Does anyone else have issues with HipStart's functionality?

Steven Mahler

As we are going forward with HipStamp (and closing BidStart), does anyone else have issues with HS functionality? Such as:

Only one category for USA?
Item sorting not working?
Items listed that are not identified correctly?

I have been with BidStart since they opened in 2005, and even now with some quirks in the BS system, we never had these problems. As you look at other websites, they all have multiple categories for USA (19th century M / U, 20th century, air mail, etc). Since the vast majority of the items were imported from either eBay or BS (which listings have all this data) why are these items not broken out accordingly?

Looking at these "powerful" filters that are now in place with HS, there are so many stamps that are "unidentified." For example, I went to USA Singles, and it broke down the category to 682,000 items. That's pretty easy to go through, isn't it?

Jacques Famery

My 2 cents worth...and I'm no expert. I think any items transferred from BS is just in "one pile". You have to "Edit" on HS and classify your stamps, same for year. Everything is there: Air Mail, Certified, Postal tax etc etc. I'm still listing on BS, because of ease and habit. But I think new items would be better off to list on HS with all the detailed search categories...I have 16000 items to go through from BS.

Carlos Verdura

I dont like all the steps to list an item here, Bid start s much easier

Forest Smith

Currently, I feel folks can more easily find what my store is all about in bidStart than HipStamp because of the multiple categories for US. I utilized many custom categories. A simple click could get you to the right US category. People like to browse stores to see what's there and their strength before buying. I have many repeat buyers because I think my bidStart store looks organized. Unless you happen to know that I put "Silver Tax" into my title or "Grade 95" you might not search by those terms within my HipStamp store. The main search engine seems to be working okay but I haven't used it that much so if an experience user like Steven says there are issues, I will dig in more to see what I think. You can find that I carry cut squares by entering U1-500 or revenues by R1-733 but overall my store currently feels like just a bunch a stuff to wade through so not as customer friendly. I do not plan to modify my 23,000 listings due to the time required. I entered consistent titles in bidStart so I do hope that more US categories or any area will be forthcoming.

No comment on listing in HipStamp. Thought I'd wait on that. I can do Bulklister in my sleep so
that's what I've been doing.

Jack Hillock

Just purchased a single stamp I needed. What a hassle. Nothing like Bid Start from years ago. Will evaluate before another purchase.

John Coles

Hello Jack

Can you please go into detail on what you found to be a hassle in you one item purchase? I'm sure Mark and Justin would love to have you feedback.

Jack Hillock

Watched the item a few days and decided to purchase it today. A block came up that wanted my name and address, why I don't know, after the purchase my name and address would appear on the pay pal invoice anyway. Without it I couldn't go forward.
I went ahead and did it, but, it wouldn't let me buy the item without adding my phone number. I tired again without the number to no avail. I will not put my phone number on this site or any other. I was going to just forget it but the item had a pretty good price, so I just made up a phone number and lo and behold I purchased it. This Time.
It took way to long, as you said John for my (One item purchase)

John Coles

Thanks for the info Jack. Have A Great Holiday Weekend.

Steven Mahler

Hi Forest, thanks for chiming in on this one. As one of the larger stores, you experience the same frustrations that I do.

Just to get a feel for HS, I spent about three hours purchasing a few revenues. Wow, what a complicated experience! I could have done the same in BS in less than one hour just by having a much better filtering system!

As a fellow store owner, I have about 43,000 items on both BS and HS. Even though MR states that HS sales are much higher than on BS, my personal experience is otherwise. Since BS has been in MR's hands, I have sold about 350 items on BS, and 120 on HS. I would take this to indicate that the buyers find it easier to find the items on BS, especially since I have had a few buyers use both stores, and then they return to using BS.

Wayne Camolli

We are eBay sellers now and we are considering opening a store on Hipstamp that will feature items not on ebay. In fact I was investigating BS when the "great change" started. I have browsed both sites, even purchased items for my personal collection on both. I find HS to be incomplete, almost as if it were opened before it was ready and fully functional. Yesterday it was down for at least 5 hours during the afternoon and evening, supposedly for "migrating". Lost prime selling time that will never be recouped. Frankly I am hesitant about opening a store here until it gets to a point that it is as functional and reliable as "other sites".

Henry Brooks

Hi Wayne,

Like all new sites this one will have a few teething problems for the first few months. Bidstart went through this when I first started selling there back in 2007 or so. The major difference between this site and "other sites" is that the owner/programmer is responsive to inquiries. If you look at the turnaround time for feature requests, fixing "bugs", etc you will see the difference. The owner is also a seller and understands the difficulties of selling.

I started on Ebay back in 1997 when you could chat with "Skippy" at 2 AM and get problems resolved. I stay away from Ebay now because there is absolutely no customer service nor logic to any of their ever evolving rules.

Think it over - it is a great place. I am certain that others will be along shortly to help alleviate your concerns.

Wayne Camolli

Hey Carol

I'm not old enough to remember Skippy (HA! - if you believe that I got 2000 Sand Dunes you can have cheap). I agree that, especially for newer sellers, ebay's "in loco parentis" attitude can be daunting. We've been around there long enough to be able to ignore them.
I agree that Hipstamp is a potentially good place to shop and sell. My concerns are in the long-term stability of the site and the "don't worry about it - everything will be OK" attitude I sense. For instance, just what is a prime store anyway. $45 a month is certainly doable, but the perks had best be gangbuster perks. I can't seem to find out what the difference is and my partners are going to want to know just what I am spending "our" money for. There do not seem to be any APIs that we can plug into and only "it's on the list" responses (remember Bob on Becker???).
I'm am certainly not saying that Hipstamp is a bad place, it just needs to grow a little.

wc

chris eaborn

Well, folks, I know I started this one off and, maybe, yesterdays `antics` along with a much too `fiddly` buying experience for some of our customers, they, like others, `voted with their feet` and purchased from us over on eBay! They knew what they wanted to buy but it was taking far too long to buy the items. On eBay, our Postage is clear and easy to work out. On here it is not. There are far too many `anomolies` on here with regard to `where` items are listed and Buyer`s will not spend hours trying to work it all out. Someone needs to lock themselves away for a full day and generate all the correct countries, etc. into the correct places. Then, they need to expand all the countries so that a potential buyer does not have to wade through literally 1,000`s of items say to locate an item of Postal History. There also needs to be filters in place whereby you can remove certain Sellers` from the viewings, where you can just search for one thing, etc. Having said all that, we will persevere with it for a month or so but the site must generate actual `sales`, rather than buyers migrating to eBay and telling us why they are buying from there and not here.

Justin Beard

Hello HipStamp Community!

My name is Justin Beard. Yesterday I joined Mark as the new COO here at Hip Ecommerce. I wanted to introduce myself in these forums to say hello and to clearly articulate why Mark has brought me into this role and how I can be of assistance to you. The most important asset we have as a company is our community of existing buyers and sellers. My role is to listen to you and to help prioritize our efforts to make this the very best place to buy and sell stamps, comics, and postcards.

Now that the migration is complete, we can focus our efforts 100% behind the Hip Ecommerce marketplaces. We will be working to address your thoughts and feedback, rolling out new features, and making the buying and selling experience second to none. I have set aside time each day to schedule calls with anyone who would like to say hello, ask a question, or provide feedback. If you would like to schedule a 15 minute call, please do so here: https://calendly.com/justinhipecommerce/15min/09-07-2016

We will be keeping the community up to date with progress and awesome new product releases on a weekly basis through our email news letter. If you have specific questions you would like to ask- feel free to shoot a question to support@hipecommerce.com and I will do my best to respond in a timely manner.

I look forward to getting to know this tight knit community. The best is yet to come...

Ted Tyszka

Sounds great, Justin. And welcome aboard.

Ted