

In Feedback, Teup writes:

Very strange reply, you first state that it's different in your place and
then you don't produce the evidence. Smells like bluf.

Anyway, if you're right, you would still need to respect the rights of your
US or EU customers. Therefore, the cancellation reason the OP suggested is still
a relevant and valid request, and stoplisting them for requesting it seems petty
to me.

(Also, I would not want to discriminate buyers based on their country of residence
in terms of the level of service they're getting, but that is a personal
choice)

In Feedback, Bricklord writes:

You tell us. You seem to be the expert on how the world works outside your borders.

In Feedback, Teup writes:

So what's the law in Canada?

In Feedback, Bricklord writes:

You would do well to remember that your cited 'legal rights' apply only
to your country. This is a world wide platform for selling. What applies in your
country does not necessarily apply elsewhere. Know your arcs.

In Feedback, Teup writes:

Hard to believe you seem to have such an extensive amount of experience on BL
yet fail to let people use their legal rights as consumers.

In Feedback, Bricklord writes:

you just got yourself stoplisted in yet another store. I will thank you however
for at least warning me before I waste my time on you.

In Feedback, Deedesria writes:

Theres no good way to communicate why i want to cancel my orders sometimes. I
often end up with not enough money, or almost impulse buying sets and changing
my mind. Please add an option that says "I no longer want this order" or something
along those lines

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 15, 2021 18:18

Subject:

Re: Please add "i no longer want this order"

Viewed:

77 times

Topic:

You tell us. You seem to be the expert on how the world works outside your borders.

In Feedback, Teup writes:

So what's the law in Canada?

In Feedback, Bricklord writes:

Hard to believe you seem to have such an extensive amount of experience on BL
yet fail to let people use their legal rights as consumers.

In Feedback, Bricklord writes:

you just got yourself stoplisted in yet another store. I will thank you however
for at least warning me before I waste my time on you.

In Feedback, Deedesria writes:

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 15, 2021 18:03

Subject:

Re: Please add "i no longer want this order"

Viewed:

80 times

Topic:

So what's the law in Canada?

In Feedback, Bricklord writes:

Hard to believe you seem to have such an extensive amount of experience on BL
yet fail to let people use their legal rights as consumers.

In Feedback, Bricklord writes:

you just got yourself stoplisted in yet another store. I will thank you however
for at least warning me before I waste my time on you.

In Feedback, Deedesria writes:

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 15, 2021 18:00

Subject:

Re: Please add "i no longer want this order"

Viewed:

71 times

Topic:

In Feedback, Andrsv writes:

In Feedback, Teup writes:

Hard to believe you seem to have such an extensive amount of experience on BL
yet fail to let people use their legal rights as consumers.

In Feedback, Bricklord writes:

you just got yourself stoplisted in yet another store. I will thank you however
for at least warning me before I waste my time on you.

In Feedback, Deedesria writes:

Legal rights depends on country

Well, that's true. But so far I know it applies to EU and US, and from what
I heard also in Canada (which would make sense, would be odd if it was suddenly
different there). But please anyone from Canada correct me if I'm wrong.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 15, 2021 17:56

Subject:

Re: Please add "i no longer want this order"

Viewed:

78 times

Topic:

Pretty shocked at how many users chime in to shame a consumer using their legal
right.
Yes, sure you can get negative feedback for cancellation. But it is still a right,
and it should be listed as one of the reasons for cancellation. It's pretty
ridiculous to make it all taboo. It happens, so you might as well have an accurate
honest option in that list of reasons.

IMO it's really spoiled behaviour from sellers. Did you think e-commerce
just magically got that big, just like that? That you're able to make a living
just like brick-and-mortar stores that need to pay rent and have employees present
all day long? It's because of distance selling consumer rights, guys. Please
be a little bit thankful that we have this e-commerce system and respect consumer
rights, which you already agreed on doing when you agreed with the Bricklink
terms of selling.

As for PayPal fees: Simply pick better payment methods that are not as crazy
greedy as PayPal, or factor it into your prices. You will perform normal customer
service - you need to.

Again, sure you can be unhappy about a buyer changing their mind, and
flag it as a negative experience for the community is totally fair. But at the
same time, you need to respect that it happens, and you need to act appropriately
and not bully consumer for simply using their rights. There is a difference between
not liking something and trying to make it stop by shaming people who do it and
blocking them from buying.

Anyone who added the OP to their stoplist, will be added to mine.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 15, 2021 17:48

Subject:

Re: Please add "i no longer want this order"

Viewed:

107 times

Topic:

Hard to believe you seem to have such an extensive amount of experience on BL
yet fail to let people use their legal rights as consumers.

In Feedback, Bricklord writes:

you just got yourself stoplisted in yet another store. I will thank you however
for at least warning me before I waste my time on you.

In Feedback, Deedesria writes:

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 13, 2021 07:49

Subject:

Re: How do you pack your items?

Viewed:

42 times

Topic:

In Selling, SylvainLS writes:

In Selling, Teup writes:

[…]
(Don't know how it's gonna work with the paper bags, I thought they would
have replaced them for 2021 but the Bonsai set still has plastic?)

Well, they need to change all their packing machines… and finish their plastic
bags stocks…

Exactly like you (your sealing machine won’t work on paper)

I'm actually just using tape (ok, I lied, so I did buy "plastic"), haven't
seen those paper bags yet, but I have some hope it's still going to work
on those...

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 13, 2021 06:24

Subject:

Re: How do you pack your items?

Viewed:

35 times

Topic:

In Selling, CSC writes:

Hi everyone,

how do you pack your items?
Not in terms of bags or boxes, I mean how to pack them in terms of what you put
in the same bag or when you use a new bag?

We are in the process of getting more bigger orders so in order to optimize picking,
I want to pick your brains on how you package items together or how you would
want them packaged if you bought from a store.

Thanks

I use the plastic bags from the sets, and I've never had to buy any plastic
this way. Both cheap AND green. Even/especially works well for mailbox shipments
that need to be under a certain width, because the plastic is quite sturdy.

Cut the bags through the middle, and you have two smaller bags, so you can split
up lots even more and distribute the contents evenly in an envelope to make a
good solid parcel.

I really recommend anyone to reuse the Lego bags, I'm doing it every day!

(Don't know how it's gonna work with the paper bags, I thought they would
have replaced them for 2021 but the Bonsai set still has plastic?)

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 9, 2021 18:57

Subject:

Re: Who Pays to Reship Returned Int'l Order?

Viewed:

45 times

Topic:

Shipping

In Shipping, zorbanj writes:

In Shipping, Andrsv writes:

I can't see that your store terms says that you ship to PayPal address. Was
his bricklink address also wrong? If not, then it's seller who did a mistake.

I would also blame seller even if terms said that you ship to PayPal address.
From the eyes of a buyer, he added his shipping address in bricklink, he buys
from bricklink. Invoice says it will be shipped to bricklink address. When paying,
he doesn't see his PayPal address which could have been added years ago.

I'd say that it's sellers responsible to verify that PayPal address and
bricklink address are the same before shipping to PayPal address.

I disagree. Sellers *must* ship to the PayPal address or they lose seller protection.
If you do not ship to the PayPal address, the buyer can open a PayPal case and
the seller will automatically lose even if the shipping status shows that the
package was delivered to the "updated" address. This is a common scam.

I doubt this is common. 90% of my orders used to go untracked worldwide for many
years, so it would not even have mattered if addresses matched or not, and I
never had a single problem with that. If people want to steal, they can do this
easily whether addresses match or not. Just order untracked or disallow PayPal
to draw funds form the connected bank account. That will undo the payment without
even needing to start a claim. Bottomline, it's easy to get screwed over
as a seller with PayPal in either case

But it's just not common - or,
at least, never happened in my case.

The Bricklink address is the address the buyer expects the order to be shipped
to, otherwise why would they enter it. It doesn't serve any other purpose
than that, while PayPal address do have other purposes (e.g. the billing address,
or account verification). So the most logical assumption would be that the Bricklink
address would be used (also because that's similar to entering a shipping
address in webshops).

Of course, sellers can specify otherwise in their terms if they want, but it
has to be really clear.

I agree though it's not an ideal system and ideally there'd be a system
where they automatically match so any possible confusion would disappear (or
maybe it already works like that with IC?)

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 8, 2021 13:24

Subject:

Re: Shipments without tracking number

Viewed:

30 times

Topic:

In Selling, MrPetovan writes:

I believe insurance can help you if the scam is falsely claiming that the package
was damaged. Tracking may not cover damage but insurance most definitely should,
otherwise it's a very poor insurance.

You'd be surprised then - AFAIK PostNL only refunds the value of the last
successfully completed transaction of the product, ie. its cost value for the
seller. Makes absolutely no sense except for the part where they get to pay less
money, which is ultimately what they want.

If my customers make any false claims about anything, I just don't refund.
I don't use PayPal so no problems there. If I can't verify they're
making a false claim, I always refund.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 8, 2021 13:19

Subject:

Re: Shipments without tracking number

Viewed:

30 times

Topic:

In Selling, enig writes:

In Selling, Teup writes:

In Selling, BrickPhaisan writes:

Good morning, as the title says, problems with ordinary shipping without tracking.
I have already had some dislike with this method and I am considering removing
it, maybe I will lose sales, but surely I will also avoid taking a negative point
without any fault, because you do not know if the client has the package and
wants the money to be returned ( the old paypal trick) or that the postal agency
has lost the package.
What would you do or do about it?
Greetings and take good care of yourselves.

Regardless of the shipping method, you as the seller are responsible to make
sure the consumer's rights are respected - that means that if it gets lost,
you should refund it.

There's nothing wrong with untracked shipping, just include the cost of covering
refunds in your handling fee. This will save money for both you and your customers.

What if a buyer explicitly asks the seller in a written form to ship without
tracking, and is willing to take the responsibility?

As opposed of the no-tracking option simply being there with some mumbo jumbo
in seller's terms that they're not responsible for lost stuff.

I am looking for a reply without the mention of PP / EU consumer rules. I know
where to find them.

Well, people can of course always make personal arrangements with each other..
but as for me, I stopped offering this 'service', I just have fixed prices
and they'll just have to deal with that

In my experience, anytime I do
something outside of the standard automated procedures, it just turns into extra
work and hassle to remember about it. But that depends on how many orders you're
getting I guess.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 8, 2021 08:52

Subject:

Re: Shipments without tracking number

Viewed:

52 times

Topic:

In Selling, BrickPhaisan writes:

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 2, 2021 14:12

Subject:

Re: New OSS : EU VAT changes from 1st of July

Viewed:

36 times

Topic:

In General, SylvainLS writes:

In General, Teup writes:

In General, SylvainLS writes:

That also means there’s even more risks of being forced to collect VAT for other
EU countries while you still don’t have to in your own country. Madness.

Haha, that's an interesting point actually. I wonder which takes prevalence
here: The fact you don't need to charge VAT, or the fact that you should
use the percentage of the country of the buyer. I would guess the first, but
it can totally turn out to be one of those oversights in the system..

Well, in the old scheme, the thresholds were high enough that nobody was in the
situation of not being registered at home and having to register abroad.

With a threshold of €85,800 in France, €10,000 sold in EU is 11.65%. I believe
that’s low, no?

Yep, but the question is which rule will apply first. Is this new rule of exact
percentages for everybody, and the VAT exemption applying only domestically,
or do you first need to qualify as a VAT registered business in the first place,
and THEN you have to look at what exact percentages to levy? I am assuming the
latter - I think the rule is about making the percentages more precise rather
than making sellers be obligated to pay VAT more often. But yes, if it turns
out it's the other way around, it's going to be an odd side effect.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 2, 2021 07:48

Subject:

Re: New OSS : EU VAT changes from 1st of July

Viewed:

37 times

Topic:

That's the old system, read the other posts for the new.
In short,
The bad news: there will be a single €10.000 limit for all foreign EU countries
combined.
The good news: you can register for the OSS ("unieregeling") so you can do it
all in one domestic report instead of having to deal with different foreign agencies:
https://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/nl/btw/content/e-commerce-en-diensten-in-de-eu-kijk-wat-er-verandert-voor-de-btw-x

So yes, big sellers are going to have to keep track of sales per individual country
from now on.

In General, ZwarteMagica writes:

If you go over €10k per country you are required to register in that country.
If you choose to apply the buyers tax rate you are also required to register
in that country. If both do not apply you are allowed to follow your local rules.
This counts for the Netherlands, but as far as my knowledge goes it is the same
in the whole EU.

In General, paulvdb writes:

In General, Legondary writes:

From the 1st of July, when you operate an e-commerce business with generated
income of over 10.000€, you will need to charge the VAT rate of the country of
which you are selling to.

This is not entirely correct (or maybe a bit too simplified). If you sell more
than 10000 EUR to other EU countries you will have to charge the VAT rate of
the buyer's country. If you stay below the limit you may charge your own
country's VAT rate but you can voluntarily choose to charge the buyer's
country's VAT rate on all your sales.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 2, 2021 04:46

Subject:

Re: New OSS : EU VAT changes from 1st of July

Viewed:

50 times

Topic:

In General, SylvainLS writes:

That also means there’s even more risks of being forced to collect VAT for other
EU countries while you still don’t have to in your own country. Madness.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 1, 2021 17:13

Subject:

Re: New OSS : EU VAT changes from 1st of July

Viewed:

49 times

Topic:

In General, Stellar writes:

In General, SylvainLS writes:

In General, Teup writes:

[…]
Well, I mean, it was just a gimmick of the Dutch tax site. I had to report my
sales to NL, to EU and to the rest of the world, and there was this strange custom
where you had to write your sales to EU down in the "NL" field. Otherwise it
would trigger an intracommunity transaction for (=B2B sale, with VAT IDs and
all). Clearly, the system assumes that consumers are all located in your own
country and sales to other countries must be business sales. Something from another
era I suppose

Well, VAT-wise, you have:
1. sales where you collect VAT,
2. sales where you don’t collect VAT and the buyer is supposed to auto-collect,
3. sales where you export out of EU and VAT is 0%.
The first two types can be local or intra-EU.

And, statistics-wise, your country wants to know how the sales are distributed
between local, EU, & out of UE.

The two are different, therefore different entries (plus, they always want you
to fill the same numbers in different ways so that they can catch “errors”

Yeah, that makes sense, in the current tax layout here we only have 3 flavours:
"Dutch consumers + businesses", "EU businesses" and "world". So EU consumers
were kind of awkwardly dubbed "Dutch consumers" only to produce the correct VAT
result.. So yeah, I can see how that needs a makeover

I'm still highly confused if BL WILL or WILL NOT act as the seller for VAT
purposes for transactions within the EU.

AFAIK, there’s still no laws to make or even authorize BL to do that.

Oh... That would've saved a lot of paperwork...

Yep, and a less friendly benefit to you, it would pretty much kill the hobby
sellers. If I am correct in assuming BL would be forced to charge VAT over all
sales. Bad for the hobby sellers, great for businesses. Although fewer hobby
sellers would mean less traffic to Bricklink, too. Will be interesting to see
if it ends up going in that direction or not.

Then it will be on us but with a setting (hopefully for July 1st 2021) on BL
to charge VAT % according to the consumer country.

It's a nice acid test to see if Bricklink is indeed on a track of starting
to take sellers seriously. They had some time to prepare it, it's a fairly
simple change for them, and it's an important change. 3 reasons why it should
just work on July 1st IMO.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 1, 2021 13:13

Subject:

Re: New OSS : EU VAT changes from 1st of July

Viewed:

44 times

Topic:

In General, SylvainLS writes:

In General, Teup writes:

[…]
Well, that was an awkward system anyway, where I had to report EU
sales as if they are "domestic" sales. […]

But they were “domestic”: the point of sale was considered to be your home.

That’s what changes now: the point of sale is the buyer’s home (if you sell more
than €10,000 or if you choose to).

I think that’s an improvement… well, not on the paperwork side but at least as
a clarification: it was a nightmare before because it depended on what was sold,
to simplify material vs. electronic.
(Especially a nightmare because of tax evasion / optimization I guess.)

Well, I mean, it was just a gimmick of the Dutch tax site. I had to report my
sales to NL, to EU and to the rest of the world, and there was this strange custom
where you had to write your sales to EU down in the "NL" field. Otherwise it
would trigger an intracommunity transaction for (=B2B sale, with VAT IDs and
all). Clearly, the system assumes that consumers are all located in your own
country and sales to other countries must be business sales. Something from another
era I suppose

I'm still highly confused if BL WILL or WILL NOT act as the seller for VAT
purposes for transactions within the EU. But I'll watch the webinar kaat
posted when I have time and I assume that will clear it up.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 1, 2021 11:27

Subject:

Re: New OSS : EU VAT changes from 1st of July

Viewed:

43 times

Topic:

In General, kaat writes:

In General, paulvdb writes:

In General, Teup writes:

Thanks! Will check it later. Does that solution require application? I thought
it would work just like the "kleine ondernemersregeling": you can just apply
it or not.. since I don't see any more info on it.. did I miss something?

In General, kaat writes:

FYI There was a webinar hosted by the dutch tax agency in April that has some
interesting details and explanations. It's in dutch though. See: https://channel.royalcast.com/belastingdienst/#!/belastingdienst/20210420_1

You might want to apply for the One-stop solution ("Unieregeling" in dutch).

According to https://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/nl/btw/content/e-commerce-en-diensten-in-de-eu-kijk-wat-er-verandert-voor-de-btw-x
you should continue to charge your customers 21% Dutch VAT if you sell less than
10000 EUR to other EU countries. You only have to register if you want to charge
the buyer's country's VAT rate.

You either register in every EU country (that you sell to) and submit VAT statements
to each of them. Or, you register in a single EU country of choice and use the
OneStop method, which is called "Unieregeling" in Dutch. For this you need to
apply via "Mijn Belastingdienst Zakelijk". Then, you submit all EU VAT related
things in one go (next to the domestic VAT, so you have more paperwork in any
case).

Do watch the webinar, it has several examples and I found it worth the hour and
a half it took.

Ok, will do. I guess that's going to make some extra fields appear on the
VAT report. Well, that was an awkward system anyway, where I had to report EU
sales as if they are "domestic" sales. (There was an EU field but it was only
intended for B2B.)

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 1, 2021 09:31

Subject:

Re: New OSS : EU VAT changes from 1st of July

Viewed:

34 times

Topic:

In General, paulvdb writes:

In General, Teup writes:

Hmm good point, I hadn't considered the change of the marketplaces becoming
responsible for VAT. So I guess BL will pay the appropriate VAT amount to the
authorities, and then charge the seller that VAT amount alongside their monthly
fees, something like that? (as separate statements: fees are a business cost,
tax is not). And of course issue a document as proof that VAT has been paid,
like they do now for UK.
I have no idea how to make invoices with "someone else paid my VAT" - is it going
to be an 'export' to California? Anyway, how to handle that is probably
not Bricklink's responsibility, as long as they provide that proof.

The marketplace will only collect VAT for imports into the EU, the same way they
already do for UK VAT and US sales tax. You will still collect VAT for all your
sales to buyers in other EU countries and will report the VAT on those sales
to your own country's tax authority. Your country's tax authority will
then report and pay the VAT to the tax authorities of your buyers' countries.

In order to make this work BL will have to make changes to their VAT system so
that sellers have the option to choose if they will charge the buyer's country's
VAT rate (this will be mandatory if you sell more than 10000 EUR to other EU
countries) or your own country's VAT rate (this will be optional if you sell
less than 10000 EUR to other EU countries). And just to make it clear, it will
of course be up to the seller to make sure that they choose the correct option.
BL won't know if you sell more than 10000 EUR to other EU countries if you
also sell on other marketplaces and/or your own website.

My bad - I thought it was about all imports including with the EU. Well, in that
case all that Bricklink has to do is just show buyers the price including either
the fixed VAT percentage, or the percentage of the country of the buyer in case
the seller has switched on that option. Not much work for Bricklink, mostly extra
work for the sellers to do their administration correctly.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 1, 2021 09:29

Subject:

Re: New OSS : EU VAT changes from 1st of July

Viewed:

48 times

Topic:

In General, Legondary writes:

Hi,

Quick question to this group...

Apparently there are some changes to the EU VAT legislation with regards to E-commerce
or web shops.

From the 1st of July, when you operate an e-commerce business with generated
income of over 10.000€, you will need to charge the VAT rate of the country of
which you are selling to.

Eg. I sell over 10K€ per year. If I sell (based in Belgium) to France, I will
need to apply the French VAT rate on my order instead of the Belgian VAT rate.

Selling platforms like E-bay, Amazon, Bol.com and therefor in my opinion, BL
as well, will need to enable this way of invoicing.

Do any of you guys or girls know more about this?

I am including a link, if this is allowed?
https://business.trustedshops.nl/blog/btw-in-e-commerce
https://www.emerce.nl/achtergrond/nieuwe-btwregels-ecommerce-actiepunten-ondernemers

Kind regards,

Nick

Thanks for the headsup, didn't hear about this before. Will be interesting
to see how Bricklink is going to handle this one and if they manage to get it
done before July. It's also gonna require some work from the sellers to get
their administration organised per country.

For independent webshops this is going to be near impossible to implement in
the way it was intended - typically products just have a listing price and the
administration is calculated afterwards. The easiest way to accommodate the new
system, then, would be to simply count a higher ex-VAT price on the invoice for
countries with a lower VAT percentage, so that the listed prices remain constant.
Bottomline, nothing really changes, just more hassle for businesses, dealing
with dozens of figures instead of just one EU figure. No idea what they're
trying to gain with this.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 1, 2021 07:49

Subject:

Re: Marketplace Panel meeting minutes

Viewed:

73 times

Topic:

In Administrative, CE_Tanja writes:

In Administrative, Teup writes:

In Administrative, CE_Tanja writes:

Dear BrickLink members,

Please find the minutes from the first Marketplace Panel meeting.

Minutes from the first Marketplace Panel meeting May 20th. 2021

Agenda

- Panel member introductions

- Marketplace panel program presentation

- Workshop

- BrickLink vision

- Marketplace plan 2021 & Prioritization discussion

- Next steps

Ad. 1 Panel member introductions

We have selected the initial panel members based on criteria such as: Having
both buyers and sellers represented, BrickLink experience, ability to engage
in constructive dialogues about the future of BrickLink and ability to consider
the greater good for the BrickLink sellers and buyers.

The initial panel members are:

Constructibles, SimplyBricks, Dcarmine, Calsbricks, Erkiles, Legoman77, Faro,
BrickCoast

During this first part, all panel members introduced themselves and it is clear
that this is a diverse, multitalented group that are all passionate about BrickLink.

No doubt that this select group will be a fantastic first Marketplace panel.

Ad 2. Marketplace panel program presentation

The structure of the program had been shared with the panel ahead of the meeting,
so in this session, we mainly dug into the basics of the program and collaboration
principles:

4 annual meetings with an opportunity to impact the future development of the
BrickLink Marketplace

Between the meetings we will collaborate through a Teams channel, making it possible
for us to engage outside the meetings as well.

We aim to increase the number of members in the panel to a max of 14 people throughout
the next 1-2 years.

We will invite new members to the Panel annually, to ensure fresh perspectives
by shifting 50% of the panel members with new members meeting above criteria.
We will be promoting the opportunity to sign up for the panel in Q1 2022.

In our collaboration, we will be looking to the future as opposed to the past.

We will be mindful of one another in the dialogues we have, remembering that
we are all in this with the best of intentions.

This panel is focused on the Marketplace specifically. There will be other initiatives
similar to this one, that focus on e.g. Studio, The Catalog, etc.

Ad 3. Workshop

This being the first Panel meeting, we felt a need to make sure we got the frustrations
out of every one’s system, in order to be able to focus on the future of BrickLink,
as opposed to being stuck in the past. This was done in a workshop where everyone
was able to share frustrations but also the things, they love about BrickLink.

Ad 4. BrickLink vision

Marvin Park shared thoughts related to the vision and mission of BrickLink as
a platform through which LEGO fans can also realize their dream designs. As for
the long-term roadmap, it was highlighted how BrickLink marketplace and Studio
can evolve to meet diverse needs of the AFOL community and become an integral
part of the entire LEGO ecosystem.

Ad 5. Marketplace plan 2021 & Prioritization discussion

BrickLink’s new Senior Product Manager Stephen Wilhelm presented the current
Marketplace roadmap. This roadmap is now mainly focused on development related
to VAT compliance rules (initiatives that we are bound to by law and that we
are not able to de-prioritize) and initiatives intended to support e.g., the
ability to lower response rate for new seller verifications, etc. There are several
user experience related initiatives the BrickLink Marketplace team plans to work
on, but we are looking to the Marketplace Panel members to help us prioritize
what enhancements would provide the most value.

Aside from above, several focus areas that we have picked up based on input from
the BrickLink members in general were presented with the intention to prioritize
them. We were not able to finish the prioritization discussions completely at
this meeting, but a couple of things were highlighted as being critical to prioritize:

Seller tools (e.g., Inventory management, store management, seller page updates)

Continue modernization of the BrickLink platform. This is already ongoing, but
we aim to apply more resources later this year.

A few less critical but still impactful areas were introduced:

Telephone support and the ability to have expert engagers to reach out to

Order Item Refund Request (OIRR) & Refund enhancement

Rewriting storefront pages to support mobile / native.

Provide BrickLink shipping methods (preferably one shipping cost per customer)

Overhaul/update payment processes

The above list varies greatly in level of complexity, and we will need to take
all input in to consideration in upcoming plans. Status on above and long-term
plans will be shared in minutes from the next Panel meeting.

A few other things we will be looking in to due to the input from the panel:

Ability for Sellers to make use of BrickLink’s access to Google Analytics.

On-site payment and why some sellers choose not to use this option.

Shipping price calculations based on zones instead of weight (US specific)

Ad 6. Next steps

It was decided to disclose the BrickLink panel members to the general BrickLink
membership base, this is not to be seen as an invitation to reach out to the
panel members directly with input for the Panel, but a way to be transparent
about who is in the panel as per the request of many members. Any ill manor
targeted directly at the Panel members may result in abandonment from BrickLink.

We need everyone’s input!

We have recently taken input from all BrickLink members in the survey, and we
take input regularly in the NPS survey, this input has already played a huge
part in shaping the focus for BrickLink in general and will be part of shaping
the future of BrickLink also.

During the upcoming Panel meetings, we might come across items to prioritize
that are not straight forward, in terms of defining what is best for the majority
of BrickLink members, in these cases, we will have a poll among the members in
general in order to ensure solid facts to back the decisions.

Upcoming meetings

The next meetings are planned for August and November.

Reflections

No doubt that we are blessed to have members on BrickLink that are prepared to
spend hours in their busy lives, participating in dialogue to make sure that
we have the best outside-in perspective we can when deciding how to prioritize
our efforts on BrickLink going forward. This is not something we have been able
to prioritize to the same extent in the past (hence numerous understandable frustrations),
but it is something that we are committed to prioritizing going forward!

BrickLink members, you can be proud of your Panel members, they did an amazing
job in representing you. Everyone spoke freely about critical issues to be addressed,
this is highly appreciated because then we won't have to waste time (mis)interpreting
this and we can get moving on the things that matter.

We hope that you will read this and share any feedback you might have, in this
topic or directly to ce_tanja. We have just started this journey and we are happy
to take your input to the process and adjust along the way.

Thank you!

The BrickLink Team

This is pretty impressive Tanja, thanks for sharing this and for coordinating
these efforts!

Just a bit of input on this one:

On-site payment and why some sellers choose not to use this option.

One obvious reason (which I have been stressing and repeating more times than
I could count

) is.... Bricklink better payment methods!! PayPal has just become
too expensive. Catch up with BrickOwl here. A year ago I had a call with the
team and raised this point, they said they were working on it, but sadly still
no results. The Netherlands, and I think a bunch of other countries, have onsite
interfaces for bank transfers. Once that is implemented I can guarantee Dutch
domestic offsite payments are gonna drop by at least 90%.

Also I would add, fix the bugs!

Very good to hear there was some space for
people to share their frustrations and that they are taken seriously now. IMO
the best thing BL could possibly do is prioritise a good bug report&fixing infrastructure.
I myself have reported a bunch of bugs over time, through the report system,
through email, and through the forum, and even when I got affirmative response
through those channels, most are still unfixed. I feel like Bricklink has bug
reports scattered all over the place and there is just no structure. Only once
bugs are dealt with efficiently, the next step is to think about improvements
and new features - that's my opinion at least. Bricklink needs to respect
its own core functionality. I don't need a store with fancy storefront features
as long as I can't even list my stock because it's impossible to part
out large sets due to site timeouts!

To be honest I pretty much gave up on Bricklink and sell elsewhere now, but I'm
still available to give input or be in a panel (I owe Bricklink that much) and
will definitely come back if Bricklink becomes a convenient option for me again.

Hi Teup,

Thank you for taking the time to share this input! Yours and everyone else's
input will be taken in to account and I agree, it is not new input, it is something
that we are aware of and that we are making an effort to solve. I am sorry to
hear that you have given up on BrickLink. Hopefully we will be able to apply
the needed changes and once again welcome you back on BrickLink as a Seller,
perhaps as a Panel member in the near future.

/Tanja

Thank you for your feedback Tanja, I'm available for a panel anytime. Good
luck!

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 1, 2021 07:27

Subject:

Re: New OSS : EU VAT changes from 1st of July

Viewed:

40 times

Topic:

In General, Stellar writes:

In General, Legondary writes:

Here is the official EU website link:

https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/business/vat/vat-e-commerce_en

The existing thresholds for distance sales of goods within the EU will be
abolished and replaced by a new EU-wide threshold of EUR 10 000. Below this EUR
10 000 threshold, the supplies of TBE (telecommunications, broadcasting and electronic)
services and distance sales of goods within the EU may remain subject to VAT
in the Member State where the taxable person is established.

The best would be if BL handles it like the orders to UK but with accepting offsite
payment methods too, like IBAN.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 1, 2021 06:35

Subject:

Re: Marketplace Panel meeting minutes

Viewed:

106 times

Topic:

In Administrative, CE_Tanja writes:

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jun 1, 2021 06:14

Subject:

Re: New OSS : EU VAT changes from 1st of July

Viewed:

73 times

Topic:

In General, Legondary writes:

Author:

Teup

Posted:

May 29, 2021 04:37

Subject:

Re: BRAVO on the BrickLink Catalog Newsletter!!!

Viewed:

55 times

Topic:

In General, SnarkBricks writes:

Just received the BrickLink Catalog Newsletter email...

Thank you!!! I think this is a wonderful to update Store owner's of what's
going on!!

Tom and Cindy of Snark Bricks

Chuckled at the "making the packing dimensions available for contributions was
a huge hit!"
Yeah, no s*t

I had been stressing the importance of doing that over and over
since the very first moment IC was announced years ago, glad they finally saw
the light

Author:

Teup

Posted:

May 27, 2021 07:31

Subject:

Re: Minifigure Inqury

Viewed:

39 times

Topic:

Searching

In Searching, Stellar writes:

In Searching, hpoort writes:

In Searching, Romeo709 writes:

In Searching, Teup writes:

In Searching, YaelNavarro writes:

I was looking at the website and when you go to click on the minifigures section
there is a minifigures that has a black wizard hat and a blue torso. I have been
looking for that torzo that is blue has a belt and has what it looks to be a
black ruff around its neck. If anyone could help me identify that torzo I would
appreciate it.

973p50 Torso Castle Forestman with Black Collar, Black Belt, and Yellow Buckle Pattern
Parts: Minifigure, Torso

The part exists (it's a print), just not in blue.

How did this part come out to be blue? Is there a custom way you can make your
minifigures ?

The picture you refer to is not a photo, it is a digital render. So they could
make it any color they liked. For instance in Studio.

What about this real photos?

Back in the day Bricklink's graphics were all render based. Just stuff Dan
made, I assume. I think he was just playing around, some of the parts didn't
exist in those colours. I also recall a blue and a yellow torso with a Blacktron
1 print.

They made it into a real minifig (custom print or sticker) by the time it had
already become iconic from that render. So the minifig refers to the render,
instead of the other way around. Maybe that particular minifig is Dan's sig
fig.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

May 27, 2021 03:28

Subject:

Re: Minifigure Inqury

Viewed:

48 times

Topic:

Searching

In Searching, YaelNavarro writes:

973p50 Torso Castle Forestman with Black Collar, Black Belt, and Yellow Buckle Pattern
Parts: Minifigure, Torso

The part exists (it's a print), just not in blue.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

May 23, 2021 03:58

Subject:

Re: What are my business options on Bricklink ?

Viewed:

79 times

Topic:

In Selling, alexbinary writes:

Hi folks, let’s say I want to make a business selling LEGO on BrickLink. What
are my options ? What works best ? Should I buy sets from LEGO and sell the parts
individually ? Should I buy sets and resell them directly ? Should I buy parts
from other BL sellers and resell them at higher prices ? Other options ?

Thanks for your help.

IMO it's unwise to solely rely on Bricklink if you're talking professional
business that should pay the bills in your life. Bricklink just has too many
issues for that. Using it as one of several outlets of your Lego sales, sure.

If I would start today with selling Lego parts, I would start by buying used
lots on marketplace sites. It takes a lot of effort to list those parts, but
you will have a more unique range of products that way. If you would buy todays
sets and part them out, you will have the same parts as everyone else and you
will not have any edge over the competition unless you're able to throw lots
of money at it to have more than they do.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

May 23, 2021 03:53

Subject:

Re: Local time stamp on orders

Viewed:

46 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, grimsbricksuk writes:

Can it be considered to change the date/time stamp placed on orders & messages,
etc. from the system time (US EST) to the users local time, as this would allow
accurate information to be captured for accounting, tax & auditing purposes.
I know that BrickOwl & other platforms already do this.
As an example, I physically receive an order at 3am (BST) on 23rd May in the
UK, but the order itself shows and records that the order was received on 22nd
May at 10pm (EST), some 5 hours behind reality.
Note, the date & time format is not an issue.
Thanks.

Yep has been requested many times

Unlikely to happen unless Lego forces them
to do it I think. I've spent 15 years having no clue when anything happened
on Bricklink

(can never remember the conversion, because I don't feel
it's something that users should have to remember)

Author:

Teup

Posted:

May 23, 2021 03:51

Subject:

Re: What is the point of Bricklink ?

Viewed:

80 times

Topic:

In Selling, alexbinary writes:

In Selling, Andrsv writes:

In Selling, alexbinary writes:

In Selling, CSC writes:

In Selling, alexbinary writes:

Hi friends, I need your help. I am trying to figure out where the value of Bricklink
lies for buyers. It seems to me that you get better value by buying sets directly
from LEGO. So what makes people buy on Bricklink ?

Thanks for your help !

Why pay 100 Dollars for a set when you need a couple of parts that cost you 5
Dollars on Bricklink?

Questin answered

Thanks for your answer. I see what you mean, but it seems to me that by doing
so, in the long run you pay a much higher price per part than you would have
if you had bought a set that contains all the parts you want. Personnally, as
a buyer on a tight budget, this makes me somewhat uncomfortable.

If there was 1000 different lego parts then you could probably do what you suggest.
But by buying that 100$ set you'll end up with hundreds of parts you'll
never use.

So you mean people are ok paying more for not having to deal with unwanted parts
?

Personnally, every part I get, as long as I paid a good price for it, is always
good to take. That is because I like to have plenty of parts on hand even if
I don’t need them right away, because when you are building something new you
never know before hand what parts you are going to need next. But I guess not
everyone works that way.

So if you're building a town hall and you need 120 of one window, and it
comes per 2 in some set, you will buy 60 sets?

Author:

Teup

Posted:

May 20, 2021 06:35

Subject:

Re: System error

Viewed:

48 times

Topic:

Problem

In Problem, ErwinNL writes:

In Problem, pineBRICKS writes:

I have put this text in my store banner:

"If you cant checkout re-confirm your address in your profile, this might help
(see forums)"

I did as well, thanks!

I see it's another episode of "the community fixes stuff that Bricklink broke
with the last update while they're silent about it"

Interesting day for
that evaluation meeting with LEGO and the sellers.....

Author:

Teup

Posted:

May 14, 2021 03:57

Subject:

Re: Filing Taxes?

Viewed:

50 times

Topic:

In Selling, chromeking71 writes:

Thanks for the tip! For product bought for reselling, what sort of expense do
you list that as? When I put it as inventory, any sets I paid for that haven't
been sold this year (inventory remaining) are not deducted from my profit, which
doesn't seem right to me because inventory purchased is still an expense.

I just declare it as inventory purchased. Weather it sells or not during the
year it's still a business expense. Even if you sell those unsold sets the
following year you'll still get taxed on them.

Not US here, but just a headsup: This wouldn't fly here, so you better make
really sure that this is OK. It's a very good question and many sellers
struggle with it. Here, you do need to know strictly the costs of what it took
to generate the income that you generated (that does include the chair you sit
on, but not stock that you didn't sell). Lego that is left is simply money
turned into stock, still capital, so it doesn't do anything for your balance
either way. If it did, then it would be easy to "hide" profit on paper by simply
turning it into stock. A second weird side effect (which I assume is universal)
is that if you quit your business, you would have to somehow undo these costs
as they didn't turn out to be business costs after all (you still have the
goods in your hands, as a private person).

Of course, laws are different everywhere, so I have no clue how it works in the
US. But maybe part of it is universal logic, so just saying, you better double
check.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

May 13, 2021 14:54

Subject:

Re: Questions for all sellers

Viewed:

32 times

Topic:

In Selling, zorbanj writes:

In Selling, Skullfyre writes:

2 - Would you ever send a shipment of pieces to a buyer built into a large
flat brick?

I ask this because I had just received a shipment and all 400+ pieces were attached
into large bricks. This then took me around two hours to disassemble to see if
everything I ordered was actually there. In my opinion, this method of shipping
isn't acceptable.

Definitely not. Why do this? (...)

To save shipping costs, to protect the parts, to save storage space, and/or to
save time when counting.
I do it for most of these reasons. But I don't stack things straight up,
always with a zigzag so it's easy to take apart. 2 hours to take it apart
is definitely too much, but there IS a balance somewhere between time that it
takes and the extra costs you would have otherwise had. It's not impossible
for this to make a €10 or even €20 difference.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

May 10, 2021 10:21

Subject:

Re: Fix sale tax invoice msg, it's unprofessional

Viewed:

57 times

Topic:

In Selling, chetzler writes:

" This message overrules any other payment instructions mentioned below if any."

From the makers of "sellers are supposed to respect the law but we actually we
don't really care whether they do" comes the new hit "this is how it works,
but don't be surprised if the seller claims something else in this message"

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Apr 12, 2021 11:18

Subject:

Re: Items Moved Today

Viewed:

43 times

Topic:

In Catalog, yorbrick writes:

The idea of a larger-scale change conducted twice per year is working well and
is superior to occasional changes that are harder to draw everyone’s attention
to. So, the good news is that for the foreseeable future, we will shift categories
mainly at those times, with the current organizational structure.

...

2) The parts in the original April 1 list are much more common than those in
the previous list. There are some obscure and some common parts in both lists,
but as a whole, moving parts in the original April 1 list would have had an exponentially
larger impact. Even if we were ok with all of the changes, we would not want
to move this many at one time.

You seems to be favouring twice yearly large moves instead of smaller ones, but
then go on to say there were too many to move. What is the plan here, to roll
those over to the next move and possibly bumping other parts of that move if
the list becomes too long again?

That was exactly what I've been wondering for a while. The logic of not wanting
"too much" at one time escapes me. The more often things change, the messier
it is. I may open my main store back up once all of this is over (late 2022 or
so) in the meantime it's just too much chaos for me and not really worth
the hassle.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Apr 2, 2021 11:00

Subject:

Re: Lego/Bricklink-Very frustrated with you

Viewed:

52 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, Emporiosa writes:

In Suggestions, Admin_Russell writes:

In Suggestions, jennnifer writes:

In Suggestions, cosmicray writes:

The trick there, is that IC only supports PP and Stripe. You can't do IBAN
with IC and collect the sales tax.

Nita Rae

Is IBAN an onsite payment method?

Jen

It is possible in theory to incorporate IBAN into an onsite solution, but apparently
it is very difficult and potentially unstable. So we consider IBAN to be offsite
only.

Just food for thought (although not even sure I like this solution, haven't
read into it much), but in Canada the primary "debit" method that folks use is
Interac E-transfer. There are some solutions like PremierPay (with a transaction
fee of course), and can be setup with API etc. I'm assuming IBAN likely has
some other paid solutions that assist in facilitating the transaction, but again,
probably less popular due to the fees associated (even if less than PayPal).
From a buyer's perspective, it's potentially a bit easier though. And
it could probably allow BrickLink to facilitate tax collection as well.

From what I understand, several countries have their own preferred interfaces
for IBAN transactions. Outside Bricklink my Dutch customers pay by iDEAL and
my Belgian customers sometimes by Bancontact. As far as I know they're similar.
The cool thing about Stripe is that you can just accept these payments without
even knowing what they are, so adding these methods would be great for most on
Bricklink worldwide - the only exception being sellers outside the EU who only
sell domestically. (and of course it's great for the buyers in the countries
where these payment solutions are used)

The Dutch one is very popular here in spite of the fee. The fee is only €0.29
regardless of the amount, and even if a store/organisation/restaurant/etc would
offer both options, I'm assuming people just go for the onsite solution,
even if the seller passes on the fees to the buyer. That's what I do anyway.

It seems to me that offsite bank transfers are becoming less usual in daily life
here, with the main second hand trading site now also offering onsite payment.
It's going to be a matter of time before Bricklink (and Lego.com!) are going
to have to follow along.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Apr 2, 2021 09:33

Subject:

Re: Lego/Bricklink-Very frustrated with you

Viewed:

51 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, jennnifer writes:

In Suggestions, cosmicray writes:

The trick there, is that IC only supports PP and Stripe. You can't do IBAN
with IC and collect the sales tax.

Nita Rae

Is IBAN an onsite payment method?

Jen

IBAN is offsite but it can be used with instant checkout. For offsite payment
methods, instant checkout is just an automatic invoice.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Apr 2, 2021 09:31

Subject:

Re: Lego/Bricklink-Very frustrated with you

Viewed:

44 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, Admin_Russell writes:

In Suggestions, jennnifer writes:

In Suggestions, cosmicray writes:

The trick there, is that IC only supports PP and Stripe. You can't do IBAN
with IC and collect the sales tax.

Nita Rae

Is IBAN an onsite payment method?

Jen

It is possible in theory to incorporate IBAN into an onsite solution, but apparently
it is very difficult and potentially unstable. So we consider IBAN to be offsite
only.

Difficult and potentially unstable?

How so? BrickOwl doesn't seem to have
that problem, and neither do I in my own website. It works perfectly, just use
Stripe. I managed to get it to work in my webshop in no time at all.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Mar 30, 2021 11:18

Subject:

Re: Why so few changes approved?

Viewed:

38 times

Topic:

In Catalog, firestar246 writes:

Since it was only a couple days before April 1st, we decided to start organizing
the pieces by the new changes that were going to be done April 1st. https://www.bricklink.com/help.asp?helpID=2487

Now today, I notice that a ton of them say not approved, including many that
made sense. So is there a reason?

When Russell posted that very confusing message (to me as well as to the catmins
themselves) saying things may or may not get approved by April 1st, I realised
it'd be a mess... :/ The idea was that the 6 things directly listed in the
newsletter would certainly be approved, and the rest was going to be decided
sometime later on and may or may not make it in the April update.

If I recall right, for some reason Bricklink believes it is better to do little
bits at a time, so the other things will be approved later. Don't really
understand this logic, it just sounds like a recipe for confusion to me. IMO
it's way better to do major updates in one go...

Actually I wish the entire catalog revamp (this project started last year, will
last maybe another year) was just released in one update once it is properly
finished (and announced properly in advance). After so many years of working
with the catalog as it is, what is a few more months working with it? Just my
2 cents.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Mar 21, 2021 04:46

Subject:

Re: Two Weeks?!

Viewed:

67 times

Topic:

In Catalog, BigBBricks writes:

In Catalog, Teup writes:

In Catalog, BigBBricks writes:

In Catalog, Teup writes:

In Catalog, BigBBricks writes:

In Catalog, Teup writes:

In Catalog, Rob_and_Shelagh writes:

In Catalog, Teup writes:

In Catalog, yorbrick writes:

Just curious, I wonder how this works for those that sell on multiple platforms
and don't use remarks as stock locators but rely on a catalog sequence to
find parts on orders.

Even for tiny stores, this is a clear indication as to why storage should never
be based on the (current) catalogue.

I think that leaves remarks sorting as the only alternative, and it has many
drawbacks. I would certainly never work with a remark based store. Even if it'd
be only because there are bugs with the field and populating it probably requires
Brickstock, which means no accurate priceguide which matches Bricklink. It's
really not an option for me.

In 15+ years never had a single problem with the remarks field.

Robert

There was. There was a serious bug where each time you did a part out and the
item was already in your inventory, the remarks would be voided. THEN how would
you find the part..

the thought of having my entire inventory sorted by it
scares me a bit. I've used the remarks field for locating minifig parts within
the minifig category, but that bug made it a disaster. The bug was fixed and
then just reappeared again - which is often the case when Bricklink "fixes" something.
I believe this is fixed now so sure, it's reasonable to use it. But I just
don't dare - I'm just a coward I guess.. so you see, you can never be
100% safe.

Besides, my remarks field are used for my software to execute my pricing policy
and keep stats (If those get deleted, it's not a big deal)

The remark being voided during upload is most likely an issue with the default
settings you have for uploads. I've been using this for years in conjunction
with BrickStock and bricksync and have never had a real issue.

bricksync allows for nightly automated backups so I don't lose the remarks
and anything else and the price differences within BrickStock are minimal and
mostly based upon the settings the user controls.

If you are going to put yourself through rearranging your store bi-yearly, I'd
reconsider your options. I'd hate for a fellow seller to have to continually
put themselves through that when better solutions are available.

- Big B

No, really, it was a bug. To be precise, it happened when you would select "concatenate
old and new remarks". Those remarks didn't get concatenated but just deleted.
Not just for me, for everyone. It was confirmed by Bricklink and fixed, then
it popped up again, then it was fozed again.
Well, you rely on third party software.. IMO it's more risky than relying
on what is part of Bricklink itself in terms of whose interest it is to keep
it working. (Luckily for you ryough, it seems the new Brickstore is going to
enjoy some decent community maintenance) By the way, you are in the US, so yes,
then the Vat problem than BrickStock has doesn't affect you and the prices
should be fairly accurate.

I always forget about the VAT issues you guys have with BrickStock. That would
make a considerable difference but wouldn't making the adjustment for VAT
after querying the US based prices fix that? Just trying to understand better
so I can be of some assistance.

What is this new Brick Store 2021 that I keep reading about? I licensed BrickStock,
which came after the original BrickStore was retired.

It's true I do rely upon a 3rd party tool or two but I get the feeling from
the way these applications are developed that they creators have a better understanding
of what a seller needs and uses. I have reference files for it to pull prices
or locations from and I control my data and don't have to rely that a database
that I have no control over will always be available. Since I seem to experience
the BrickLink blackout daily, I try to work around the deficiency.

Well, the problem with BrickStock and VAT is that it's a variable discrepancy,
so you can't really correct it. For example, if some part is only being sold
by VAT registered stores, then the average will be some 20% lower. But, if it's
only non-VAT registered stores selling it, the number is accurate - well, sort
of... I don't entirely understand it either but sometimes it's just a
bit off.
We're talking about like 5% here really, for many users it's just not
a big deal. The reason that it matters to me is not so much about the money,
but about how long it takes to sell things. I like to have some control there
and I noticed my price level have a huge influence on that.

Relying on BrickStock is OK I think, we've seen the catalog is an uncertain
factor too and life is uncertain in general

Just a personal defensive attitude
that I prefer to work with just Bricklink and what I can make. Plus, I just really
like it when the identity of a part directly tells you where it is, so no additional
layer of administration there, even if it's easy to maintain. Thanks for
offering your thoughts, I think I should be okay - either the catalog has settled
down by the time I have more time for selling here, or I should be able to make
some tool that generates remark fields with my own categories, based on the part
number. That way things keep having a fixed place and I don't have to worry
about location management

I do wish you luck with your style of organizing vs the catalog. The new minifig
head mold alone would make me change but everyone's style is their own I
do give you credit for using by part number.

Aaaaactually here you stumbled upon something that's nice about catalog based
sorting. There will be a main bag with a bag for each type inside (one bag for
1x1 plates with thick U-clips, one for thin, one for O-clips, ...). So whenever
the inventory is off, because of some set inventory mistake or a mistake during
part-out, and a buyer buys 10 of that part, you open the drawer and notice immediately
"hey, instead of 10, I have 2 of the one type and 8 of the other". So you can
A: adjust your inventory immediately and B: Give the buyer the other type free
of charge, or ask them if it matters.

If you ever do switch and have questions,
ping me. I'd be happy to help.

- Big B

Thanks!

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Mar 19, 2021 12:16

Subject:

Re: Two Weeks?!

Viewed:

49 times

Topic:

In Catalog, BigBBricks writes:

In Catalog, Teup writes:

In Catalog, BigBBricks writes:

In Catalog, Teup writes:

In Catalog, Rob_and_Shelagh writes:

In Catalog, Teup writes:

In Catalog, yorbrick writes:

Just curious, I wonder how this works for those that sell on multiple platforms
and don't use remarks as stock locators but rely on a catalog sequence to
find parts on orders.

Even for tiny stores, this is a clear indication as to why storage should never
be based on the (current) catalogue.

In 15+ years never had a single problem with the remarks field.

Robert

There was. There was a serious bug where each time you did a part out and the
item was already in your inventory, the remarks would be voided. THEN how would
you find the part..

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Mar 17, 2021 03:13

Subject:

Re: Two Weeks?!

Viewed:

63 times

Topic:

In Catalog, BigBBricks writes:

In Catalog, Teup writes:

In Catalog, Rob_and_Shelagh writes:

In Catalog, Teup writes:

In Catalog, yorbrick writes:

Just curious, I wonder how this works for those that sell on multiple platforms
and don't use remarks as stock locators but rely on a catalog sequence to
find parts on orders.

Even for tiny stores, this is a clear indication as to why storage should never
be based on the (current) catalogue.

In 15+ years never had a single problem with the remarks field.

Robert

There was. There was a serious bug where each time you did a part out and the
item was already in your inventory, the remarks would be voided. THEN how would
you find the part..

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Mar 16, 2021 13:38

Subject:

Re: Two Weeks?!

Viewed:

39 times

Topic:

In Catalog, cosmicray writes:

In Catalog, Teup writes:

In Catalog, qwertyboy writes:

In Catalog, zorbanj writes:

Going to have to echo what Nita Rae said. Relying on Bricklink's catalog
system, where you ultimately have no control over, is trouble.

This is a nonsensical argument. The very same can be said about the "remarks"
field. That field is completely under BL's control as well. If for whatever
reason that field goes belly-up, you are in deep doodoo, whereas catalog-based-sorted
stores can still easily find any part. Just because some stores have decided
to do things differently doesn't make them "nuts" (as a previous poster said),
and neither does will it be "trouble".

FWIW, our store has items stored according to the catalog. Sure, there will be
changes, but they are easily mirrored in our store (it is just moving some drawers
around, no big deal).

Niek.

+1 That's exactly how I think.

Plus, I am yet to figure out how even to use the remark field when parting out.
The usual answer is "BrickStock", but without it, just parting out on Bricklink?
No idea.

It's relying on a global marketplace's catalog versus relying on a tool
a guy once made.
Right now, you could make a point that remark sorters were betting on the right
horse, but that's purely by chance. It just so happens to be case that there's
a brand new BrickStore coming up on the one hand, and the catalog is giving some
troubles on the other hand. It could just as well have been the other way around.

Well, everybody has their own habits and preferences. I just like the idea that
when armageddon comes and the internet goes offline, I can still find my Lego
parts

Your physical inventory is just that … physical inventory. You devise your own
organizational scheme, and how you label the various drawers/bags/containers,
and put your private storage reference into the Remarks field. When an order
arrives, there are your location references beneath each item ordered. You are
using the remarks field to carry your own private inventory scheme. It's
really simple.

But people seem to be so wedded to the BL Catalog, they can't find the cognative
skills to think outside the box. Just do it.

Nita Rae

Nita, let me just brag a little bit here

I have developed all my own software
environment and created my own webshop with many complicated automated systems
spread over 8 different applications to manage different aspects of catalog maintenance
and expanding. I have over 1 million parts and I am doing this for a living for
10 years now. Trust me.... I have the skills

At some point I even made statistic
software to make a visual diagram of which drawers are pulled most often based
on my orders contents, and I was able to position most of them at arm height,
without even needing to break the alphabetical order. (moving categories within
the same letter of the alphabet)

It's your way, it's just not my way. All I can say is that you can't
disqualify me for doing it this way. I earn €30 per hour of work in my store,
that's more than what I earned when I was working as a teacher. So I am in
no way working in a stupid way. Being able to see directly on Bricklink where
a part is / will be / was, is perfect to me. If I ever pick a wrong part, or
for whatever other reason I need to put some parts away, I can simply return
it in my stock without having to look up any numbers. This extra layer of data
is a liability that I just want to avoid... to me catalog correspondence is the
most elegant and efficient solution. Just my preference.

But you can actually have a bit of both. You can populate remark fields with
your own categories, of course. That's what I will do if next year the end
of big changes are not in sight. I guess catalog based sorting or remarks based
sorting is kind of a continuum more than totally separate worlds.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Mar 16, 2021 13:26

Subject:

Re: Two Weeks?!

Viewed:

45 times

Topic:

Aah, that makes some sense, thanks for sharing. And really interesting to read
that in a way, you kind of ended up with a hybrid remarks-category system.

I can see at least one tedious loose end - if the part no longer fits in that
location and the remarks need to be changed.. That's another thing that seems
annoying to me: The lots are stored individually (not all colours and several
variations of the category in the same drawer), therefore, the bins/drawers are
tiny. So they need to be moved around if they grow and shrink, so the remarks
sometimes need to change.. That's what I like about category based sorting,
I can just throw everything in the bins and part out the set and not worry about
any administration besides the prices.

In Catalog, RecycledBrick writes:

I guess the main thing I never really understood is... what do you do first?
Do you first put things in places, then go and enter them in the remark fields
(but then how do you know what items should have consolidated)

Or do you first write down which bins you're going to put everything in and
then put it there (but then how do you know which ones are free and that it will
fit)

And then some lots may already have a location but it became too small and it
needs to be changed... and the part-out screen only shows that you already have
an item in your inventory, it doesn't show directly what the remark is...

When I part out a set I go through the process. I don't enter any locations
at this time and let the existing items consolidate. The last screen before
the pieces are finally added I save as a PDF as pictured. It shows where the
locations are for the consolidated lots. I save it because I don't want
to put all the pieces away right at this moment or have to look them up later.
Everything that is a new lot which doesn't have a location goes to Stockroom
A. That way I can easily go and add locations to the new lots. I use no 3rd
party software.

I used to do random locating of pieces using just locations in the remarks.
it would take awhile to find a piece if something went wrong. I have put more
pieces into groups. At least I can find it quicker if the location is wrong
or missing. I have arranged things in BL categories but not in any order. With
the moving of items I am not going to move everything around right away and in
most cases don't need to. A lot of the Tile Modified category I have alway
kept with Plate Modified so I don't always follow the BL catalog.

I have been told privately my way of parting out is stupid. It allows me to
quickly part out a set whether 1 or a 100 very fast and then I can put those
pieces away at my leisure. I don't want to enter the new locations and put
all the pieces away during the part out process. What works for me may not work
for others

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Mar 16, 2021 13:17

Subject:

Re: Two Weeks?!

Viewed:

35 times

Topic:

In Catalog, randyf writes:

In Catalog, Teup writes:

I know you can't look into the future, but what about you? Do you feel these
major updates (where catagories are redefined) are going to be a regular thing,
or is this a phase that's soon over? I can't help but feel like we're
soon gonna have the catagories we want to have and these large projects aren't
necessary anymore, but maybe I'm wrong...

Now that we have all of the definitions in place for part categories (even though
some are still being tweaked), I don't foresee many of these large changes
occurring in the future. In fact, I foresee 2-3 more rounds at the most, and
then we will be at a place where they are no longer necessary, as you said. At
that time, anything needing to be changed would probably be back to a few here
and there like before. I know it will be rough for a little while longer, but
I think you can do it.

Thanks! Yeah, that's pretty much how I imagined it now. When I come back
to Bricklink selling (probably sometime next year), I'll see how the project
fares

P.S. I wish I lived near you. I would go and help you rearrange your store just
for fun.

Appreciate the thought

Here's a picture of the mainly affected room and
a schematic of it. The lowest unit on the righthand side in the schematic contains
wedges. Those are large 2-column-wide drawers. Moving the wedges would imply
moving the units themselves, because nothing near it fits well in large drawers.
So that would mean taking breaking that entire wall of drawers apart, etc etc..

And I am a perfectionist, I want all drawers that are used most often to be
at the most comfortable row. Soooo yeah.... I will skip this update and wait
it out, then sometime in the future plan some days to deisgn a new layout

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Mar 16, 2021 13:03

Subject:

Re: Two Weeks?!

Viewed:

37 times

Topic:

In Catalog, Admin_Russell writes:

In Catalog, Teup writes:

In Catalog, Admin_Russell writes:

In Catalog, Teup writes:

In Catalog, Admin_Russell writes:

In Catalog, Teup writes:

This is not a big deal for me personally as I am not currently selling here,
so I can plan it when I want.. but... really?!

The catalog changes are scheduled for April 1. That's only 2 weeks away.
I noticed that this is a DRAMATIC catalog update that will throw the entire store
upside down. Definitely won't be able to take my entire 1.2 million parts
store apart and piece it back together just casually within these next two weeks
between sorting orders. Especially moving all the wedges will be be fun puzzle.

Not gonna object against any changes, they seem alright to me. Except that there's
one change clearly missing from that list: Moving the 2x2 corner brick to Brick,
Modified.. (since plate and tile are there)

I hope this really was THE update everyone was waiting for, and now we're
satisfied..

The list you see is of the PROPOSED changes, not SCHEDULED changes. There are
only six items on the list so far that can officially be considered approved
by admin, and those are the six examples listed in the Catalog Newsletter which
went out yesterday.

Oh, whoa, thanks Russell, that's an important addition here. That's not
the way I read it at all, but now I see.

Does this mean the other proposed changes are going to trickle through at random
moments later on, or will they be implemented in one go with the next edition
in October?

No, it means a decision on those items has not been made yet. If something is
rejected, it doesn't mean it can't happen at another time, or that it
will happen at another time. But the bigger question is more about how much of
this moving around the community can accept in a given period of time.

Well, I don't know how it is for other users, but looking at my situation
it definitely is about how often and not how much.

Regular updates at specific times seems to be the path forward with these types
of changes. That way, there is a reference point people can look back on and
make adjustments.

OK, so if I understand correctly, the changes that are still in proposed status
will be listed for a future update (provided they are accepted), with a future
announcement like this one. So, this list of six is exactly what is going to
change 1 April - nothing more. In that case, makes sense.

I mean, it would be awkward to make a clear annoucement for 6 parts with a clear
date, only to suddenly implement moving all wedges to brick/plate/slope the week
after unannounced

No, there are still 2 weeks to approve the other proposals for the April 1 deadline.
All of them might be approved, but it isn't certain. The only certain thing
at this point are the six listed in the newsletter, because we didn't want
the newsletter highlighting things that weren't going to change.

Uh... wow

That's a mess, Russell. If wedge(plate) moves, that can be hundreds
of thousands of parts for some sellers. That would just change overnight without
a month - and not even 2 weeks headsup? I thought we really agreed here that
we needed time. You guys better approve or deny them ASAP so that category based
stores can plan their changes.

Well, I won't argue, go ahead, do what you do. I am glad I am closed.. I
will think about reopening sometime next year maybe, once this whole phase is
over and the dust has settled!

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Mar 16, 2021 12:58

Subject:

Re: Two Weeks?!

Viewed:

33 times

Topic:

In Catalog, Rob_and_Shelagh writes:

In Catalog, Teup writes:

In Catalog, yorbrick writes:

Just curious, I wonder how this works for those that sell on multiple platforms
and don't use remarks as stock locators but rely on a catalog sequence to
find parts on orders.

Even for tiny stores, this is a clear indication as to why storage should never
be based on the (current) catalogue.

In 15+ years never had a single problem with the remarks field.

Robert

There was. There was a serious bug where each time you did a part out and the
item was already in your inventory, the remarks would be voided. THEN how would
you find the part..

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Mar 16, 2021 10:51

Subject:

Re: Two Weeks?!

Viewed:

32 times

Topic:

In Catalog, qwertyboy writes:

In Catalog, zorbanj writes:

Going to have to echo what Nita Rae said. Relying on Bricklink's catalog
system, where you ultimately have no control over, is trouble.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Mar 16, 2021 10:44

Subject:

Re: Two Weeks?!

Viewed:

32 times

Topic:

In Catalog, Admin_Russell writes:

In Catalog, Teup writes:

In Catalog, Admin_Russell writes:

In Catalog, Teup writes:

Well, I don't know how it is for other users, but looking at my situation
it definitely is about how often and not how much.

Regular updates at specific times seems to be the path forward with these types
of changes. That way, there is a reference point people can look back on and
make adjustments.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Mar 16, 2021 09:37

Subject:

Re: Two Weeks?!

Viewed:

45 times

Topic:

In Catalog, Admin_Russell writes:

In Catalog, Teup writes:

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Mar 16, 2021 09:34

Subject:

Re: Two Weeks?!

Viewed:

36 times

Topic:

In Catalog, popsicle writes:

In Catalog, Teup writes:

You've created a beautiful Lego workplace for yourself, very nice! Best of
luck with the reorganizing. I'm sure you'll handle it in a manner that
makes it yet better than it is now (if that's even possible

)

Thanks Cory

Yeah, I will figure out a work around and settle back with the
Bricklink catalog once the dust has settled. I'm stubborn like that. Guessing
here that by the end of next year, with 3 more update editions behind us, the
catalog miiight just have approximated its final form

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Mar 16, 2021 07:23

Subject:

Re: Two Weeks?!

Viewed:

51 times

Topic:

In Catalog, cosmicray writes:

In Catalog, Teup writes:

Let's get something right here, making your physical store inventory storage
… mirror the logical catalog arrangement … is completely nuts. I realized that
20 years ago, realized that I needed a local reference for where I was storing
things, exchanged a few messages with Dan, and he implemented the Remarks field.
My physical storage has no relationship to the logical organization of the Catalog
… none.

Nita Rae

"Nuts" is strong language

It is entirely up for debate whether remark based
sorting or category based sorting is better. I strongly believe category based
sorting is superiour and it has a long list of benefits.

But to keep it simple: I would not even know how to do part-outs. I would need
to enter all sorts of bin numbers and it would take forever. Also I cannot see
on that page what the remarks of my existing lots are. Those only appear on the
verification page.. this is a whole lot of hassle that I'm glad to avoid.

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Mar 16, 2021 07:20

Subject:

Re: Two Weeks?! - personal solution

Viewed:

48 times

Topic: