Discussion on AZSAuctions.com site - is now live - buy/sell/trade

If it doesn't fit the topic in any of the other forums, and is firearm-related, put it here!
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smithers599
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Re: Discussion on AZSAuctions.com site - is now live - buy/sell/trade

#31

Post by smithers599 »

Not a good first experience.

Created the account, then tried to list some .22 ammunition for sale. No can do. I listed "Category" as Sporting Goods, Shooting, Ammunition, and the error message said "9588 is not a valid category." What is that supposed to mean?

Also, since "New Message" no longer appears on the old Classified section, I am guessing that is over with, and only the new method of listing is available. Is that right?


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Re: Discussion on AZSAuctions.com site - is now live - buy/sell/trade

#32

Post by admin »

smithers599 wrote: October 26th, 2021, 4:35 pm Not a good first experience.

Created the account, then tried to list some .22 ammunition for sale. No can do. I listed "Category" as Sporting Goods, Shooting, Ammunition, and the error message said "9588 is not a valid category." What is that supposed to mean?

Also, since "New Message" no longer appears on the old Classified section, I am guessing that is over with, and only the new method of listing is available. Is that right?
As I said above, it would be self-defeating to roll out this new site, but leave the status-quo in place. Existing topics will remain, but new for-sale needs to go to the new site.

As for your issue, you didn't actually select the final category. You picked "ammunition", but did not finish. Perhaps it was because you didn't see the final box pop up on the subsequent row below...
Screen Shot 2021-10-26 at 5.48.38 PM.png
I contemplated only having everything at a max of 3 levels in to avoid that, but wondered if it would get too "messy" with a lot of top-level categories. Probably doesn't matter much at the early stages with not a lot of items listed yet. I am open to thoughts and suggestions.
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Re: Discussion on AZSAuctions.com site - is now live - buy/sell/trade

#33

Post by smithers599 »

^^^
Aha. If it was off the bottom of the visible screen, then I would not have seen it.
As to suggestions, an error message less obtuse than some numbers would save you the trouble of people bothering you. Maybe something like "Please complete the Category -- What type of ammunition?

As to questions, will there be the same level of privacy? That is, will name, address, email address, and phone number remain hidden, with the option to communicate by PM only?
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Re: Discussion on AZSAuctions.com site - is now live - buy/sell/trade

#34

Post by admin »

The site doesn't share any info; eg - won't be sold, shared, transferred, etc. In fact, I am contemplating just requiring a username, and email to sign up - further info can be optional. The downside to that is that it will attract some potential scammers since they don't have to give *any* personal info.

I tried to aim for the middle-ground by making an address and phone number required at sign-up, but not doing any sort of physical address verification or validating the phone # so that someone could put anything in there.

I'm leaning more towards removing that from registration and just leaving it as an option for those who wish to be a "verified" seller.

Any thoughts?
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Re: Discussion on AZSAuctions.com site - is now live - buy/sell/trade

#35

Post by QuietM4 »

It's probably 50/50. Even some of the scammers will comply with personal info requests. The feedback rating system should take care of them. A "Verified" tag lends some credibility to the seller, but a history of positive feedback means more to me than a digital check mark. Now that I know "Verified" is basically meaningless...since you don't actually verify any of the info..."Verified" is just a .jpeg next to the name. If you are going to have a "Verified" process, you actually have to verify the person through a legit method...paypal, small CC charge, etc. If you don't, then I'd rather just risk a scammer and go by feedback rating alone. People have to be pretty dumb to fall for most of the scams out there anyways.

And for the people who freak out over a PayPal verification or similar, they have no idea how the internet/computers works...or they most likely wouldn't be selling firearms on the internet anyways, if they were so concerned about Big Brother.
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Re: Discussion on AZSAuctions.com site - is now live - buy/sell/trade

#36

Post by smithers599 »

admin wrote: October 26th, 2021, 7:53 pm The site doesn't share any info; eg - won't be sold, shared, transferred, etc. In fact, I am contemplating just requiring a username, and email to sign up - further info can be optional. The downside to that is that it will attract some potential scammers since they don't have to give *any* personal info.

I tried to aim for the middle-ground by making an address and phone number required at sign-up, but not doing any sort of physical address verification or validating the phone # so that someone could put anything in there.

I'm leaning more towards removing that from registration and just leaving it as an option for those who wish to be a "verified" seller.

Any thoughts?
Thank you. My question is not whether my information will be sold etc., but whether it will be visible to users of the site, or to buyers or sellers. I want to continue to be able to meet people at the Bass Pro or Sportsmans, exchange cash for goods, and go our separate ways without ever knowing our real names, much less phone numbers and email addresses. Will that be possible?
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Re: Discussion on AZSAuctions.com site - is now live - buy/sell/trade

#37

Post by admin »

I really appreciate the feedback on the site. I want to make it user-friendly, easy and useful - and it helps to get feedback from others.

I did go ahead and just remove the requirements to put in phone number, address, etc upon initial registration. I have other things I'm using to try to reduce scammers/spam, etc. A user can choose to enter that info later in their profile if they want, or if they want to be a 'verified' account.

I also modified the categories a bit so that none of them proceed past a third tier to avoid the issue smithers599 had where he didn't see the last category box. If the site continues to grow, I will modify the way subcategories work down the road.

As for your personal info, if you buy something or win an auction, it will provide the contact info you have in your profile to the seller so they can reach out to you directly to finalize the deal, arrange payment or ship the item. Outside of transactions you enter into to buy something, it isn't visible to any other buyers or sellers. eg, if you bid on something but don't win it, or place an offer on something that isn't accepted, the seller doesn't have access to your address or contact info - if that's what you're asking.

If you're deliberately trying to avoid giving names or contact info, you'd need to enter bogus info in your profile for everything but your email address and when you buy something or win something, you'd just use the site messages (like PM's on this site) to communicate with them for a meet-up time, place, etc. That option is immediately presented to the buyer (and seller) when a deal is made. So yes, you can still remain anonymous in that sense, if that's what you're after.

Here's an example of what I mean (I happened to pick a shipping option by mistake, but the rest is what I'm referring to for bogus info along with how you'd communicate privately with the seller).
Screen Shot 2021-10-26 at 9.30.23 PM.png
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Re: Discussion on AZSAuctions.com site - is now live - buy/sell/trade

#38

Post by admin »

QuietM4 wrote: October 26th, 2021, 8:29 pm It's probably 50/50. Even some of the scammers will comply with personal info requests. The feedback rating system should take care of them. A "Verified" tag lends some credibility to the seller, but a history of positive feedback means more to me than a digital check mark. Now that I know "Verified" is basically meaningless...since you don't actually verify any of the info..."Verified" is just a .jpeg next to the name. If you are going to have a "Verified" process, you actually have to verify the person through a legit method...paypal, small CC charge, etc. If you don't, then I'd rather just risk a scammer and go by feedback rating alone. People have to be pretty dumb to fall for most of the scams out there anyways.

And for the people who freak out over a PayPal verification or similar, they have no idea how the internet/computers works...or they most likely wouldn't be selling firearms on the internet anyways, if they were so concerned about Big Brother.
I'm not sure how you get that "verified" is meaningless. In order to get verified you DO need to use a payment gateway for a $1.50 charge to a credit card. That amount is then credited back to the account on the auction site.
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Re: Discussion on AZSAuctions.com site - is now live - buy/sell/trade

#39

Post by QuietM4 »

I wasn't aware of the CC charge for verification...I was going by your previous post where you said you don't verify the users address or ph#. I haven't signed up for the new site, and I most likely won't....I get much better response or my sale items on ARFCOM.
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Re: Discussion on AZSAuctions.com site - is now live - buy/sell/trade

#40

Post by azrik »

I keep getting this fatal error when trying to sign up:

Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Class 'Ppb\Validate\GeoLocation' not found in [data]
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Re: Discussion on AZSAuctions.com site - is now live - buy/sell/trade

#41

Post by admin »

azrik wrote: October 27th, 2021, 3:20 pm I keep getting this fatal error when trying to sign up:

Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Class 'Ppb\Validate\GeoLocation' not found in [data]
Fixed. You caught me in the middle of pushing an update to the server. It should work now - sorry!
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Re: Discussion on AZSAuctions.com site - is now live - buy/sell/trade

#42

Post by TangoDown »

So after being on the site from my phone, I really dislike the size of the Featured listing. I get it costs more so the point is to have it be prominent, but it makes all the other listings look like ads at the bottom of a page.
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Re: Discussion on AZSAuctions.com site - is now live - buy/sell/trade

#43

Post by QuietM4 »

I don't think the site needs categories like "Art", "Baby", "Crafts", "Dolls and Bears", etc. It should only focus on guns and gun related accessories. You aren't re-inventing eBay.
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Re: Discussion on AZSAuctions.com site - is now live - buy/sell/trade

#44

Post by admin »

QuietM4 wrote: October 28th, 2021, 12:22 am I don't think the site needs categories like "Art", "Baby", "Crafts", "Dolls and Bears", etc. It should only focus on guns and gun related accessories. You aren't re-inventing eBay.
No, you're right - I'm definitely not reinventing eBay - or Gunbroker or Armslist for that matter. I started creating firearm-related categories from scratch and realized how many there are, and then started going through notes from past requests on the forum classified ads and categories, so it branched out to tangential categories related to outdoors, then tools, then cars and pretty soon I realized that if all this kind of stuff is going to pop-up, it needed to either be ONLY firearm related stuff (eg, no Outdoor stuff, sporting goods, car stuff), or it needed to be "everything" as options. I just opted for the latter, figuring that it was 'more choice' and the site is set that if there aren't any items in those categories, they don't appear when you click on the categories at the top. And rather than manually creating all these categories, I found someone who had already done it and was able to pull their data and import the already-created categories into the database, and then just modify/add a few things.

My goal was to put something together that was similar to the old backpage, but at the same time, addressing the major issues with that site (which were many) and avoiding the pitfalls.
TangoDown wrote: October 27th, 2021, 11:14 pm So after being on the site from my phone, I really dislike the size of the Featured listing. I get it costs more so the point is to have it be prominent, but it makes all the other listings look like ads at the bottom of a page.
I agree with this. I am working on some alternative site skinning to make it look better. I am not creative at all, so it takes a lot of experimentation for me to get something that looks right.
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Re: Discussion on AZSAuctions.com site - is now live - buy/sell/trade

#45

Post by Firemoose »

Very cool. Nice job!
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