kristie
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posted on July 18, 2001 07:52:50 AM
I previously have been using Auction Amiga and am sad to see that they'll be closing. I signed up for the trial of Auctiva and have not been able to get my auctions to post. I sent them a customer support request over 24 hours ago and have heard nothing. Do they have a customer support phone number? So far, I'm not impressed and seriously doubt I will be subscribing to a service who doesn't have a customer support phone number and doesn't respond within 24 hours. Do any of you use Auctiva? What has your experience been?
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litlux
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posted on July 18, 2001 07:59:44 AM
I have used the Auctiva gallery service and when it was not working correctly, I emailed them asking for help
Auctiva never had the courtesy or common sense to respond.
As a result, I decided not to use their other services, even though they were attractive.
I am fairly old fashioned in the sense that I believe customer's questions should be answered, no matter what. God knows I get a few of them myself from bidders. So when a service I use fails to respond, my pocketboook closes tighter than a quohog. ("Clam" for all you non-New Englanders)
However, someone more patient with poor service may be able to answer your question and solve your problem.
Still, I think it is Auctiva's responsibility to provide support, not the community.
[ edited by litlux on Jul 18, 2001 08:07 AM ]
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igetbargains
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posted on July 18, 2001 08:43:38 AM
Kristie,
I would not recommend Auctiva. I have been using them for the past 3 months or so. Customer Support is a shame!
I have been unable to post auctions either. The problem has been going on this week. They must be cowering under a desk right now.
Do I sound frustrated? Well I am. For now it is back to Mr. Lister. Just wish I Knew a way to get these 40 auctions, that were written with Auctiva, over to eBay. (Short of cut and paste)
I for one and moving away from Auctiva.
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alanuk
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posted on July 18, 2001 08:59:22 AM
I use Auctiva and yes the Poster can be very frustrating. But i have found that usung the Bulk Upload to Mister Lister works very well and for the past few weeks I have had no problems at all.
As far as support is concerned, if you are getting no response to your requests, post your problem on their discussion boards and if a support person doesnt answer it i'm sure one of the other users will be able to help. I have stuck with Auctiva since the beginning of this year and have seen improvments. Their Manager program is excellent and I think the Poster will be also when the posting/scheduling issues have been sorted out.
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iowaantiques
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posted on July 18, 2001 10:53:34 AM
My own experience with Auctiva support has been good. Poster has always worked for me. Are you trying to use the scheduler? It does say it's a Beta release
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paintpower
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posted on July 18, 2001 11:46:52 AM
I've been using Auctiva since I started selling on Ebay (October 1999). Best place to get questions answered is on their discussion boards. Also, the posting/scheduling part is still in beta testing so I'm still posting auctions manually, but they do post fast and you can get a good bunch of them up in an hour's time.
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lafournigue
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posted on July 18, 2001 11:53:22 AM
I would agree that Auctiva support is terrible. I haven't been able to log in to my account for 36 hours now and I am still waiting for a reply. They do have a good product(Auctiva Manager) and it saves a lot of time when it is working. But when ebay makes the slightest change Auctiva can be down for a week. I've promised myself to find something else. I have checked out other products, but when I read the boards, it appears that all the other services are having problems, too. I'm just paying fees month by month with Auctiva in case something better comes along.
David
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computerboy
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posted on July 18, 2001 01:36:33 PM
Might I recommend Vrane to you disenchanted Auctiva users? They have Power relister Gold and the product is exceptional. They also have a number of other Auction tools, some of which are free of charge.
We've used this service for some time and have been very pleased with the results.
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lafournigue
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posted on July 18, 2001 03:36:30 PM
After only 1 days of use of Vrane it is not much better than Auctiva. The power lister is restricted to users from only a few select countries.The power lister screen is so poorly set up that it doesn't memorize the default settings so one has to re-input them each time making everything very prone to error. Also the instructions are super confusing for new users. The instructions say to not change anything if you want to relist exactly like the original auction. But low and behold I didn't change the default settings and it relisted all my auctions to ship to the 'US only' instead of 'international' .I had to go in manually and change them all. In addition, the relister boasts a 7 second relist delay but today it has been relisting at 65-70 seconds per auction. Ebay takes 90 seconds, so not much difference. But to top it off, the customer service is not very polite. I wrote them that when relisting the relister wasn't putting the original auction link in the auction. I asked for 2 credits. Someone replied back that if I'm not happy to close my account and they'll refund.
It is only my first day so I'm definitely not impressed.
David
[ edited by lafournigue on Jul 18, 2001 05:02 PM ]
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ebud
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posted on July 18, 2001 04:36:51 PM
kristie: please provide me with a case # and I will look.
litlux - please reply here with your support case # and I will look into it. There is generally nothing we dont fix and almost always we reply within a day or two.
Under no circumstance do we not reply at all. If that happened, perhaps your case wasn't completely submitted. You should have received a confirmation via email with your case #.
We do not have a support phone #. It simply is not cost effective, and for as little as we charged we can not afford to do so. Not even Andale does that anymore and they charge 2.5%. We are charging far far less than that.
igetbargains: please provide a case #. We are not cowering under a desk.
The best place to get an answer is either our support request form on the help tab, or the discussion board links also on our help tab.
lafournigue: please provide a case #.
thanks,
Support
Tom T.
[ edited by ebud on Jul 18, 2001 04:37 PM ]
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ebud
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posted on July 18, 2001 04:57:06 PM
litlux: you have no support cases
igetbargains: 11 out of 11 of your support cases have been closed. Your last case we replied to is this one: case #118902
Posted Monday, July 16, 2001, 9:59:15 AM
replied Monday, July 16, 2001, 4:55:55 PM
Posted Monday, July 16, 2001, 6:40:36 PM
Posted Monday, July 16, 2001, 7:24:20 PM
replied Monday, July 16, 2001, 8:31:52 PM
Posted Tuesday, July 17, 2001, 2:07:47 PM
closed Wednesday, July 18, 2001, 8:32:17 AM
I really dont know what we can do. We answered several times in one day within hours.
My guess is some of your problems are caused by Ad Subtract and Norton Anti Virus. You have email scripting turned on which causes eBud to crash when it closes sometimes. Please try turning off *all* other programs and then posting or using eBud just to see if it works. From there we can try adding things back and see which it is that is breaking things.
lafournigue: I can't find an account for you so I dont know about your support cases. There were no accounts with email or usernames matching *fournigu* so you must have another username or email address you use in our system.
Support
Tom T.
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jadejim
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posted on July 18, 2001 05:24:43 PM
In desperation I signed up for a year at Auctiva this weekend. A VP promised to help me get pictures on and I had been trying to do that with poster for YEARS. Never could make it work. Needless to say the problem has not been resolved yet.
Lots of conflicts with Norton. Always Norton's fault. Found and downloaded a new package called Kinem and have finally been able to list a few auctions--oh and they have pictures and no I didn't have any problem uploading them. And no, there were no conflicts with Norton. Going to wait a week and see how end of auction management works and will probably cough up the entire $39.95 that this new program costs.
I was an ebud beta tester and loved it but enough is enough. I do not have time to constantly have the kinds of problems I have with Auctiva.
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kristie
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posted on July 18, 2001 06:09:23 PM
Ebud, my case number is #1189932. It
was posted at 9:11 P.M. on July 16. I just checked and it states "still awaiting response".
Kristie
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igetbargains
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posted on July 18, 2001 07:18:27 PM
Tom T.,
I do not appreciate you responding to my problems with Auctiva in this forum.
If you look at the case numbers you will notice the last two I closed without a solution from Auctiva.
Your mention of AdSubtract/Norton is the first time it have ever come up. The last suggestion I got from support was to "Download the latest IE. I don't know if it is going to do any good, but it can't hurt".
Never do I remember you posting a response to a question I have left on the Auctiva Discussion Boards, but you respond on the Auction Watch board?? You have my email address....why not email me direct?
[ edited by igetbargains on Jul 18, 2001 07:19 PM ]
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eastwest
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posted on July 18, 2001 07:51:03 PM
I am sorry you have had problems in the past with vrane!!!!!
I have been very inpressed with vrane and had my questiuons answered very fast..You may want to remember that you were asking for a credit of 2 cents......
As for the international setting...why would you not have listed only one auction the first time and see what happens...
correct your mistakes and learn from them ...that mistake would have cost you a whole penny and you would have learned form it !!!!
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iowaantiques
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posted on July 18, 2001 08:55:14 PM
Jeez, everybody has a complaint about something! I tried a number of the "free introduction" management software deals and decided that I'd _pay_ for Auctiva on a month to month basis. It's a long way from perfect, but it has features that I appreciate. YMMV
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jadejim
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posted on July 18, 2001 09:42:09 PM
Well guess what? By some sort of magic, I actually got answers to my auctiva support requests. However, turning off all my other programs including and more specifically both my anti virus and firewall programs is simply not an acceptable option.
I don't know about the rest of you, but running naked through a minefield isn't my idea of a big thrill!
This stuff may work if you have simple dial up connections and less sophisticated protections but with my DSL "always connected" there is no way I will be that vulnerable.
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kristie
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posted on July 18, 2001 09:48:51 PM
Jadejim, you're lucky to have gotten a response. I'm still waiting for mine. It's now approaching 48 hours since my case was opened and still no email or correpondence from Auctiva. I'm glad I found this out before I spent money on their service. Time to look elsewhere. 
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ebud
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posted on July 18, 2001 10:08:39 PM
kristie: fixed
igetbargins: we cant answer your support cases if you close the. When you leave them open we do answer them as I mentioned in my previous post.
You said: "Customer Support is a shame!" and "They must be cowering under a desk right now." I dont believe either of which to be true. Not every support person is going to have every answer, and not every computer acts in the same way as another computer with many of the same programs installed. Since I dont do 100% of the support I may not have answered any of your cases.
The discussion boards on our web site are primarily for users to be able to help other users, although we post and answer as much as we can there. Our main priority is to answer support cases though. At your request I will not try and help you anymore here. I will look for your post on our site a little later tonight.
jadejim: our support case replies to you did not ask you to turn off your antivirus and firewall forever. Just to try using the software to list an auction, then to turn them back on.
We were hoping to narrow the problem down to that particular software running and then could attempt to find a solution which would let you use both at once.
Thanks,
Support
Tom t.
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kathyg
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posted on July 18, 2001 10:22:58 PM
turning off all my other programs including and more specifically both my anti virus and firewall programs is simply not an acceptable option
The problem is, anti-virus and firewall programs can be terrible resource hogs, and eBud is a resource hog as well. These are not Auctiva problems so much as that fact that Windows 9x is a really crappy operating system. If you are running anti-virus and firewall software at all times, plus who knows what else, I would suspect you have a lot of conflicts and crashes with other software beside Auctiva products.
I don't know an easy answer to this. I use a hardware firewall, and most of the time I keep my antivirus software turned off because I can't tolerate the performance decrease more than anything else. I back up often and keep my fingers crossed. I keep my startup clean as possible and reboot often - like several times a day.
I feel sorry for anyone trying to support software like Auctiva's, because most PCs these days are already pretty screwed up before their software was ever installed.
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SaraAW
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posted on July 18, 2001 10:23:34 PM
jadejim,
Please edit your last post to take out the promotional wording:
"Give kinem a try."
If you're unable to edit your post within the next 30 minutes, I'll have to delete it.
Edited to add: I've now deleted your post and will email you a copy for ease of editing out the promotional language.
Thank you,
Sara
[email protected]
[ edited by SaraAW on Jul 18, 2001 11:16 PM ]
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SaraAW
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posted on July 18, 2001 11:19:18 PM
ebud and Everyone,
If you have technical support questions regarding Auctiva, etc., please take these issues to their support departments.
Thank you,
Sara
[email protected]
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jadejim
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posted on July 19, 2001 05:33:14 AM
kathyg: Thanks for the explanation. However, I have a whole lot more ROM than most--384 Megs. Should be plenty of resources for running the simple programs I use. I don't have crashes and conflicts except on the VERY rare occasion--and of course with Auctiva.
TomT. I appreciate what you are telling me but I don't really have time for experimenting right now. I need software that works first time every time.
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mrpotatoheadd
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posted on July 19, 2001 06:48:03 AM
Windows Resources vs. Memory
A common topic of confusion amongst Windows 9x users is the difference between resources and memory. If you use Windows 9x, you'll sooner or later run into a situation where you get an error message about low resources. However, this has nothing to do with the physical memory or RAM that's installed in your PC. Let's take a look at what those system resources are, how they get depleted, how you can monitor them, and how they can be refreshed.
http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/resources1.html
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jadejim
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posted on July 19, 2001 11:35:33 AM
Thanks for the link mr potoato!
That did explain a lot--do you know if it is the same for Windows ME?
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paintpower
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posted on July 19, 2001 02:05:38 PM
jimjade: if you are running Windows ME, there's your problem! I have it too and it is a very unstable operating system. Any little thing can set it off. It doesn't like the earlier versions of Norton that came preinstalled on it. I had to delete mine. It also does not like ZoneAlarm firewall software and didn't like AddSubtract. I was having all sorts of problems with my Windows ME until I uninstalled all those programs and now I'm having no problems (knock on wood - tomorrow it will not run at all! LOL). The sad thing here is that since the new operating system is scheduled to come out and Windows ME was such a disappointment, wonder what sort of support will be available for it?
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jadejim
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posted on July 19, 2001 03:01:28 PM
Thanks paint. I really haven't had any trouble with ME at all until this Auctiva thing. In fact some little foibles went away when I installed it.
I bought a new ME compatible Norton when I upgraded--and I always upgrade to the latest operating system.
I know some people have had a ton of trouble with ME but so far not me. Will be putting in a hardware firewall in September and adding one more puter to the network at that time. That should take care of any Zone Alarm trouble.
Oh and I have never been able to get Auctiva poster pictures to work. Bought it first way back when it was sold on ebay. That was Windows 95 days and a dial up. Went thru 98 and cable--still nothing. Now ME and DSL and nothing has changed except that I get DLL errors with Manager--but I can work around that.
Can't work around auctions with no images tho.
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paintpower
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posted on July 19, 2001 03:22:33 PM
jadejim: where are you trying to host your auction photos? I host mine on my ISP webspace and have never had a problem getting them to work with Auctiva Poster. I've been using it since October 1999 with no troubles at all with photo uploading and hosting.
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toke
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posted on July 19, 2001 03:37:39 PM
Hi mrpotatoheadd!
Nice to see you...been a while. Thanks for the great link...I bookmarked it. You know all my probs with understanding this stuff...
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jadejim
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posted on July 19, 2001 04:47:28 PM
paint--my normal place to host pics is my ISP--I have lots of space there and it worked great with Auction Amigo.
I have tried doing the same with Auctiva and it won't upload my pictures either to my ISP or their space.Locks up my computer and I get to start all over again.
I think I am listing about 10 auctions a week now and I should be doing 20 a day.
Will spend this evening relisting anything and everything I can find and maybe it will look better in the morning. And maybe I'll get a response from Auctiva by then.
My alternate software (the name that got deleted above)is a bit slow for me but I can and do make it work.
Thanks for all your help
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