From A Seller Perspective, constructive feedback from a seller's perspective Options

[Damon L1]

Most of this is venting, but I think there are two pieces of feedback I would like to articulate -- 1) the offers thus far have been silly low and 2) summer shipping just doesn't make sense for me.

First of all, I understand that I can limit the lowball offers by putting in ask prices. However, I can't find an easy way to do that in Cellartracker. I can do it for individual wines, but how do I do this for 200 wines? It's easier to just take everything down and to avoid the headache.

Getting lowball offers is incredibly annoying. When you offer me $25 for Clos Rougeard (less than 50% of retail), the 10 seconds required to open the email is a waste of time. There should be some minimum % of retail that a bidder can offer. 60%? 66%? It will still be annoying but perhaps it would scare off the less intelligent bidder.

I need a "No thanks" button for offers, ideally with commentary. I think there needs to be a feedback loop other than lack of response. This would help bidders understand why bids aren't being accepted.

Summer shipping. I refuse to sell or to ship wine in the summer if it is the seller's risk and the seller's cost. What incentive do I have to pay extra for shipping? Unless someone is paying me a major premium, I just don't understand why I would deal with the hassle of selling a few bottles. If I needed the cash, I would sell a large quantity of bottles and I would probably look at options other than Marketplace. Other than Vinfolio, I just don't understand who benefits from shipping fine wine in the summer months.

[Steve Bachmann]

Most of this is venting, but I think there are two pieces of feedback I would like to articulate -- 1) the offers thus far have been silly low and 2) summer shipping just doesn't make sense for me.

First of all, I understand that I can limit the lowball offers by putting in ask prices. However, I can't find an easy way to do that in Cellartracker. I can do it for individual wines, but how do I do this for 200 wines? It's easier to just take everything down and to avoid the headache.

Getting lowball offers is incredibly annoying. When you offer me $25 for Clos Rougeard (less than 50% of retail), the 10 seconds required to open the email is a waste of time. There should be some minimum % of retail that a bidder can offer. 60%? 66%? It will still be annoying but perhaps it would scare off the less intelligent bidder.

I've sent Eric LeVine a note to see if there is a bug or problem on his side. You should be able to set a bid filter which limits bids being sent to you based on relative metrics like % of average U.S. retail value. See this Vinfolio blog post titled "Bids have been placed on your wine." If you can't set such filters in CT, I'm sure we'll be getting it fixed soon.

I need a "No thanks" button for offers, ideally with commentary. I think there needs to be a feedback loop other than lack of response. This would help bidders understand why bids aren't being accepted.

The best feedback loop to bidders is setting an asking price. Perhaps we need a macro way to set asking prices on a relative basis so it can be done all at once for all wine marked for sale. Would that be helpful?

I've considered the feedback mechanism you suggested but ultimately it comes down to price. We're in the middle of updating our alerts architecture so bidders will be informed of new asking prices automatically as a stimulus to modify their bids. We're also planning on updating the bid pop-up to surface the last Marketplace transaction value, Average U.S. retail, and Average auction value from WinePrices.com to ensure people are aware of price levels before entering a number.

Summer shipping. I refuse to sell or to ship wine in the summer if it is the seller's risk and the seller's cost. What incentive do I have to pay extra for shipping? Unless someone is paying me a major premium, I just don't understand why I would deal with the hassle of selling a few bottles. If I needed the cash, I would sell a large quantity of bottles and I would probably look at options other than Marketplace. Other than Vinfolio, I just don't understand who benefits from shipping fine wine in the summer months.

You don't pay extra shipping. The shipping fee is the same regardless of shipping speed. There are shipping subsidies as well depending on the value per bottle. See this page under shipping fees.

Nevertheless, there are others who feel the same way as you. Please see this other forum post titled Shipping Options, Quesitons on Seasonality and inbound shipping and one potential solution we're considering in the future in post #3.

[Damon L1]

I've sent Eric LeVine a note to see if there is a bug or problem on his side. You should be able to set a bid filter which limits bids being sent to you based on relative metrics like % of average U.S. retail value. See this Vinfolio blog post titled "Bids have been placed on your wine." If you can't set such filters in CT, I'm sure we'll be getting it fixed soon.

Got it. I tried to do that with the "Manage Bid Alert" widget, but not sure if it worked. They request seemed to time out. It's not clear if I can set a $x over cost and a % above retail?

The best feedback loop to bidders is setting an asking price. Perhaps we need a macro way to set asking prices on a relative basis so it can be done all at once for all wine marked for sale. Would that be helpful?

Yes, that would be helpful. I agree asking price is the best signal. It's an interesting dynamic -- I realize most consumers will be comparing prices on your wineprices.com or on wine-searcher.com... so I don't want to overprice. However, for wines that I like, I tend to set an asking price above the low retail. I wonder if it's even worth listing those wines?

I've considered the feedback mechanism you suggested but ultimately it comes down to price. We're in the middle of updating our alerts architecture so bidders will be informed of new asking prices automatically as a stimulus to modify their bids. We're also planning on updating the bid pop-up to surface the last Marketplace transaction value, Average U.S. retail, and Average auction value from WinePrices.com to ensure people are aware of price levels before entering a number.
You don't pay extra shipping. The shipping fee is the same regardless of shipping speed. There are shipping subsidies as well depending on the value per bottle. See this page under shipping fees.

That is good to know. I read the help page on shipping and it wasn't clear. I thought I paid extra for overnight shipping if Vinfolio told me it was necessary. Probably my fault, but you should make this as clear as possible. I guess my concern is that if you are setting the shipping time, I don't want to assume the risk for heat damage. Is that the case?

Nevertheless, there are others who feel the same way as you. Please see this other forum post titled Shipping Options, Quesitons on Seasonality and inbound shipping and one potential solution we're considering in the future in post #3.

Sounds good. Looking forward to seeing the evolution.

[Kristin Vinfolio]

Got it. I tried to do that with the "Manage Bid Alert" widget, but not sure if it worked. They request seemed to time out. It's not clear if I can set a $x over cost and a % above retail?

Thanks for your response. Based on your feedback I realize we need to temporarily disable the option to set % or $ over cost as we are not currently pulling that from CellarTracker listings. We have logged this as a high priority issue. In the meantime, you should be able to set filters relative to retail or auction as well as your asking price and minimum price. I will look into the time out issue on our end. It may be occurring because of confusion with a filter you've set on cost.

Yes, that would be helpful. I agree asking price is the best signal. It's an interesting dynamic -- I realize most consumers will be comparing prices on your wineprices.com or on wine-searcher.com... so I don't want to overprice. However, for wines that I like, I tend to set an asking price above the low retail. I wonder if it's even worth listing those wines?

Since you, as the seller, make the ultimate decision whether to accept or ignore a bid I would argue it doesn't hurt for you to list those wines especially if you include your asking price.

It is good to know. I read the help page on shipping and it wasn't clear. I thought I paid extra for overnight shipping if Vinfolio told me it was necessary. Probably my fault, but you should make this as clear as possible. I guess my concern is that if you are setting the shipping time, I don't want to assume the risk for heat damage. Is that the case?

Thank you for the feedback. We will look into other ways of surfacing information on inbound shipping rules. To answer your question, yes, you as the seller ulitmately assume responsibility for the condition of the wine. We created the rules governing shipping speed determination after many rounds of internal discussion and feel comfortable that we are shipping in weather at speeds that ensure the quality of your wine. That said, we continue to monitor Marketplace user feedback and will use that to fine tune these rules as well as other Marketplace policies.

[Damon L1]

Thanks for your response. Based on your feedback I realize we need to temporarily disable the option to set % or $ over cost as we are not currently pulling that from CellarTracker listings. We have logged this as a high priority issue. In the meantime, you should be able to set filters relative to retail or auction as well as your asking price and minimum price. I will look into the time out issue on our end. It may be occurring because of confusion with a filter you've set on cost.
Since you, as the seller, make the ultimate decision whether to accept or ignore a bid I would argue it doesn't hurt for you to list those wines especially if you include your asking price.
Thank you for the feedback. We will look into other ways of surfacing information on inbound shipping rules. To answer your question, yes, you as the seller ulitmately assume responsibility for the condition of the wine. We created the rules governing shipping speed determination after many rounds of internal discussion and feel comfortable that we are shipping in weather at speeds that ensure the quality of your wine. That said, we continue to monitor Marketplace user feedback and will use that to fine tune these rules as well as other Marketplace policies.

Hey Kristin:

I am still having trouble creating a Custom Bid Alert. Seems like there is a problem with the widget -- maybe related to my CT usage?

On a separate note, if I set an asking price and a bidder bids the asking price, is the sale automatic or do I still accept/ignore?

As a consumer/collector, I think this is really interesting. I would still be hesitant to buy/sell during summer months, especially for wines of this caliber.

Thanks,
Damon

[Kristin Vinfolio]

I am still having trouble creating a Custom Bid Alert. Seems like there is a problem with the widget -- maybe related to my CT usage?

I just successfully created a custom bid alert in my test CellarTracker account but have logged an issue with our Engineering team to take a look at this functionality.Can you send me an email kristin@vinfolio.com with the specific criteria of the alert you are trying to create?

On a separate note, if I set an asking price and a bidder bids the asking price, is the sale automatic or do I still accept/ignore?

You still need to accept/ignore the bid. In the next 4-6 weeks we will be implementing an auto-accept feature to allow a seller to automatically accept bids on wine stored at Vinfolio that meet his private minimum price. At some time after that we will enhance this to support automatic acceptance for wine stored remotely. There are added requirements involved to support this for remote storage including support for a minimum quantity accepted and handling shipping deadlines.

[ericlev]

First of all, I understand that I can limit the lowball offers by putting in ask prices. However, I can't find an easy way to do that in Cellartracker. I can do it for individual wines, but how do I do this for 200 wines? It's easier to just take everything down and to avoid the headache.

Bulk-update (not rule-based but rather allowing the user to filter their own listings and edit asking and minimum prices for multiple wines in on form) is now live.

For CellarTracker users: http://www.cellartracker.com/list.asp?table=Sale