posted on October 13, 2002 06:28:06 AM new
Ok , so I go to the company email adress and whaddaya know I got this spam email from Carnaby.com auctions requesting / suggesting that we post / list / join Carnaby auctions ???? ...
Now , What I would like is some feedback , I went and of course took a look , site looks great etc ... but lets talk about the real deal here , I have learned that pretty auction sites dont mean pretty money being made and looking at the numbers there I dont think they're getting much traffic .
Sooooo ...
All this to say ...
Are Sellers making any money over there ( or starvin ) ????
Is listing at Carnaby a good idea ???
OR
Should we just regard this email we got as a waste of our time and just another piece of BAD SPAM ???
posted on October 13, 2002 07:20:16 AM new
About the same as the other very low traffic sites. Some sellers drive all of their online auction traffic to one site to use it as a free store and I'm sure a few Carnaby sellers are doing that very thing.
There are no low traffic sites ( other than a few niche sites ) worth the investment of time to justify the very few sales you will reap over a long period of time.
posted on October 13, 2002 09:23:27 AM new
Don't waste your time. The Bidville rejects completely destroyed that site. At least the last time I looked there, there were only a handful of people even listing items there any more. I tried it for some time and never got a sale. Any time a potential buyer would browse Carnaby, the bidville rejects drove them away. And there customer service, well now that I think about it, no one has good customer service. I would steer clear of Carnaby. Try epier. Much easier site to use than Carnaby. As far as warehousing items, you can auto-relist them there and you won't have to do any maintanence on them. And there is more traffic there than Carnaby. Not to say you will get rich there, but at won't be a total discouragement either.
PS: There free image hosting is top notch too. I use it for my ebay images. No down time and easy uploads.
posted on October 14, 2002 04:36:50 PM new
auctiongroup2002,
I am a regular buyer and sometime Seller at Carnaby. Yours is not the first I've read of emails being received so it's obvious that at long last, Carnaby is taking steps to promote itself and increase it's userbase.
I am not going to lie and tell you that it's teeming with life and I've never had better sales but Ithink things are looking a little more hopeful than they did a couple of months ago. What I can tell you that is that I notice more and more Sellers arriving every week and, while not quite as many yet, more bidders too. Heck - I even got outbid by one of them on an item the other day!
As tooltimes mentioned, some Sellers take advantage of Carnaby's Stores to park their inventory. Promotion of those stores should theoretically, drive more users to the site.
The site is very easy to use and has a first-rate Bulk Lister, Max Loader, that makes listing a breeze.
stonecold (or is that caffeitalia??) doesn't seem to spend a lot of time at Carnaby. While no doubt there are some users that were at BV previously, Carnaby is not inundated with trading cards and recipes etc. I seriously doubt that "BV rejects" are driving away potential customers.
stonecold also seems to have an issue with Carnaby's support - aside from his alterego, he is the only person I have seen on any board that thinks poorly of the Customer Support at the site. My personal experience is this - any time I have had a tech problem or question, Support have been prompt in reply to my emails and have been incredibly patient in working to resolve the issue. Their Moderator is quick, responding to questions in a timely and efficient manner. The Support staff are friendly (but not overly so like you find at some places), open to suggestions and criticisms.
The boards are like no others I have experiences anywhere. The members are respectful of one another, petty bickering rarely happens and the old hands go out of their way to help the newbies. The staff seem to have loosened up the place a little too with their Moderator introducing a promotional day each Saturday and a weekly "Wanted" thread.
Carnaby is caught in a Catch-22 like most third-tier sites - Sellers are reluctant to list because of the lack of bidders and there are few bidders because of the lack of items available. If Sellers like you and I don't take a chance, then sites like Carnaby don't stand a chance.
I don't think it will ever rival eBay - I don't think any site ever will - but it has the potential to offer a nice supplementary income.
posted on October 14, 2002 05:28:11 PM new
1 year ago, CARNABY was very exciting, with great tech innovations (MAX is simply the greatest bulk loader out there) and dedicated CS!
NOW...it is a wasteland! With Leo jumping ship, I don't forsee anymore nice tech surprises erupting there any time in the next century
It is probably still up as a tax write-off or something
posted on October 14, 2002 07:28:14 PM new
Palaco,
What I stated was that any time anything positive happened at Carnaby, the bidville rejects drove them away. I never stated that the crap auctions were still listed there. We went over that a while back when you pointed it out that they are pretty much gone. That part is true. Also true is for the most part, the bidville rejects are gone as well. Problem is the damage is done. With the sabotage the rejects did by driving anyone decent away, most of those people won't give it a second chance. Personally, I won't either. Their is just too much maintenance that you have to do with your auctions there once listed. There are only two sites that justify the time for maintenance and that is Ebay and Yahoo. And Yahoo requires nearly none. I would rank listing at Carnaby third in ease of listing behind Yahoo and epier. Ebay would be fourth, but again because of the traffic at ebay, it is justified where at Carnaby, it is not. And carnaby if you don't get a sale, you must go back and constantly relist making it very high maintenance. If they offered a 10 to 20 relist option, then it may become more desireable, but not now. As far as their complete lack of customer service, it is no different than any of the other sites out there so it also ranks very low. Quite simply put, because of the damage the bidville rejects did to Carnaby, it simply isn't worth the time to be there.
posted on October 14, 2002 09:03:13 PM new
Well stated palaco. Great customer and technical support and great chat rooms due to some gentle yet firm moderating.
A definite Catch 22 situation facing all third tier sites.
I think any influx of new buyers is from sellers trying new sites in search of a little success somewhere.
I've always wished Carnaby well and will continue to do so.
posted on October 14, 2002 11:43:59 PM new
stonecold,
We went over that a while back when you pointed it out that they are pretty much gone. That part is true. Also true is for the most part, the bidville rejects are gone as well. Problem is the damage is done. With the sabotage the rejects did by driving anyone decent away, most of those people won't give it a second chance.
Actually one of the problems I see it is that individuals such as yourself keep bringing up ancient and somewhat disputable history. By your own admission the "crap" auctions are gone (if indeed they were ever actually *there*), the troublemakers, as you perceive them, are gone and yet you persist in bringing the subject when someone new like auctiongroup asks questions about the site.
Now I don't believe there is anything wrong with laying out the history of a site, particularly when someone is considering doing business with them, but you offer a rather jaundiced view by your selective history.
And carnaby if you don't get a sale, you must go back and constantly relist making it very high maintenance.
You run 10 day auctions with the option to relist 3 times giving you a 30 day run. If the item doesn't sell, log into their Auction Manager, go to closed auctions, click "select all" and click "list identical". Click once more to confirm. 5 minutes at the most, once every 30 days. You and I obviously have very different opinions of "high maintenance".
As far as their complete lack of customer service, it is no different than any of the other sites out there so it also ranks very low.
stonecold, please humor me and tell me what the problem you had with Carnaby's CS was. Honestly, even those users who don't like the site or have given up and gone on to greener pastures seem to have nothing but praise for the Service staff. Someone obviously did something pretty major to piss you off and I can only think of one person who has stormed out of the place in a snit in the last 12 mths. Unless you are he (and if you are, I can't be the only one who didn't pick it), it's a mystery to me why you rate them so poorly. If it's been longer than 12mths, then I would suggest giving them another whirl - the CS staff at Carnaby now are first-rate and have their sh*t pretty together.
auctiongroup,
I have no idea whether all this information will tempt you to give Carnaby a try or turn you off. I am not a cheerleader though I have no doubt that some might brand me as such. I do believe in giving honest opinions and factual histories.
I would hope you might be tempted to test the waters with Carnaby because I believe that in order to attract bidders to a site, you have to have Sellers who are willing to take a chance. No matter what you decide, I wish you every success
