I don't think one can fault Hipstamp because some vendors do not like to ship out of North America, or out of the US. Just look for sellers that will ship to your country and ignore those that will not. There are many Feebay sellers that will not ship out of the US - just leaves more business for those of us that will sell worldwide. It is not the fault of the suction site, but selling "worldwide" is the option of each seller - as it should be.
You've missed the point. What you have commented on is common sense. We just need the option to block the sellers that do not post to our country, in your words "ignore" them. It is indeed, the fault of the auction site.
We don't go hunting for sellers that will post to our country, we "search" for stamps we seek. Crikey, how hard is it?
Where do you put in the listing that you will not ship to a specific country? Also, as Steven asks, is the old Bidstart function for blocking a buyer ever going to be reinstated?
"Where do you put in the listing that you will not ship to a specific country? Also, as Steven asks, is the old Bidstart function for blocking a buyer ever going to be reinstated?"
When you set up your store's postage rates, you simply do not set up an international postage rate. When a potential customer looks at a listing, and then checks the shipping, their country will not be shown in the dropdown selection box.
So I log in today and page 1 of British Commonwealth is full of listings by one of the infamous sellers I would like to block , CPAPhil. Page 2 the same, 3,4,5 etc etc. I reach page 53 and I've had a guts full, his listings just keep going and going making it nigh on impossible to check what other sellers have actually listed in the last 24 hours.
Seriously is it that hard to create a feature that will help both seller and buyer block people they do not want to ever deal with , especially when they are listing 13,000 plus items of complete and utter overpriced junk like CPAPhil does.
Sorry for naming and shaming, but it's now getting to the point where a simply implemented feature is being ignored to the detriment of the site for no logical reason.
My wants list stands at 10,382 individual requirements, all pre 1936 mint British Empire, however I will also buy others that interest me. That's a lot of potential sales that I am unable to find, without having to search either individually or by some other obscure method that I have been unable to fathom as of yet.
British Commonwealth is already a complete and utter shambles when it comes to the amount of items "dumped" there in order to over inflate the amount of items listed, when they are heavily duplicated elsewhere. If i want to search for Canada I can go to the Canada category like every other site , but here the 150,000 plus listings are duplicated, same goes for Australia and just about every other item will be duplicated somewhere whether it be Caribbean or Africa etc.
And don't even get me started on the rediculous amount of French Colonies listed in BC.
This is bordering on Poppe stamps levels of absurdness!
Thank you for your detailed feedback - it's always helpful to better understand how buyers are browsing and searching for items. We appreciate all of the feedback we receive, and always carefully review any and all suggestions.
We do have some features scheduled for the future which I believe would address the concerns you've raised, however we can only generally comment on time tables of features which are currently under active development, so I wouldn't be able to provide an estimate as to when you may see such features.
One tip which may help you currently, is to keep in mind that you can set specific year ranges within any search, as well as use negative keywords in your searches to remove items which contain those keywords, by placing a minus sign directly in front of the keyword.
With regards to our development priorities, we have several hundred items on our development list, and we only work on a few at a time from start to finish - as this is far more efficient than working on many items at once. So when I was referring to active development I was referring to the items we're working on at the moment, and which would be out within the next few weeks.
As noted above, we appreciate all feature requests we receive, and they're very helpful in our planning for improvements and new features. Feature requests are just one part of what goes into our planning and helps us to determine the best priorities for HipStamp to continue growing, as it continues to do each month. We take into account several factors, such as how many members have requested a feature or improvement, how many members would be affected by the update, how often the feature in question is used, and what the overall business impact is.
That being said, we do communicate with thousands of buyers and sellers *each month*, and many of the features you continue to see us release are because they're some of the most requested features and improvements requests we hear. Here's a few examples from June alone:
Each week we heard from many different buyers and sellers, that they would like an easy way to keep track of what they needed to do on HipStamp, such as fill orders, review items they've been outbid on, leave feedback, etc. Which is why we worked with our members to develop a new Reminders feature which is now available in the Members Area, and easily and clearly highlights items you need to take action on, and provides quick links to do so,
Auctions have become a very important part of HipStamp, with tens of thousands of items being won at auction each month. Each week we received feedback from buyers participating in auctions, particularly those who bid in the last few minutes, that the bidding process could be streamlined. Which is why we revamped the entire bid process, allowing you to place and confirm bids all from the same page with almost no delay. This has helped us to reach 250,000 bids on HipStamp - which we will be highlighting in more detail in an upcoming newsletter!
Similarly, on the Seller side, each day our buyers submit hundreds of offers to our Sellers. One item we continued to hear from Sellers, and became more pressing as our sales continue to grow, was that accepting offers was very time consuming. This was because once you accepted an offer, you would just go to the specific offer page, and then need to start over and wade through all offers, including the ones you already accepted to find the next to accept. Now, that's all changed as once you accept an offer you're instantly taken to the next you need to accept, counter or decline. Which allows Sellers to respond to action offers for buyers faster than ever before. Combined with the Reminders feature above, this has made a big difference in completing sales through offers.
These are just three examples, of the many new features and enhancements we released in just June alone. One thing I would personally like to improve, is making sure our members are more aware of the features we are releasing. That being said, and again, not withstanding the other items we take into account when prioritizing items to work on, each of the above three items were items we heard many times each week from many different members, where as blocking members has come up very rarely among members outside the discussion here in our forums. Again, that being said, we do have features planned which will help address the items highlighted here.
Hopefully that provides a little better insight into how we prioritize features! If we had more resources available, there would certainly be many more feature requests we have from our members that we would like to action sooner rather than later. Until that time, we do need to make decisions as to what to build and when, and we believe we're on the right track, as just a few months ago we announced that we hit $200,000 a month in sale; and I'm happy to say we've already passed $300,000 a month and are quickly closing in on $400,000 a month in sales....
That wouldn't be possible without everyone's support here, so thank you again!
Also, just to clarify, one item which is in active development, and should be released within the next couple of weeks, and has been extensively discussed on this very thread - is blocking items from search results, in which the Seller does not ship to your (the Buyer's) country. We're currently working on an update where by default you will only see items which can be shipped to your country, and those which can not will be excluded from the search results which you see.
"One thing I would personally like to improve, is making sure our members are more aware of the features we are releasing."
I wasn't even aware of the improvements you had made in June, as they are not something I normally use. So I appreciate your very well-written explanation of what you have added to improve the functionality here!
Yes!-- send out a newsletter about what you're doing to make Hipstamp better and better! Don't be shy about tooting your own horn!!
I agree with Dave Bennett. You are obviously working on items to make our website a better one. My only problem is that you work in a vacuum -- why not publish a list of the ongoing projects that you are working on (i.e. the item, when it was identified, estimated completion date).
I know that we all have given input on numerous recommendations for improvement and change. It seems that whatever we say, it falls on deaf ears, since we don't ever get a response to our inquiries.
I know that I have even given corrections to various categories months ago, and they are still not even fixed:
Where is Danish West Indies? Not listed as a territory under USA Where is German East Africa? Not under German Colonies Where is Schleswig? This is both a state and a territory, and should be listed accordingly. It was finally added to German States (total of 22 items listed). 1 item is correctly listed (could be listed under Schleswig-Holstein), then there are 19 items that should be under Colonies and Territories. Here is a total breakdown for Schleswig at the global level:
22 - under German States 12 - under Caribbean !?! 1 - under Germany 1 - under German Allied Occupations 59 - under German Colonies and Territories
This dovetails with Mark Jones and Paul Molloy's comments about incorrect listings throughout the entire store. Here are my reason why I would block a buyer or seller:
Bad experience with a buyer (I had two that received the items, and then sent them back because they changed their mind and wanted a full refund (approval service? Not!!)) I had another that did not want to give anyone positive feedback. 80% of the feedback he left was either neutral or negative (mostly negative). My one feedback from him was neutral with the comment "As stated." What in heck does that mean!?!
Bad experience with a seller (I have contacted sellers asking them to fix their items -- most are friendly, but some are simply rude and will not change anything)
The ability to filter out unwanted listings (one seller numbered his items in the title (#1, #2, #3, etc) and the system established the listings with catalog numbers 1, 2, 3. I had 15 pages of this seller's items just to get to USA Scott #65 (sorted by catalog number!)
Whether they deliver to your country. Mark, I don't think that your fix will even filter out all of them. I have an APO address (US military address) in Germany. Foothill Stamps will not send to an APO, even though this is a US address!!
The request for user custom categories has died. Your expanded filters have definitely reduced the need, but it is still not all inclusive. How about:
Cameroun, Carolines, Samoa, Togo as German Colonies? They are only listed in the respective countries (which is fine) but I could setup a custom category and pull just the items in question under my own "German Colonies" search.
Belgium, France, Poland, Serbia, Russia, Slovakia, etc. as German Occupations. I could setup a custom category to pull up the items.
These are just a couple examples that can help the specialized collector. I am sure that Germany is not unique with its expanded collecting area.
Under the search function, your engines will only search for the information in the title. In BidStart, I could search in either the title or the description. Because of this, I needed to change about 15000 items, moving my filter (i.e. Circular Cancels) from the description to the title.
Steven, in regards to your comment: "Bad experience with a seller (I have contacted sellers asking them to fix their items -- most are friendly, but some are simply rude and will not change anything)"
... I had an insistence with a person that was condemning my store as it stated 95% of my items were damaged and I should not be selling them. It was not a pretty day with that person. I appreciate an extra pair of eyes for the listings and when I check things out I let them know with lots of gratitude for pointing my errors out. HOWEVER, if a person is going to do that, please do it with compassion and gently let the seller know a mistake has been made. Being an aggressor toward someone's mistake is not the way to go, I will get defensive and bite back.
That being said, I'm NOT saying you are aggressive, this was meant to let others know to be gentle when letting a seller know they made a mistake.
Thanks for letting me vent about that. It really did upset me that thing told me I was a bad person. I'm not, really!
Luree, thank you for sharing. I may be a direct person, but I am a compassionate one.
The one example that comes immediately to mind is this one: The seller used (#1, #2, #3, etc) in every listing, indicating that this was his first, second, third copy of catalog number XXXX.
My collection is mostly complete, so I don't search for specific items. I am looking for items that catch my eye to upgrade an item in my collection, so I browse through items. Imagine when I am trying to go through catalog number 100, and have to wade through 10000 items that have errors in their listings and should not even come up. You could select any of these items in question, go to the details tab, and see that the catalog number was "1, 2, 3" even though the seller had put the correct catalog number in the title.
So when I explained this to the seller, and asked that he fix his listings, he simply answered "NO!"
I am always appreciative when someone sends me a message stating that I have an error in a listing, and always thank them for their time.
My bottom line, errors in listings happen. If it is with a few items, no problem, because it happens (with me too!!). But when there are hundreds, and the seller has no interest in fixing the errors, then we end up with a bad experience. On my side, frustration because I have to go through these listings (since I cannot block the seller), and the seller because he is not selling anything!
Even though I live in Germany, I will also reach out and offer my assistance to help clean up their store. When my listings transferred from BidStart to HipStamp, I was so frustrated because I could not find anything, and it was my own store!! And since we had no ability to correct them in bulk, I was very vocal both here, and via email directly to Mark and Justin. I now know that we do have a website vastly superior to BidStart, eBay, or any other, but many new sellers don't know the ins and outs, especially when the listings are imported from other websites. So after working through my listings, I now know how the website works, and am always willing to help others with theirs.
I think you are right, we the sellers/owners of the stores here, had a huge learning curve to master before we could sit down and say, hey I like this that or the other. And yes, when the stores transferred we all had little problems pop up. I finally stopped listing here and went through and am still going through each and every listing to make sure all is right. It was/is a trip, but we all learn!
And BTW, I was one of the first to ask about blocking buyers. So this is a feature we have wanted since we all started to list here.
I can understand your frustration in wading through all those stamps. I wonder why that seller doesn't use the "quantity" column? Just a rambling thought.
I am and have always been appreciative of people letting me know that I have an error in any of my listings. I want to present the correct information in everything that I sell. As was stated, we are humans, and errors do happen. Those sellers who get touchy about being told that there's something wrong with their listings...well, to me that means that they don't want to be bothered and don't care. I don't buy from those sellers.
While it may be true that some sellers and buyers are requesting this feature,there are also sellers and buyers who are not requesting this feature at this time,myself included. The biggest reason for me having the blocked buyers was because of non payment and less because there were pains in the butt. (After doing this for 12 years on Stamp Wants-Bidstart then on to Hipstamp,I can count on one hand the number of really bad buyers that I had)
For me I see that what is more critical to be worked on is issues that actually deal with improving the sales first. And then also dealing with issues that can be huge time savers that can cut down some of the extra time being need to deal with things like feedback and printing invoices. (The less time it takes to deal with the feedback and printing invoices the more time I would have to scan and list more items,which would give the buyers some better variety to find what they are looking for)
There have been a number of sellers asking for custom store categories for just as long as they have been for a blocked buyers list. Personally I think that the custom stores categories would be something that should come BEFORE the block buyers list. (That is my own feelings on this as I just don't see how having a blocked buyers list would be that big of a need for me)
Personally I would rather see that we would be able to both print invoices and leave feedback the same way we can on Ebay. 2 clicks and I can print off 20-25 invoices at a single time. 2 clicks and I can leave all the feedback on ALL the orders at one time. That for me would be far more ideal and needed then the blocked buyers list. (But again that is my only my opinion)
We need to remember that Bidstart had years to get where is was at one time. Hipstamp has only been up and running for a little over a year. There is only so much time in the day and Mark has only so much help. (Take a look at how long it takes Ebay to get some things working and look at how large of a staff they have working on the site) Hipstamp has already been a big upgrade to Bidstart.
Well, I can certainly see both side of the picture. Yes some want this feature and some don't and both have their very good reasons. Maybe someday it will be implemented and then again maybe not. True, it is not life threatening (although we'd like to throttle some members, she says with a smile) but it was a nice feature. When it happens then goodie it will happen.
I do believe all that has gone into the building of HS has been wonderful. Once I got used to where things are, it's a piece of chocolate cake!
We are settling in and even joking with each other again, that is wonderful to see. I loved all the conversations we used to have. But once again, that is looking in the rearview mirror and we all need to look forward into a brighter future.
Michael The initial request was made by me 11 months ago and it was not for blocking buyers, there is a separate thread for that, it was specific to blocking sellers, and at the time was roundly dismissed by Mark. You see it does not matter how many custom categories you'd like to have, if it's impossible to find any of your listings then why bother? Currently, as it stands, sellers are able to list 1000's of items at once and drown out anything else in a category, filtering them is impossible due to losing other listings you might be interested in , and if it's the usual suspects then you'd never buy from them in the first place. You yourself could list 50 items that I could be interested in and 2 minutes later another seller that I would like to block could list 5000 items and hey presto your items are now on page 100 and something! Mark has come up with alternative ways to search in a post above, however, it only works if the seller has provided all the detailing when the listing is made, a lot do not. Then you have other sellers wanting ridiculous flat rate amounts for postage, others want extra per item shipped, others do not ship outside the US ( for some strange reason they think the world ends after the 50 states), others list items so far overpriced I would never buy from them, the list goes on and on. This feature gives buyers the best option to actually find items they are interested in, thus improving sales! You asked for custom categories in August 2016, the same time as this request was made, this has received 57 comments and 1.5k views, custom categories has received 19 comments and 419 views. Which do you think is the more popular request? Now I'm not denigrating your feature request as you have with this one, however, it will not matter one iota how many items you list if people do not buy them or cannot find them, you just end up paying listing fees. I used to purchase almost exclusively on bidstart, the features available made it easy to find items and prices were reasonable. Since hipstamp came into fruition my purchasing is now mainly elsewhere. I spend around a $1000 a month on average on stamps and this place is seeing around 10% of that, because I really cannot be bothered wading through tens of thousands of utter crap listed by clueless sellers that have started to list here. How many other buyers are doing the same?
In better news it seems that at least one of the bugbears of this feature request has been implemented, listings by sellers who do not ship to your area are no longer visible.
While it is true that in a little less then a year this thread has about 60 comments,that's really a small drop in the bucket of the number of buyers and sellers on the site. How many people are asking for these requests through the forums and how many are sending them via the contact us form? I highly doubt that Mark is only getting the feature requests only from the forums as you will rarely see the larger size sellers actually posting in the forums for one and the other is how many of the buyers actually post in the forums?
The number of people actually posting in the forums is a small sample size across the whole site. Mark in another thread stated that Hipstamp was closing in on about $400,000 in sales for this past month,now factor in that at the end Bidstart was doing about $100,000 in sales and it appears that what Mark is doing is working. So if the sales have increased that much over the past year the question that needs to be asked is how many buyers are actually asking to have a block seller feature?
Just because we think a feature is something we would like does NOT mean the vast majority of the other people on the site are even interested in that feature. And the other is that just because we think a the feature should be a priority for the DOES NOT mean that it is a priority for the site at this time. (And that does not mean that some of the features we have asked for won't be done as some time,it may or may not be done in the future) The only ones who can give any insight into that is Mark and Justin.
Comments
You will not get my business till you fix this
This is the sort of nonsense we face in Australia
What you have commented on is common sense.
We just need the option to block the sellers that do not post to our country, in your words "ignore" them.
It is indeed, the fault of the auction site.
We don't go hunting for sellers that will post to our country, we "search" for stamps we seek.
Crikey, how hard is it?
Any ideas?
When you set up your store's postage rates, you simply do not set up an international postage rate. When a potential customer looks at a listing, and then checks the shipping, their country will not be shown in the dropdown selection box.
Seriously is it that hard to create a feature that will help both seller and buyer block people they do not want to ever deal with , especially when they are listing 13,000 plus items of complete and utter overpriced junk like CPAPhil does.
Sorry for naming and shaming, but it's now getting to the point where a simply implemented feature is being ignored to the detriment of the site for no logical reason.
My wants list stands at 10,382 individual requirements, all pre 1936 mint British Empire, however I will also buy others that interest me. That's a lot of potential sales that I am unable to find, without having to search either individually or by some other obscure method that I have been unable to fathom as of yet.
British Commonwealth is already a complete and utter shambles when it comes to the amount of items "dumped" there in order to over inflate the amount of items listed, when they are heavily duplicated elsewhere. If i want to search for Canada I can go to the Canada category like every other site , but here the 150,000 plus listings are duplicated, same goes for Australia and just about every other item will be duplicated somewhere whether it be Caribbean or Africa etc.
And don't even get me started on the rediculous amount of French Colonies listed in BC.
This is bordering on Poppe stamps levels of absurdness!
Thank you for your detailed feedback - it's always helpful to better understand how buyers are browsing and searching for items. We appreciate all of the feedback we receive, and always carefully review any and all suggestions.
We do have some features scheduled for the future which I believe would address the concerns you've raised, however we can only generally comment on time tables of features which are currently under active development, so I wouldn't be able to provide an estimate as to when you may see such features.
One tip which may help you currently, is to keep in mind that you can set specific year ranges within any search, as well as use negative keywords in your searches to remove items which contain those keywords, by placing a minus sign directly in front of the keyword.
For example, you could search for "-Australia -Canada -India" in the British Commonwealth section, and limit your results to items issued pre 1936, for example:
https://www.hipstamp.com/category/british-commonwealth/?item_specifics_07_year_of_issue[to]=1936&parent_id=4&keywords=-Australia+-Canada+-India&sort=started_desc
To view all pre 1936 British Commonwealth excluding Australia, Canada and India, sorted by the most recent items listed.
As noted above, we appreciate all feature requests we receive, and they're very helpful in our planning for improvements and new features. Feature requests are just one part of what goes into our planning and helps us to determine the best priorities for HipStamp to continue growing, as it continues to do each month. We take into account several factors, such as how many members have requested a feature or improvement, how many members would be affected by the update, how often the feature in question is used, and what the overall business impact is.
That being said, we do communicate with thousands of buyers and sellers *each month*, and many of the features you continue to see us release are because they're some of the most requested features and improvements requests we hear. Here's a few examples from June alone:
Each week we heard from many different buyers and sellers, that they would like an easy way to keep track of what they needed to do on HipStamp, such as fill orders, review items they've been outbid on, leave feedback, etc. Which is why we worked with our members to develop a new Reminders feature which is now available in the Members Area, and easily and clearly highlights items you need to take action on, and provides quick links to do so,
Auctions have become a very important part of HipStamp, with tens of thousands of items being won at auction each month. Each week we received feedback from buyers participating in auctions, particularly those who bid in the last few minutes, that the bidding process could be streamlined. Which is why we revamped the entire bid process, allowing you to place and confirm bids all from the same page with almost no delay. This has helped us to reach 250,000 bids on HipStamp - which we will be highlighting in more detail in an upcoming newsletter!
Similarly, on the Seller side, each day our buyers submit hundreds of offers to our Sellers. One item we continued to hear from Sellers, and became more pressing as our sales continue to grow, was that accepting offers was very time consuming. This was because once you accepted an offer, you would just go to the specific offer page, and then need to start over and wade through all offers, including the ones you already accepted to find the next to accept. Now, that's all changed as once you accept an offer you're instantly taken to the next you need to accept, counter or decline. Which allows Sellers to respond to action offers for buyers faster than ever before. Combined with the Reminders feature above, this has made a big difference in completing sales through offers.
These are just three examples, of the many new features and enhancements we released in just June alone. One thing I would personally like to improve, is making sure our members are more aware of the features we are releasing. That being said, and again, not withstanding the other items we take into account when prioritizing items to work on, each of the above three items were items we heard many times each week from many different members, where as blocking members has come up very rarely among members outside the discussion here in our forums. Again, that being said, we do have features planned which will help address the items highlighted here.
Hopefully that provides a little better insight into how we prioritize features! If we had more resources available, there would certainly be many more feature requests we have from our members that we would like to action sooner rather than later. Until that time, we do need to make decisions as to what to build and when, and we believe we're on the right track, as just a few months ago we announced that we hit $200,000 a month in sale; and I'm happy to say we've already passed $300,000 a month and are quickly closing in on $400,000 a month in sales....
That wouldn't be possible without everyone's support here, so thank you again!
I wasn't even aware of the improvements you had made in June, as they are not something I normally use. So I appreciate your very well-written explanation of what you have added to improve the functionality here!
Yes!-- send out a newsletter about what you're doing to make Hipstamp better and better! Don't be shy about tooting your own horn!!
I know that we all have given input on numerous recommendations for improvement and change. It seems that whatever we say, it falls on deaf ears, since we don't ever get a response to our inquiries.
I know that I have even given corrections to various categories months ago, and they are still not even fixed:
Where is Danish West Indies? Not listed as a territory under USA
Where is German East Africa? Not under German Colonies
Where is Schleswig? This is both a state and a territory, and should be listed accordingly. It was finally added to German States (total of 22 items listed). 1 item is correctly listed (could be listed under Schleswig-Holstein), then there are 19 items that should be under Colonies and Territories. Here is a total breakdown for Schleswig at the global level:
22 - under German States
12 - under Caribbean !?!
1 - under Germany
1 - under German Allied Occupations
59 - under German Colonies and Territories
This dovetails with Mark Jones and Paul Molloy's comments about incorrect listings throughout the entire store. Here are my reason why I would block a buyer or seller:
Bad experience with a buyer (I had two that received the items, and then sent them back because they changed their mind and wanted a full refund (approval service? Not!!)) I had another that did not want to give anyone positive feedback. 80% of the feedback he left was either neutral or negative (mostly negative). My one feedback from him was neutral with the comment "As stated." What in heck does that mean!?!
Bad experience with a seller (I have contacted sellers asking them to fix their items -- most are friendly, but some are simply rude and will not change anything)
The ability to filter out unwanted listings (one seller numbered his items in the title (#1, #2, #3, etc) and the system established the listings with catalog numbers 1, 2, 3. I had 15 pages of this seller's items just to get to USA Scott #65 (sorted by catalog number!)
Whether they deliver to your country. Mark, I don't think that your fix will even filter out all of them. I have an APO address (US military address) in Germany. Foothill Stamps will not send to an APO, even though this is a US address!!
The request for user custom categories has died. Your expanded filters have definitely reduced the need, but it is still not all inclusive. How about:
Cameroun, Carolines, Samoa, Togo as German Colonies? They are only listed in the respective countries (which is fine) but I could setup a custom category and pull just the items in question under my own "German Colonies" search.
Belgium, France, Poland, Serbia, Russia, Slovakia, etc. as German Occupations. I could setup a custom category to pull up the items.
These are just a couple examples that can help the specialized collector. I am sure that Germany is not unique with its expanded collecting area.
Under the search function, your engines will only search for the information in the title. In BidStart, I could search in either the title or the description. Because of this, I needed to change about 15000 items, moving my filter (i.e. Circular Cancels) from the description to the title.
... I had an insistence with a person that was condemning my store as it stated 95% of my items were damaged and I should not be selling them. It was not a pretty day with that person. I appreciate an extra pair of eyes for the listings and when I check things out I let them know with lots of gratitude for pointing my errors out. HOWEVER, if a person is going to do that, please do it with compassion and gently let the seller know a mistake has been made. Being an aggressor toward someone's mistake is not the way to go, I will get defensive and bite back.
That being said, I'm NOT saying you are aggressive, this was meant to let others know to be gentle when letting a seller know they made a mistake.
Thanks for letting me vent about that. It really did upset me that thing told me I was a bad person. I'm not, really!
Luree
The one example that comes immediately to mind is this one: The seller used (#1, #2, #3, etc) in every listing, indicating that this was his first, second, third copy of catalog number XXXX.
My collection is mostly complete, so I don't search for specific items. I am looking for items that catch my eye to upgrade an item in my collection, so I browse through items. Imagine when I am trying to go through catalog number 100, and have to wade through 10000 items that have errors in their listings and should not even come up. You could select any of these items in question, go to the details tab, and see that the catalog number was "1, 2, 3" even though the seller had put the correct catalog number in the title.
So when I explained this to the seller, and asked that he fix his listings, he simply answered "NO!"
I am always appreciative when someone sends me a message stating that I have an error in a listing, and always thank them for their time.
My bottom line, errors in listings happen. If it is with a few items, no problem, because it happens (with me too!!). But when there are hundreds, and the seller has no interest in fixing the errors, then we end up with a bad experience. On my side, frustration because I have to go through these listings (since I cannot block the seller), and the seller because he is not selling anything!
Even though I live in Germany, I will also reach out and offer my assistance to help clean up their store. When my listings transferred from BidStart to HipStamp, I was so frustrated because I could not find anything, and it was my own store!! And since we had no ability to correct them in bulk, I was very vocal both here, and via email directly to Mark and Justin. I now know that we do have a website vastly superior to BidStart, eBay, or any other, but many new sellers don't know the ins and outs, especially when the listings are imported from other websites. So after working through my listings, I now know how the website works, and am always willing to help others with theirs.
And BTW, I was one of the first to ask about blocking buyers. So this is a feature we have wanted since we all started to list here.
I can understand your frustration in wading through all those stamps. I wonder why that seller doesn't use the "quantity" column? Just a rambling thought.
While it may be true that some sellers and buyers are requesting this feature,there are also sellers and buyers who are not requesting this feature at this time,myself included. The biggest reason for me having the blocked buyers was because of non payment and less because there were pains in the butt. (After doing this for 12 years on Stamp Wants-Bidstart then on to Hipstamp,I can count on one hand the number of really bad buyers that I had)
For me I see that what is more critical to be worked on is issues that actually deal with improving the sales first. And then also dealing with issues that can be huge time savers that can cut down some of the extra time being need to deal with things like feedback and printing invoices. (The less time it takes to deal with the feedback and printing invoices the more time I would have to scan and list more items,which would give the buyers some better variety to find what they are looking for)
There have been a number of sellers asking for custom store categories for just as long as they have been for a blocked buyers list. Personally I think that the custom stores categories would be something that should come BEFORE the block buyers list. (That is my own feelings on this as I just don't see how having a blocked buyers list would be that big of a need for me)
Personally I would rather see that we would be able to both print invoices and leave feedback the same way we can on Ebay. 2 clicks and I can print off 20-25 invoices at a single time. 2 clicks and I can leave all the feedback on ALL the orders at one time. That for me would be far more ideal and needed then the blocked buyers list. (But again that is my only my opinion)
We need to remember that Bidstart had years to get where is was at one time. Hipstamp has only been up and running for a little over a year. There is only so much time in the day and Mark has only so much help. (Take a look at how long it takes Ebay to get some things working and look at how large of a staff they have working on the site) Hipstamp has already been a big upgrade to Bidstart.
I do believe all that has gone into the building of HS has been wonderful. Once I got used to where things are, it's a piece of chocolate cake!
We are settling in and even joking with each other again, that is wonderful to see. I loved all the conversations we used to have. But once again, that is looking in the rearview mirror and we all need to look forward into a brighter future.
Me too!
The initial request was made by me 11 months ago and it was not for blocking buyers, there is a separate thread for that, it was specific to blocking sellers, and at the time was roundly dismissed by Mark.
You see it does not matter how many custom categories you'd like to have, if it's impossible to find any of your listings then why bother?
Currently, as it stands, sellers are able to list 1000's of items at once and drown out anything else in a category, filtering them is impossible due to losing other listings you might be interested in , and if it's the usual suspects then you'd never buy from them in the first place. You yourself could list 50 items that I could be interested in and 2 minutes later another seller that I would like to block could list 5000 items and hey presto your items are now on page 100 and something!
Mark has come up with alternative ways to search in a post above, however, it only works if the seller has provided all the detailing when the listing is made, a lot do not.
Then you have other sellers wanting ridiculous flat rate amounts for postage, others want extra per item shipped, others do not ship outside the US ( for some strange reason they think the world ends after the 50 states), others list items so far overpriced I would never buy from them, the list goes on and on.
This feature gives buyers the best option to actually find items they are interested in, thus improving sales!
You asked for custom categories in August 2016, the same time as this request was made, this has received 57 comments and 1.5k views, custom categories has received 19 comments and 419 views. Which do you think is the more popular request? Now I'm not denigrating your feature request as you have with this one, however, it will not matter one iota how many items you list if people do not buy them or cannot find them, you just end up paying listing fees.
I used to purchase almost exclusively on bidstart, the features available made it easy to find items and prices were reasonable. Since hipstamp came into fruition my purchasing is now mainly elsewhere. I spend around a $1000 a month on average on stamps and this place is seeing around 10% of that, because I really cannot be bothered wading through tens of thousands of utter crap listed by clueless sellers that have started to list here.
How many other buyers are doing the same?
While it is true that in a little less then a year this thread has about 60 comments,that's really a small drop in the bucket of the number of buyers and sellers on the site. How many people are asking for these requests through the forums and how many are sending them via the contact us form? I highly doubt that Mark is only getting the feature requests only from the forums as you will rarely see the larger size sellers actually posting in the forums for one and the other is how many of the buyers actually post in the forums?
The number of people actually posting in the forums is a small sample size across the whole site. Mark in another thread stated that Hipstamp was closing in on about $400,000 in sales for this past month,now factor in that at the end Bidstart was doing about $100,000 in sales and it appears that what Mark is doing is working. So if the sales have increased that much over the past year the question that needs to be asked is how many buyers are actually asking to have a block seller feature?
Just because we think a feature is something we would like does NOT mean the vast majority of the other people on the site are even interested in that feature. And the other is that just because we think a the feature should be a priority for the DOES NOT mean that it is a priority for the site at this time. (And that does not mean that some of the features we have asked for won't be done as some time,it may or may not be done in the future) The only ones who can give any insight into that is Mark and Justin.