A warning to sellers who migrated inventory from BidStart

Doug Noernberg

All,
I recently had the unfortunate opportunity to tell a Buyer that I couldn't send him a stamp he purchased because it already sold. It appears I had a duplicate listing on HipStamp, both of which migrated over from BidStart, which had duplicate listings from the not-so-good old Stanley Gibbons out of control days. Needless to say, having to do this really pi$$ed me off.

Thanks to help from Mark on another thread, I was able to export my entire HipStamp store and review it in Excel for duplicate listings. I did so, and found and removed several. Then I had this sale I couldn't fulfill. I didn't show as a duplicate listing because the original already sold! I hadn't thought of that!

Fortunately thanks to my personal database, I could compare the private IDs in my current store with those that sold in the past relatively easy. I FOUND 16 MORE OF THEM and removed them from my HipStamp store!

It may not be so easy for others, but let this experience serve as a warning to y'all that, if you haven't already done so, I highly recommend you review your inventory for all items transferred from BidStart to verify you don't have items for sale that are either duplicates, or have already been sold.

Thanks Stanley-Gibbons.

-Doug

Wayne Buza

I had a number of duplicates that I had to remove back in October

Robert Bechtel

Thanks Doug,
I think I'm safe, bailed out from SG about 2 years ago. Nice to be back among friends. Mark has done a great job here.

Bob Bechtel
Packets Plus

Luree Hughes

Good advise, Doug. I've been doing just that and have been amazed how mistakes I've found, either by me when I was learning the Bulk Lister, or by the magic dust bunnies that were playing in the translation between all the sites. Well worth the clean up. Time consuming, but I'm not going anywhere any time soon, I hope!!!!

Henry Brooks

Thanks for the warning Doug. /this is exactly why I didn't migrate from Bidstart and started here from scratch. Most of my Bidstart stock still sits on the shelf unlisted as I am working out of boxes of stuff put away in the 80's. Looks like I made the right decision.

Richard Olsen

Another problem with the migration from Bidstart was all of the scans that disappeared, When I click on one of my items with no scan, I can run my cursor over where the scan should be and the scan will appear. HipStamp doesn't have a magic cure for this. Thus, I am having to go through thousands of items to rescan several hundred stamps.

Jacques Famery

Richard. Yes, I went through all my items, actually I discovered this bug while Bidstart was still live, I corrected this before the move to Hipstamp...and unfortunately once in a while I'm still finding a few. Too bad, Hipstamp doesn't have a "system" where any listing without a visible scan pops up and advises you to put a proper scan.

Steven Wilner

I have been having this problem since Hipstart started. I just had one this week - where 3 of the 7 stamps selected were previously sold during the SGM days - but the listing was apparently left up in Bidstart and migrated here. I should have kept a list of what I sold on SGM (it would have been a short enough list) that I could check against when I find a missing stamp in my inventory - then I will know for sure what happened to it. Besides having to disappoint the buyers - to get the fee claimback on specific items within an order - requires opening a ticket since there is no fee claimback per item like we had on Bidstart.

Michael Dodd

If it is any consolation I too had listings migrated that were actually sold.. I apologise to the Hipstamp buyer, and once was able to still fill the order because of another copy of the stamp... what else can I do.. happened twice so far and yes occasionally I find images missing.. that is life I just put up with it....