yeahwell
|
posted on May 30, 2002 06:21:15 PM new
What are you thoughts about today's problems with auctionwatch? I am not happy at all; i can understand that these things happen, but I was not happy that we had no indication until about an hour ago as to what was happening? I lost quite a bit of business as people were not going to bid on my items without seeing the photos?
Anyone else have thoughts on this?
|
micmic66
|
posted on May 30, 2002 06:23:48 PM new
Yes, what a bummer. Luckily I have nothing ending till Tuesday. I actually had a few nibbles throughout the down period.
|
nanntique
|
posted on May 30, 2002 06:24:50 PM new
Since most of us were without images for ONLY 12 HOURS, I'm sure AW will offer some form of compensation.............
|
ewora
|
posted on May 30, 2002 06:25:17 PM new
I also lost quite a bit of money today. I closed about 60 auctions today and had quite a few emails requesting pictures. Unhappy doesn't quite describe my feelings.
|
dman3
|
posted on May 30, 2002 06:30:07 PM new
You lost money ???
How could that be if the Items were listed on ebay that means you never had that money to start with.
Can't lose something you never had that more like counting your chicken before they hatch.
you may have lost a few tenth of a cent in fee to auction watch fees they charge to use there services per photo or what even but no real money from auction sales or bids you never had yet !!!
http://www.Dman-N-Company.com
Email [email protected]
|
ahc3
|
posted on May 30, 2002 06:30:09 PM new
Guess it could have been worse if it was a Sunday. Wow, that was a long downtime
|
ihula
|
posted on May 30, 2002 06:42:53 PM new
I also had a lot ending tonight - 120 auctions. I think I can safely say I lost money because most of the items I have sold before for a more money - I think the bids would have gone much higher if they could have seen the product.
|
macker123
|
posted on May 30, 2002 06:43:06 PM new
dman3,
What are you talking about??? Of course people lost money. I had 20 or so auctions close in the middle of the downtime. My bidders always wait until the last 12 hours or so to do any real bidding. I easily lost $100 - $200 in lost bids.
For example I had a personal organizer at $20 before the downtime, I know form past auctions it always sells for around $100. Today it sells for $26, WHY??? HMMM..let me think NO IMAGES TO LOOK AT.
My bidders have no idea what it looks like so they either move on or put a very low bid on.
|
DianaAW
|
posted on May 30, 2002 07:04:07 PM new
Hi everybody,
I just want to let you know that we are planning to update you on what exactly happened today (to the best of my understanding, the outage was due to an extremely unlikely sequence of events - we will provide more detail as soon as we are able to gather information from engineering.)
We also plan to offer some sort of compensation to the users who were affected by this outage. Of course, it goes without saying that we are deeply sorry for the inconvenience caused by today's outage.
Thank you for your patience,
Diana
|
jilliewillie
|
posted on May 30, 2002 07:04:44 PM new
Those of us who had auctions close during the down time, not only lost the potential of a sale for those items, but the fees charged by both eBay AND auctionwatch for those auctions. I have several items which I will have to relist because of the outage, as well as items I lost money on because the bid amounts didn't climb like they normally do at the end.
VERY DISAPPOINTING!
[ edited by jilliewillie on May 30, 2002 07:05 PM ]
|
ewora
|
posted on May 30, 2002 07:08:53 PM new
Well...when someone emails me and say they would like to bid but would like to see a picture could I send them one??? I would guess that yes I lost money because they didn't bid without benifit of said picture.
I got more than one email requesting photos.
Multiply that by the number of people who didn't ask for photos and who didn't bid because there wasn't a photo then one might conclude that there was lost revenue from the lack of pictures.
|
dman3
|
posted on May 30, 2002 07:35:03 PM new
macker123
I'm not really disagreeing with any here, anyone who had auctions closeing in the last day or so when problems started lost at least some chance of better biding and sales with the loss of pictures 
there are many things that happen online that can't be helped as much as they hurt and if you cant look on it with a certin amount of humor you would just walk away and quit before you hardly got started.
No amount of harping or refunding can turn the last few hours around and make them turn out any differently then they already have why cry over spilled milk when there is only two choices drink it off the ground or wait and remilk the cow tommorrow and hope its a better day .
if this was posable someone would be auctioning it off on ebay for a price right now and with out a pictures and making a fortune..
http://www.Dman-N-Company.com
Email [email protected]
[ edited by dman3 on May 30, 2002 07:38 PM ]
|
bidsbids
|
posted on May 30, 2002 07:52:45 PM new
It's ironic but last night I was thinking how essential photos are to an auction and how often the image hosters go down and ruin an auction. I then came up with the idea of hosting the same auction photo on two different sites so that a seller almost always had the same photo in two places on his auctions but also occasionally only had one photo on his auction but also never had zero photos.
A little extra work but worth the time when disaster strikes. It won't work well with auction that have lots of photos but at least one main photo can be duplicated via image hosting.
|
Libra63
|
posted on May 30, 2002 07:53:32 PM new
I agree with DMan. This is not a true science and things happen that can't be controlled. Auctions could have been ended prior to the ending time and relisted but some chose to ride it out. I know that quite a few people use eBay for their income and I feel bad about that, and I am sure that AW does also but it is now up and running again. Remember when AW was down for almost 4 days, now thats misery. But we survived and are still here.
|
epifanie
|
posted on May 30, 2002 07:54:53 PM new
dman..you say "some chance at better bidding"? what about NO chance of any bidding. im an artist and no ones gonna bid on art they cant see.!! Some of my auctions in the past have had bids increase threefold in the last hour of bidding , so this issue with AW being down this long is a significant one. Using little sayings about spilt milk and cows is appropriate talk for disappointed children, but doesnt really cut it when it comes to responsible business people. There really is now way to get any real complensation from Auctionwatch because there is no way to determine how much could have been lost. However, for me, one good thing came out of it. I listed one auction directly through ebay and finally taught myself some simple html code so my auction would look better. This was a real lesson to me, I am going to learn my own code and make my own database so I can have more control when this kind of thing happens!
pbrooke
|
hair2dye4
|
posted on May 30, 2002 10:06:28 PM new
Ya well, WE all lost money and bids, do you bid on items you can't see? All of my auctions closed 15 minutes after AW was up again, I know I lost a lot of bids, yes I could have cancelled some bids and started over, then you lose customers. Or I could start my prices higher, but then you have less interest, it is a gamble and I just rolled craps! LOL
How many last minute bids do you place, I think the regular e-bay folks do all there bids in the last few minutes and if you were checking auctions with no pictures then well why wait around. buy from someone else.
guess I won't go to Vegas anytime soon, lost a bunch on the last ebay outage too..
good luck to all
|
superman100
|
posted on May 30, 2002 11:29:56 PM new
"DianaAW: .... outage was due to an extremely unlikely sequence of events".
If it was so unlikely, then why did it happen? If it happened, then it's likely.
|
bidsbids
|
posted on May 30, 2002 11:35:51 PM new
No one is forced to use AW services. There is no way people should gripe on an optional servive, either live with AW's shortcoming or find another service or use eBay's IPix or host your own images for free.
|
macker123
|
posted on May 31, 2002 12:09:48 AM new
bidsbids,
"No one is forced to use AW services. There is no way people should gripe on an optional servive, either live with AW's shortcoming or find another service or use eBay's IPix or host your own images for free."
That is stupid! Why would you say that??? This is not a FREE service we are talking about. I pay around $100 per month to AuctionWatch and I expect 100% uptime. Now everybody knows, that is not possible, but having a system down for half a day is UNACCEPTABLE and WE all deserve to be COMPENSATED!!
"either live with AW's shortcoming or find another service"
I didn't sign up knowing this. It is not like AuctionWatch advertises, "FREE one day a month downtime".
|
mrfoxy76
|
posted on May 31, 2002 04:57:44 AM new
dman3
I never ever would buy an item without a picture and I think most people would be in the same position. Would you buy say a CAR based on description............NO well perhaps you would based on your posts.
Of course people lost money they LOST POTENTIAL bids due to no pictures being available to reassure potential buyers of the product.
|
yeahwell
|
posted on May 31, 2002 05:30:35 AM new
well, I didn't have any items ending yesterday but I still lost business because ALL of my items have BUY IT NOW prices; I generally sell at least 2-3 items every day with this option; but if a potential customer goes to my listing tey aren't going to purchase it without a photograph. And, I know they can look elsewhere for it!
I'm curious to hear about the compensation that AW has in mind as well as some time of guarantee (ie "we guarantee to never be down for more than 1 hour or we will offer our customers ......."
|
RSMSPORTSGA
|
posted on May 31, 2002 06:30:32 AM new
Yes...I know from our emails....PHOTOS ARE ESSENTIAL....the problem we are having today is...AUCTION SYNCHING??...FOR SOME REASON...OUR IMAGES WERE LOST??...the auction pro manager is now at 15 hours...we can not upload any auctions today DUE TO THE DOWN TIME YESTERDAY....of course...we learned...uploading through ebay is still an option...and ACTUALLY MUCH FASTER...CAN STILL USE HTML...ADS LOOK GREAT...emails can be sent since sales are a little slack right now...AMAZING...ONE LEARNS A LOT WHEN A SERVICE IS DOWN...AND YES WE DO EXPECT COMPENSATION....and I am sure we will receive it...WE pay AUCTION WATCH SOME MONTHS 200.00 PLUS....so..I trust we will get AN EMAIL TODAY?? telling us the credit we can expect!!!!...LIFE GOES ON...thank heavens...our life support is not AUCTION WATCH...hehehe!!!
|
jalleniii
|
posted on May 31, 2002 08:24:24 AM new
Aside from photos missing, no one is complaining that they were unable to ship due to the inability to access post-sale tools.
|
bidsbids
|
posted on May 31, 2002 08:38:48 AM new
If your cable TV goes out for 12 hours or even 3 days the cable company says tuff and never issue any rebates. The original poster asked what are your thoughts on this situation. This same occurrence can repeat itself. If it does then AW's survival is suspect. It may be best to have backup plans for another occurrence.
|
yeahwell
|
posted on May 31, 2002 08:41:26 AM new
when my cable system goes down, even if it is for 3-4 hours, I tell my cable company that they owe me a refund; when they say, "tuff" I tell them that I will report them! "tuff" is not an acceptable answer when you don't get what you pay for! Everyone here should remember that.
|
kyms
|
posted on May 31, 2002 08:48:42 AM new
I demand and get credit from my Cable Companies outages evry time it happens. I am always credited for the lost time because I demand it.
But this is different, my cable bill can be broken down into minutes and cents. If I have a 1 day outage we just figure out how much I pay per day and get that as my credit. How can we even begin to get actual credit for amounts we don't have? We don't know for sure that any of our items would have been bid on anyway. (probably would have, but we do not know for sure).
I would like to get a token credit of some sort, but how can I expect more than a token? AW could go broke if they had to offer actual credit to us for our losses.
Like with any utility, things happen and we need to be reasonable...nothing is 100% error-proof. I am just happy things are up and moving again.
|
Libra63
|
posted on May 31, 2002 08:58:29 AM new
This is rediculous. AW hasn't had an outage in quite a while and to think that this science is 100% safe you had better think again. i.e. you buy a car for $20,000.00 and it goes into the shop because of a malfunction due to inadequate auto workers. Say this outage lasts 3 days. i don't know of any car dealership that will give you another car for that time. So you have to rent one and you get no reimbursement. I know the auto maker won't give you a loner. But, you do have another option here, list your own through ebay, have your own free webspace or wait for AW. I am sure the AW owners just love to have down time. Ya right, down time is money and they don't want to lose that so then they have their technicians work overtime to bring your service back to them. Everyone always needs a back up system and if you don't then it is wait it out.
|
toolhound
|
posted on May 31, 2002 09:44:08 AM new
When you pay for a service that is 24/7 they should have the backup system. I don't have a backup electric company or phone company why should I need a backup for photo hosting? I was lucky enough to not have any auctions running that I am using AuctionWatch with but I have been there before and it costs you money and if your auctions ended during the down time it cost you big.
Is it just me or are there a few posters on this board that would say it is dark out at noon if you say it is light?
|
mrfoxy76
|
posted on May 31, 2002 09:56:22 AM new
VW gives you a loaner well they do at my dealership.
|
Libra63
|
posted on May 31, 2002 09:57:40 AM new
Yes, and if your electric, phone or gas goes out you don't get reimbursed for that..Backup system for the above are Candles or oil lamps, and fireplace. Phone who cares most are telemarket ones anyway. Remember if your electric goes out your computer goes out, you don't lose sales just the ability to contact your winners.
Be reasonable the only thing in this life that is absolute are death and taxes. I live in a state where we have lots of snow. Some days I was unable to get to work, I don't get paid for snow days so I am just out that days pay. I just move on and hope I can recoop another way. I am sure AW and their execs are meeting and deciding what to do, so be patient and wait for their response and then if they don't do anything it is time to gripe.
|
