Trying to "list similar" and losing description.

Henry Brooks

I just tried to list a few stamps and the Description block loses everything but the first line, sometimes part of the second line stays. There is no way to gracefully back out and add to it and I can't remember the format for the item number and my APS information which I have always included.
This happened 4 or 5 times and I just give up........ why does the description not carry through - it always has before. I have 18 red boxes on the shelves, each with 600 to 800 stamps to list as well as a half dozen bankers boxes and two book shelves of collections to list. And once again it auto filled a 1944 date on a stamp issued in 1906 .........
Is this happening to others or just to me ?

Henry Brooks

I tried once again to get the ID and APS number to stick in the description box. I cut and pasted the 3 lines into the description box and checked at the lower image on the "List Now" page and the description was correct. I listed all the items and went back and even thought it had been correct on the "List now" page it had stripped them out again. I went back and did the cut and paste again and so far they are sticking.
Any ideas - isn't anyone else having this problem ????

Mark Rosenberg

If you're copying and pasting text - you could be potentially copying HTML which will generally have it's formatting stripped out (since we do not allow HTML). However, if it's not properly formatted - that could cause an issue. Try manually typing in the information instead of copying and pasting it.

Henry Brooks

I guess my question is why did it automatically "stick" for the first 3100 listings with no problems ?

Realistically I can't spend the time to type in each ID number and my APS number in the description for each listing so I will just kind of regroup and the last few thousand stamps will just have the first line generic description in them. Perhaps the phrase ID triggered something new ? Whatever - no point in fighting city hall I will try and fit the APS number in somewhere else and hope that the ID number filled in on Page 2 will be searchable.

I will send a ticket on all the wrong year dates that are being automatically filled in once I can figure out how to start listing again.

Henry Brooks

I have it working again - your note re: HTML helped. You must have made a recent change in the stripping protocol.

I replaced "ID: XYZ 123 //" with "- XYZ 123 - " and it works like a charm. Dashes are good separators.

Thanks Mark. Really appreciate your patience. I really do try and fix these things before "whining" on the forums but I was hoping someone else had the same problem and had found a workaround. This is just like the early days of Bidstart - we will get through it.......

Michael Duehr

Carol,

The private ID number is searchable. You will find the search box on the listings page under selling. (It works great too)

Michael Duehr

Carol,

On the auto fill I have seen that happen more often with the worldwide then with the US. (I am not sure about this but I think I have an idea as to why it's happening) Perhaps Mark would be kind enough to correct this if I am mistaken on this.

If you look at the Hipstamp cat on many of the stamps you do see the year of issue for a lot of them BUT if you look at countries like Angola most of them do not have that information yet. Best guess is that the "auto fill" is going by what other sellers have listed those items as. (IE year,type etc) And again best guess is that when you are getting an incorrect year with the "auto fill" is that the Hipstamp cat doesn't have that information yet and it's just using the last information used on the previous listing or there was an error in some earlier listings with the incorrect information.

This just seems like this most likely and hopefully Mark will comment on if this is correct or not.

Donald (Don) Hobson

I am having the same problem. The details of the description which is to be the same on a new listing as the one I "list a similar item" from do not get listed, only the title of the new listing. I have listed new items this way since bidStart closed with no problem. The problem is with the listing of USA stamps. Carol, what is it you did to get the "details" of the listing to get transferred to the new listing?

Henry Brooks

The problem in my case was the use of symbols or the word ID in the line for the item listing number. For example:

FVF used - sound
ID DEN 587 or ID: DEN 587 //
APS # 2222222

When the second line is changed to just - DEN 587 - (with the dashes) it seems to work fine. If you are having different problems show us what you are using in the description.......

Hope this helps

Donald (Don) Hobson

My problem is that only the first line in the "description" of the item gets transferred from the listing I am using as a template (i.e. I hit "list a similar item") to a new listing. I just found out something, however. If I type in the details of the "description" in to the box called "description" on the "default setting" page and then cut and paste that box in to the new listing I get the whole "description". I do not know yet if I have to do that every time I do a new listing. Hopefully not.