Customer Feedback/Requests

Jeri Stathas

Mark, I know you're swamped, probably haven't had much sleep so whenever you get to this. I've been receiving a lot of feedback from my customers. Everyone really likes the site. However, there are several questions and one major complaint:

1. Most of them did not like the fact that if they did not pay immediately the sale would be cancelled. This seems to be a major issue. Many of them like to browse for a period of time, some to reach the free shipping total, and then pay. Many want to pay by check, cash or money order. They are aware that they can keep the items in their shopping cart but are afraid someone will buy it out from under them. Will you reconsider this option? Some, actually, thought it was "harsh".

2 Automatic currency conversion. Want to see the price in their own currency rather than US dollars.

3. Private message. Seems the only way to contact someone is to go to their store, open an item and click "Questions". I might have missed something, but I don't see anywhere to type in a name under messages in Members area.

Thank you!

Mark Rosenberg

1) While I'm not sure exactly when we will be able to implement this, the plan is to allow sellers to pre-approve specific buyers who can purchase items from them without paying at the time of purchase. Additionally, in the interim, buyers can place best offers on any items they way, and if accepted by the seller - they will have "won" the items, and can then pay accordingly (as opposed to immediately).

2) Similarly, on our agenda, but I can't give a specific time frame.

3) At the moment if you have a purchase / sales with another member - you can message them from the Selling (Sold) section or the Buying (Won) section. Additionally, as you noted you can use the Ask Seller a Question feature. The forum section actually has a separate message system, and you can create new message by clicking on the "Inbox" icon at the top right. However, the way this currently works is that only members who have participated in the forum area have "forum" accounts / inboxes. We can review this again in the future.

Jeri Stathas

Thanks, Mark. Pre-approved buyers - that's interesting.

Jeri Stathas

Mark, just a thought - How about pre-approved sellers - wouldn't that be easier? I assume we then become responsible for any non-payers, i.e., no fee claim back. Sellers could choose what option they wanted - pay now or pre-approved. I'm trying to think this through from both sides.

Mark Rosenberg

Thanks we'll take that into consideration. The main concern would be to cut down on the number of unpaid items, as this is a fair amount of administrative work, particularly when needing to deal with Final Value Fee claimbacks.

Jeri Stathas

Actually, I was thinking of you. I wouldn't want to deal with all the FVF claimbacks either. Maybe sellers would have to meet certain qualifications or have a track record with you. Sellers would also have to agree they are responsible to collect payment and cannot claim any fees back for non-payment. Under those circumstances, maybe most sellers would rather have buyers "Pay Now".

Wayne Buza

Care has to be taken to avoid exploded PayPal fees. If "Pay Now" were to apply to each individual lot costs would rise and that would have to be passed on to buyers which would result in sales tanking.

Jeri Stathas

"Pay now" refers to paying your invoice once you empty your cart and checkout. In other words, immediate payment or the order is cancelled.

Gregory Tanico

Pre approved buyers in my opinion is the biggest problem with Webstore (along with a search engine that does not work right). Every buyer gets to buy 5 items maximum in one order before getting knocked out and not being able to buy without getting permission for possibly every single seller even if it is one per person. This has never been accurately explained to me but I do know that I have but 1 buyer there and my stamps get a lot of views. I think the buyers get a message about contacting a seller or something, and they just don't bother to purchase anything at all. No other site I have dealt with does this sort of thing. Non payment issues were never a huge problem for me on Bidstart or Delcampe. Ebay non payment is rare indeed. They have this strike thing against a buyer for failure to pay and ebay themselves sends out reminders to anyone who has not paid in 2 weeks with I think a warning message about failure to pay.

Doug Noernberg

Mark, I was giving it a thought and have the following suggestion, assuming the requirement to pay immediately upon checkout remains:

Add the following settings:
(a) Seller's Tools - Activate "add-on" orders with discounted shipping (checkbox / boolean)
(b) If (a) is checked, capture (b) Number of days. This would be the number of calendar days, set by the Seller, that their terms will allow for combined shipping
(c) if (a) is checked, capture (c) Reduced incremental S/H charge. This would be a one-time base reduced S/H charge (to be used in all zones) that would apply if this logic is activated (such as 30 cents to cover the base cost of a new Paypal transaction). Could be set to zero.
(d) if (a) is checked, capture (d) Per Item charge. This would be the optional per-item charge to be applied to each item in the second invoice.

Then the logic I'm thinking of is as follows:

1) If (a) is turned off, then you have what you have now. Each transaction calculates the S/H per the existing settings, even if the two orders (and payments) are done back-to-back. No S/H discounts apply, or
2) If (a) is checked, every time an order is placed (during the buyer's checkout process), a loop is run that checks whether the seller's "Sold" list contains other transactions within the time period of [Now - (b)] where buyer has placed a previous order AND the items are not marked as "SHIPPED".
If "FALSE", then calculate shipping charges per normal means.
If "TRUE", then automatically override the default shipping charges with (c) + n*(d), where n is the number of items in the shopping cart.

The only problem I have with this logic is if the second order is for something big/heavy that has Shipping charges that exceed those in the previous purchase... haven't thought that through, but what do you think of the concept?

Ted Tyszka

Doug, this is why, whenever I used to buy crossword puzzle magazines, I always skipped the logic puzzles. LOL

Tedski

Jeri Stathas

I'm with you,Ted, yikes! Doug, you lost me after "Add the following settings"

Doug Noernberg

I thought it the best way to communicate it!

Ted Tyszka

Henry Brooks

"Mark, just a thought - How about pre-approved sellers - wouldn't that be easier? I assume we then become responsible for any non-payers, i.e., no fee claim back. Sellers could choose what option they wanted - pay now or pre-approved. I'm trying to think this through from both sides." - Jeri

I would have no problem swapping out the ability to let a customer take their time (and pay by check, cash, stamps at face for small purchases, etc) in return for waiving the right to fee back claims. I never did a fee claim back on Bidstart because it wasn't worth the time and effort expended by either of us ... it's just part of the cost of doing business.

Mark Rosenberg

Doug,

I believe there may be an issue with what you described. If I understand you correctly - you mean that buyers do still need to pay at checkout, and then if they purchase additional items a few days later, they can still receive discounted shipping. However, if that's the case, as a seller, you would need to delay shipping every order by at least the set amount of days specified in order to be able to actually combine any future order.

You could then create an option to send a note to the seller that you're really done purchasing - but this would start to over complicate the checkout process.

Jeri/Carol,

That's an interesting idea. It would help to cut down on Final Value Fee Claimbacks, but not unpaid orders. Still interesting to think about further though.

Overall, I'm not too sure how much of an issue either way this is. I've received feedback and suggestions from over 100 buyers already, and none mentioned any issue with having to pay when checking out. Most likely because this is how almost every other website works in general. For auctions, and offers, payment isn't required at checkout - so it's not applicable there. Nonetheless I'll keep reviewing this as we move forward.

Doug Noernberg

Mark. I agree with you. I hadn't thought of that. The only thing I can think of would be to give the Buyer an option when checking out that they want to continue shopping, so don't ship yet. But it's getting overly complicated. I was just afraid that buyers might be compelled to checkout versus keeping things in their cart to ensure they get them (and don't lose the items to another buyer), then are forced to pay, but pick up in another session and buy more. But I'm sure it's not that big a deal and we can work around it, but if I end up combining shipment and refunding some money, I would want a partial refund of my fees (which are calculated inclusive of S/H charges).

Eh, it's just getting to weird. Fahget about it.