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Can you believe ha.com does this? Really?

Started by Dr Carl,

64 posts in this topic

Dr Carl

Dr Carl

Posted
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Posted

As the OP, here's how my story just ended....

 

I'm traveling and between flights in Chicago with a 5 year old. But when I landed, an email appeared... my full price offer has been accepted!

 

So, Roy, I guess you're right - my buy now "offer" was accepted and I was able to "buy now".

 

My personal opinion is that HA should (1) relabel it as "suggested buy price" with a disclaimer saying seller has indicated a willingness to sell at this price, but it is at seller's discretion and (2) if a seller does not sell the book at the suggested buy price, there's some sort of consequence (minor perhaps) to the seller - after all, if I don't follow through on the "buy" as a buyer I am punished by HA...

 

My two cents...

 

Carl

 

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rjpb

rjpb

Posted
Posted
A broker who doesn't actually have the book in possession can't be expected to guarantee availability, but this should be made more clear to potential buyers. In these cases, hitting the Buy It button is really just a full price offer not an actual transaction.

 

For us oldsters, it's not much different than the mail order days when you sent a SASE along with your check or money order to a seller in the CBG and had to wait a few weeks to see if you got the book or just your money returned.

 

Or something substituted.

 

:facepalm:

 

Man, the kids of today have NO idea what it was like waiting weeks or even months to hear back.

 

lol

 

That's okay, their kids will be complaining about sellers who take a half hour to get around to teleporting their orders.

 

"I ordered a book from Roy forty-five minutes ago and it still hasn't arrived, should I be concerned?"

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shadroch

shadroch

Posted
Posted
MCS consignments are all in house and this situation should never happen there. Hit the BIN there and the book is yours I gather. No excuses.

 

 

New MCS consignments are listed both on ebay and their own site so it is possible two people might hit the BIN button at the same time. Unlikely, but possible.

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rjpb

rjpb

Posted
Posted
MCS consignments are all in house and this situation should never happen there. Hit the BIN there and the book is yours I gather. No excuses.

 

That's my experience, but they have some neg feedback on ebay due to something being sold on their website and then on ebay before they could update the listing. Despite language explaining that this might happen, there are unsurprisingly those on ebay who get grumpy when told the book they BINned is already gone.

 

Personally these sorts of disappointments are far less annoying than say being told you can't have a seat on an overbooked flight after you've arrived at the airport, but some people have different priorities.

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shadroch

shadroch

Posted
Posted
MCS consignments are all in house and this situation should never happen there. Hit the BIN there and the book is yours I gather. No excuses.

 

That's my experience, but they have some neg feedback on ebay due to something being sold on their website and then on ebay before they could update the listing. Despite language explaining that this might happen, there are unsurprisingly those on ebay who get grumpy when told the book they BINned is already gone.

 

Personally these sorts of disappointments are far less annoying than say being told you can't have a seat on an overbooked flight after you've arrived at the airport, but some people have different priorities.

 

 

I love being denied a seat on a flight like that. At one point I had six one way flight credits by booking on flights that had a good shot of being overbooked.

One trip to Vegas, the people at the gate in Laguarda were looking for volunteers to be bumped on the first segment to Dallas. They promised me a flight on the next plane- in an hour and gave me two one way tickets for my trouble. My friends went on ahead of me. got to Dallas and my friends were there. Their flight to Vegas was canceled so two flights worth of NYers were competing for the next flight to Vegas. I volunteered again , got to Vegas six hours after my original time and got four free tix out of the deal.

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BarryAllen

BarryAllen

Posted
Posted
A broker who doesn't actually have the book in possession can't be expected to guarantee availability, but this should be made more clear to potential buyers. In these cases, hitting the Buy It button is really just a full price offer not an actual transaction.

 

For us oldsters, it's not much different than the mail order days when you sent a SASE along with your check or money order to a seller in the CBG and had to wait a few weeks to see if you got the book or just your money returned.

 

Or something substituted.

 

:facepalm:

 

Man, the kids of today have NO idea what it was like waiting weeks or even months to hear back.

 

lol

 

:shrug:

 

Hard to imagine sending my money to anyone in that scenario...

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slym2none

slym2none

Posted
Posted

Just as fun was places like MHC saying the comics they advertise are in the VG-NM range, so you don't really know what you are getting condition-wise! Then you had to worry about alternates, as they always asked you to list some in case they were out of stock of what you wanted.

 

(thumbs u

 

 

 

-slym

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BarryAllen

BarryAllen

Posted
Posted
I recently (earlier today) went to ha.com and pressed the "buy now" button on a book I've wanted for some time... I was very excited to see it on ha.com at the "buy now" price...

 

... and guess what happened....

 

I was told by ha.com that "buy now" does not secure a purchase...

 

... "buy now" is only an offer made to owner, and the owner can accept or reject the "buy now" price, and I have to wait up to 72 hours to see what the owner wants to do (which can include not replying at all).

 

That is the one of the single worst policies I've seen on the Internet, never mind on a comic site -- since when is "buy now" not a buy?

 

Thoughts?

 

(P.S. This is first post I've started that expresses my frustration about an issue or site - but this was just too much for me not to express my dismay.)

 

In this day and age all this amounts to is lazy owners with zero commitment to customer service. However, since people vote with their dollars and continue to line their pockets, they will never care...

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VintageComics

VintageComics

Posted
Posted
A broker who doesn't actually have the book in possession can't be expected to guarantee availability, but this should be made more clear to potential buyers. In these cases, hitting the Buy It button is really just a full price offer not an actual transaction.

 

For us oldsters, it's not much different than the mail order days when you sent a SASE along with your check or money order to a seller in the CBG and had to wait a few weeks to see if you got the book or just your money returned.

 

Or something substituted.

 

:facepalm:

 

Man, the kids of today have NO idea what it was like waiting weeks or even months to hear back.

 

lol

 

That's okay, their kids will be complaining about sellers who take a half hour to get around to teleporting their orders.

 

"I ordered a book from Roy forty-five minutes ago and it still hasn't arrived, should I be concerned?"

 

Yes, we can't afford a teleportation machine but you can take advantage of our "squirt delivery option" where your order is fired by cannon to the location of your choice.

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VintageComics

VintageComics

Posted
Posted

As a 14 year old kid ordering a comic with newspaper money you didn't think to call 411 and do a search to find a phone number. You just mailed your check and then impatiently waited for weeks for something to arrive. Or not.

 

Check out the interior ads to some of those early Fawcett books. They had trading posts for kids where they could mail each other and trade stuff.

 

Completely different world pre internet and computers.

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VintageComics

VintageComics

Posted
Posted
A broker who doesn't actually have the book in possession can't be expected to guarantee availability, but this should be made more clear to potential buyers. In these cases, hitting the Buy It button is really just a full price offer not an actual transaction.

 

For us oldsters, it's not much different than the mail order days when you sent a SASE along with your check or money order to a seller in the CBG and had to wait a few weeks to see if you got the book or just your money returned.

 

Or something substituted.

 

:facepalm:

 

Man, the kids of today have NO idea what it was like waiting weeks or even months to hear back.

 

lol

 

:shrug:

 

Hard to imagine sending my money to anyone in that scenario...

 

It was a way of life for collectors pre internet and pre cons.

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VintageComics

VintageComics

Posted
Posted
Hey Roy, looks like your website hasn't been updated since you set it up, just saying. :baiting:

 

That's a real sore spot with me. I try and update it from time to time but I made a few mistakes in developing it and the back end is pretty complicated to use.

 

I went with Magento because it was touted as the best thing since sliced bread but what nobody told me was that it's a software that is really made for huge, enterprise level companies so the back end is much more complicated and slow than I thought it would be to use.

 

In the mean time, my developers (who I never personally met and are somewhere out west, they just did it for me over the internet and cell phone) basically left me hanging after finishing the front end of the site and I just forgot about it for a time.

 

Now I've looked back into finishing it recently and the costs are enormous for me to do what I want to do...and it's been so long since the dudes skipped out on me that I even have to update the software first before making any changes.

 

Keep in mind this is all a different language to me so all I see is what it's going to cost. Combine that with how easy it is to sell at other places and I'm trying to justify paying 5 figures to get it up and running the way I want it to and I have a hard time motivating myself to do it.

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VintageComics

VintageComics

Posted
Posted
As the OP, here's how my story just ended....

 

I'm traveling and between flights in Chicago with a 5 year old. But when I landed, an email appeared... my full price offer has been accepted!

 

So, Roy, I guess you're right - my buy now "offer" was accepted and I was able to "buy now".

 

:applause:

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Sqeggs

Sqeggs

Posted
Posted
A broker who doesn't actually have the book in possession can't be expected to guarantee availability, but this should be made more clear to potential buyers. In these cases, hitting the Buy It button is really just a full price offer not an actual transaction.

 

For us oldsters, it's not much different than the mail order days when you sent a SASE along with your check or money order to a seller in the CBG and had to wait a few weeks to see if you got the book or just your money returned.

 

Or something substituted.

 

:facepalm:

 

Man, the kids of today have NO idea what it was like waiting weeks or even months to hear back.

 

lol

 

That's okay, their kids will be complaining about sellers who take a half hour to get around to teleporting their orders.

 

"I ordered a book from Roy forty-five minutes ago and it still hasn't arrived, should I be concerned?"

 

Yes, we can't afford a teleportation machine but you can take advantage of our "squirt delivery option" where your order is fired by cannon to the location of your choice.

 

lol

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BarryAllen

BarryAllen

Posted
Posted
A broker who doesn't actually have the book in possession can't be expected to guarantee availability, but this should be made more clear to potential buyers. In these cases, hitting the Buy It button is really just a full price offer not an actual transaction.

 

For us oldsters, it's not much different than the mail order days when you sent a SASE along with your check or money order to a seller in the CBG and had to wait a few weeks to see if you got the book or just your money returned.

 

Or something substituted.

 

:facepalm:

 

Man, the kids of today have NO idea what it was like waiting weeks or even months to hear back.

 

lol

 

:shrug:

 

Hard to imagine sending my money to anyone in that scenario...

 

It was a way of life for collectors pre internet and pre cons.

 

So pre-70's?

 

Still can't imagine sending much money in any direction and hoping something accurate comes back my way... It is amazing that there were collectors at all!

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VintageComics

VintageComics

Posted
Posted
A broker who doesn't actually have the book in possession can't be expected to guarantee availability, but this should be made more clear to potential buyers. In these cases, hitting the Buy It button is really just a full price offer not an actual transaction.

 

For us oldsters, it's not much different than the mail order days when you sent a SASE along with your check or money order to a seller in the CBG and had to wait a few weeks to see if you got the book or just your money returned.

 

Or something substituted.

 

:facepalm:

 

Man, the kids of today have NO idea what it was like waiting weeks or even months to hear back.

 

lol

 

:shrug:

 

Hard to imagine sending my money to anyone in that scenario...

 

It was a way of life for collectors pre internet and pre cons.

 

So pre-70's?

 

Still can't imagine sending much money in any direction and hoping something accurate comes back my way... It is amazing that there were collectors at all!

 

I'm 44 so for me it was mid 80's. And I didn't know what a comic convention was.

 

The first time you did it you didn't expect it to happen. Afterward you became a little more careful.

 

Think buying raws on eBay but 100 times slower in every way.

 

:tonofbricks:

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