Checkoutmycards.com

[timgetsch]

Originally Posted by ohiomike

...I think shipping time becomes increasingly less a factor when shipping costs become increasingly less a factor too. Its the combination of high shipping costs / slow shipping that will cause the most frustration.

Our updated shipping systems are in place, so we should be able to stay on top of shipping now. For the past week most orders have been shipped withing 2-3 business days.

Originally Posted by ohiomike

Yes, I think dealing with the perception that buyers have in regard to the shipping price is a big factor. Admittedly, the current shipping policy is not out of line for buyers who are just purchasing single cards, a handful of high-end cards, or orders of say 50 cards or less. It's larger orders where the current shipping policy leaves a lot to be desired by prospective buyers. That perception could lead to just an overall bias against the site. That is what needs to be avoided.

Do you feel that the proposal to charge $20 for the first 100 cards and $10 for each additional 100 cards accomplish this?

Originally Posted by ohiomike

...Sellers are paying for a marketplace to have their cards sold and shipped to the buyer for them. Therefore, its sellers who should be assigned the additional overhead costs involved with labor costs of pulling and preparing cards to ship.

This is an interesting observation. I haven't tried to tie packaging and postage costs to seller expenses because it varies based on where the buyer lives, how many cards they purchase, and what shipping service they choose. We can definitely consider ways for sellers to subsidize the cost of shipping so that buyers feel like they are getting a better deal.

Originally Posted by ohiomike

This is true, but it also raises the question of why you even allow low priced cards to be on the site in the first place.

When sending us content to put on the site, we have never guaranteed what we will or won't allow on the site. We simply reserve the right to reject cards for any reason. One reason we commonly reject cards is because they aren't worth enough to put on the site. That said, it takes time and money to reject cards and send them back. Many times it just isn't worth the effort to reject some cards.

Originally Posted by ohiomike

There are ways in which the site COULD be making money off even these low price cards (as well as all flip transactions) but you seem unwilling to add a transaction fee. And I respect that... you seem to be looking out for the sellers best interest, which is one of the best parts about your site versus say an ebay.

If we make any more money than we currently do off of the low price cards, sellers will be losing money. We already charge $0.15 to list cards. If we add an additional $0.10 transaction fee, sellers will be complaining that they can't sell cards for $0.25 any more.

Originally Posted by ohiomike

But I remember reading in your terms before ever becoming a user on the site that you did not want cards under $1 listed.

This is what we state on the "How to ship to us" page.
"Our rule of thumb is that we try to make our service cost effective for cards worth $1 or more. There are many cards worth less than $1 that might still be worth putting on the site (e.g. vintage commons and commons from the current year). We may use our discretion and return cards that might not be worth going through the system. Typically we only do this when we receive large lots or cards that are primarily commons from the 1980's and 1990's."

Originally Posted by ohiomike

But now that there are hundreds of listings daily for cards not only under $1 but going as low as $0.01-$0.15 per card, it seems your stance has changed.

Stance has not changed. Our site is still not cost effective for those cards. The sellers are likely losing money on those particular cards, but they didn't have to spend the time sifting through their cards to find only the better ones. So in the long run, they likely saved a lot of time.

As long as we don't lose money to ship those items, we don't mind having them on the site. If there are new policies that would cause us to lose money on shipping, we would be forced to do something different with these cards.

Originally Posted by ohiomike

So as long as you are going to allow for these cards to be listed, I find it hard to swallow that you are taking the stance that you are unlikely to do anything to promote the sales of these lower priced cards. Either disallow them altogether or allow them and put policies in place that will help them sell. Frankly, I could go either way. Without the low priced cards you wouldn't have nearly as much time invested into listing cards that aren't really making money for the site by your own admission. It would allow for the better cards to get on the site quicker, and make for happier sellers.

Only a small percentage of the new cards listed are in this category. We wouldn't save that much time by rejecting the low price cards, and if we did reject more cards, we would have to start charging sellers for cards that are being rejected. This would really upset sellers because they would be paying for cards that didn't even get listed. This would then make sellers more cautious about what they send us, which would slow down the rate at which we receive items. As you can see, this is not a simple issue. Any changes have down stream consequences.

Originally Posted by ohiomike

... you seem to not really care weather low priced cards are being sold or not, yet you don't want to lose the processing fees they generate.

Yes, I don't really care about having low priced cards on the site, as long as we don't lose money on them.

Actually, I don't care about he processing fees that low price cards generate, but I do care that people won't send us as many items to list if they have to spend a bunch more time picking out the low price cards. This is my big concern. This was an issue we had when we charged $0.20/card for processing. People simply spent too much time sifting through their cards, and they didn't just throw them in a box and send them to us.

When people have to sift through their cards it isn't just the low price cards that we don't receive... We often end up not receiving any cards because it is simply too much work to put the package together for us.

Originally Posted by ohiomike

I don't think anyone is asking you or the company to incur costs without passing them along... I just believe they are being allocated incorrectly by charging the buyers overhead fees that should be covered by sellers. There are PLENTY of ways that the processing fee structure could remain the same while sellers still pay a little more after the card is sold to help cover fees.

We will chew on this one. Charging a transaction fee to the seller to help subsidize the packaging fee is an interesting concept.

Originally Posted by ohiomike

I'm not saying any of these changes will be easy or that you can just implement them at the flip of a switch. But I think there are more possibilities out there than what you are entertaining as realistic.

I agree that we need to take time and we will need to be very careful, and I agree that there is some potential in these ideas.

Originally Posted by ohiomike

As sellers we're all in favor of the site making profits and being successful. Its a necessity for the site to continue to prosper and grow. And I don't think any of us would be spending as much time as we are making suggestions if we didn't have the long term success of the company in mind.

This is awesome! This is exactly whey I picked the domain name CheckOutMyCards.com. I wanted the sellers to take ownership of this site, and to be invested in its success.

Originally Posted by ohiomike

And we are not asking you to take money out of your own pocket to make these changes. Now and in the recent past, you have heard from many of us about implementing some kind of additional fee to either make it easier on your company and/or on the seller. How many other sites do you know of where the sellers are asking for more fees to help out?

We do appreciate this. We are just being really careful that any changes won't have adverse consequences.

Originally Posted by ohiomike

I'm sure this issue has no quick resolution, so with that said I think most sellers would agree that the changes you've proposed to shipping are an improvement over what is in place now. So in my opinion the best way to proceed would be to implement the proposed changes (assuming you don't hear any complaint from anyone, and assuming the changes are sustainable for you and your company without hurting your bottom line) but continue a dialogue which could hopefully lead to some ideas for change that would not only make it better for the buyer, but also for the site itself. (i.e. Like the site making more money somehow off otherwise free transactions like "flips")

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback.

[timgetsch]

Originally Posted by pskell02

Tim, did you guys give it any thought to cross market with Blowout? Maybe work out some kind of system where the $$ we have in our accounts can be used to purchase boxes/cases from BO. Charge a small percentage on top of the box price so you guys still get money in the cashout process.

We have started communication about this a couple times. I originally approached them at the national last year. We are both open to the idea, but we need to figure out the specifics.

When I get some time I will post my latest ideas about what we could offer.

[otmack2o]

I am currently accepting all offers...

2_t_2's Cards - CheckOutMyCards.com

[timgetsch]

Originally Posted by cardsrus1

But if the buyer is buying a lot from one seller than your costs are not that high. The fees are fine if someone buys 100 cards from 100 sellers. But for a buyer that buys 100 from a hand full of sellers the fees are out of line, especially if they are all from one seller. Maybe the fees should be based on the number of sellers rather than the number of cards...

Giving a break on shipping for ordering multiple cards from the same seller is an interesting concept. I would have to look into the numbers to see what we actually save when this happens.

Originally Posted by cardsrus1

Is it possible for us to leave a message for the buyers? Such as a note to buyers to use the best offer option to take 25 cents off each card to cover the shipping with X# of cards or money being spent. And even better would be a way to communicate with the declined best offers.

I like the idea of letting sellers specify a note that will appear when people are searching their inventory is a good one. If we were to offer this, we would review all notes before they go live on the site. We are very careful about what content gets displayed on the website.

We are not likely to add a way for people to communicate directly on our site in the near future, but that said, I am aware of the reasons why people commonly need to communicate when trying to negotiate offers. I am planning to make several updates to the offer system so that people can have a much better experience.

[bigchili73]

Hey Tim,

How about an option for a seller who may have originally rejected an offer to go ahead and accept the offer in the future. This would be contigent of course on the buyer still being interested in purchasing for the original offer they made. I just find that I will reject an offer and then a week may pass and I decide I would take what the seller was offering for the card. It might help to move more inventory off of the site.

Thanks Tim keep up your great effort on an awesome site. I have about 200 more cards ready to be sent. Had to sift through a few with the new upcharge in fees though.

[ohiomike]

I do think $20 for the first 100 and $10 per 100 after that is a fair price for buyers to pay for a bulk order. On a 500 card order, the shipping price would drop from $85 to $60... a 30% reduction in shipping fees. Very encouraging. I'd still hope that ways sellers could subsidize shipping costs for buyers should be explored, as the less shipping prices are a factor, the more cards buyers will buy. But I do think the proposed change will help solve some of the perception issues that shipping prices on large orders are out of line.

[crr9381]

my only issue is that i dont buy large quantities of cards and would not have to pay $20 for shipping when i might only have 10 cards that need to be shipped to me. Is there any way to make it so there are tiers if you dont have large numbers of cards be shipped?

[fungi2510]

Crr- I think it is still 3 bucks for the first, then 10 or 15 cents per after that. I think it caps at 20 for the first 100. I could be wrong, but that makes sense to me.

[ohiomike]

Originally Posted by crr9381

my only issue is that i dont buy large quantities of cards and would not have to pay $20 for shipping when i might only have 10 cards that need to be shipped to me. Is there any way to make it so there are tiers if you dont have large numbers of cards be shipped?

Tim said for orders under 100 cards that the normal shipping rates would still apply ($3 for the first card + 25 cents for each additional card).

[crr9381]

oh ok, i must have missed that. thanks guys.