trainz auctions moved

I had a very positive experience last evening with Trainz/DASH auction Site. The only problem I ran into was my wife who didn't understand my need for another engine and some more cars! I tried to explain "you can't have too many trains" but I forgot I used that one before!

Bill Berresford

Well, they may just be doing that.  Good luck!  I can tell you from experience that when someone quotes you a great deal on an ecommerce website to function a specific way, run away fast and find someone who quotes you a realistic price.  You get what you pay for and there is a reason ebay is still around and attempts at competition have failed.  While ebay has it's faults, it works very well and is simple in form and function.  Search function in this being key and ability to sort and drill down to the desirable items second to that. 

eBay has had a really long time to iron out their kinks, anyone who has been part of the eBay market since the beginning will gladly tell you they didn't always get it right either. Anyone remember AuctionWeb? It took a lot of iterations, and a good number of failures, to get where they are today. Some will even probably say they still don't always get it right.

Like all things IT we had to make some calculated guesses about the load we would generate over the first few auctions. We took all of our numbers based on the marketing we were doing and passed them on to DASH. We were spot on for the traffic we generated for the first few days, and then everything went off our forecast. The O Gauge auction Sunday night was without a doubt the biggest miss of all.

The DASH guys haven't skipped a beat so far, and they're still analyzing and tweaking to make sure they get things running as best they can. I'm sure if they had an eBay sized budget they would have spent hundreds of thousands generating load tests and hundreds of thousands more deploying for 200% of the estimated load. Unfortunately they don't have that type of budget, and neither do we, in the small business world, we have to do things a little differently.

I'm not trying to dismiss that we missed, because we absolutely did, and in the future I can assure you that we will not make that particular mistake again. We want the feedback to continue as well, we're tracking, reviewing, and prioritizing every single suggestion and complaint. For now we will continue working through the issues, and once we have things running smooth we will start delivering on the features and enhancements that people are asking for.

This past Sunday I was considering on bidding on an engine with a starting bid in the low $400.00 range. At a 15% "up-charge", that amounts to an automatic $60 plus before deciding on your initial bid!!! I could accept a 5% premium charge, but 15% is "over-the-top"  Maybe a sliding scale would be in order, especially on higher priced items. Presently, ebay will be my first choice when it comes to auctions.

I'm not sure why the 15% is such a big deal. Just do the math and figure out if its too much or not before bidding. For the most part the starting prices are lower than what you find on the Bay or even the sell/trade forum here even with the 15%.

Pete

Hi folks. I have been too busy running the team making improvements to DASH to respond in this forum. My apologies on being "radio silent", but I assure you that we really welcome the feedback and challenge of making DASH all that it can be for the community.

Working with Trainz as our initial partner has been terrific.  They are a great operation.  They have also presented some challenges simply because they have such a great volume of super items, and because they have such an excited audience for those items. A little like jumping into a moving car racing down the highway.

Have we messed some things up?  For sure, and for that I and my team apologize. In particular, the site performance during last Sunday's O Modern auctions was really bad.  We have made a number of enhancements to the system since then, and I expect us to never see that sluggishness again.  We've tried to also be very responsive to people that contact us who might have had issues registering (please type your email address into registration carefully!)

We are committed to continually improving your experience on DASH, and I hope you will recognize the changes as we continue to roll them out.  I wanted to end on a positive note to say that our data shows that, despite our rocky performance on Sunday, we've successfully signed up thousands of users and have closed hundreds of successful sales.  I hope you take advantage of the free upgrade offer from Trainz and join today.  Thanks again for your feedback and support.

I have a question for Scott.

Does that Scott@trainz.com email go to you or just to customer service?

If that is not it, is there a way I can contact you directly off of this board?

I have an issue with an order that I would rather not air out in public.

I assure you I have talked,( and talked) with customer service.

Thanks

Hi Scott,

I enjoyed speaking with you the other day.  BTW, the server issued I spoke of then carried over to today but hopefully is resolved now - I can sure use the sleep.

Why am I on the forum instead of sleeping?  In a word, stupidity!  For the past 45 minutes, I've been trying to 'sign up' on the DASH sight but without success.  As a long time customer of Trainz and Trainz on 'The Bay', I thought I'd tag along to your new auction site...   I fill out your online form, click 'submit' and end right back at a blank form - frustrating!   Maybe I don't understand computer operation and should just stick with fixing networks and servers...  BTW, is there a phone number I can call at DASH to register?

Since I'm on a roll, I should mention that I've been to the DASH site a few days ago and I'm on it right now.  Your page load time has not improved at all.  But then I only have a 30 mip download speed.  And to think, I used to believe 14.4 was slow.

I had my eye on 3 or 4 larger items on DASH but was not able to bid during your last auction.  Perhaps I can figure it all out, get registered and hope that my bids make it through quickly in your auction 5 days from now.  Is the '3 second snipe' going to be a possibility on DASH?

Thanks for letting me 'bend your ear'.  I like the new site, I like some of the starting prices I'm seeing (even with the buyer's premium) and I'd love the opportunity to bid.

Best,

Dave

(in the Buckeye capital)

FOOTNOTE:

I made it!!!!!!!!!!!

I finally got registered on the DASH site!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to contact Social Security tomorrow and relinquish my benefits under Part-A and Part-B since I cannot seem to change my DoB on the DASH site to anything prior to 1983...

Now if I can just 'snipe' the 2 items I have proudly placed on my DASH 'Watch List' come auction night; life will be good!!!!!!!!!!

SCOTT, if you read this; please upgrade my account on DASH based upon any 'Frequent Flyer' miles I may have on account with Trainz - THANKS!!!

Best,

Dave

Dave and Scott, we've taken care of the "Frequent Flyer" discount.  To change the DOB Dave, just click in the field on the My Account / Edit Profile screen and backspace over 1983.  You can replace the date by just typing.  (It drops down a monthly calendar, but unless you pick a date, it doesn't update the date field...I'm guessing that is the issue you have run into.)

Keep looking out for more enhancements on DASH.  We really do pay attention to the feedback submitted and we'll do what we can to make DASH work great for everyone.  The best way to get through to us for support questions is either the Contact Us form on the site or, if one of us is online, you can click to start an online chat with us.

Big difference noted:  a)  Trainz auctions,  had usually,  quite assortment, on the

accessories lines, either PW, or Modern.  Notice that has diminished !

b) viewed a 13 inch, Comet Passenger set for 153.00 -   I just purchased the 18"

    brand spanking new (un opened box), for quite less than this,  and NO , fees

    just shipping !!!

c), what little purchasing I did do with Trainz auctions, previously, I had no problems,  with Bidding, products, or the simple 15%, or arrival of product.
   Currently this change,  is to time consuming , or a) or b).

Moving on to other Avenues !!

thanks

In addition to making sure their physical server(s) has the needed hardware "horsepower" and having a fat enough bandwidth pipe, I would hope they also have this site virtualized using clustering with load balancing and high availability services.

Hey John. DASH runs with a high-availability architecture.  Load balanced across several servers.  Our team is very experienced with high-performance systems design and management, and we see a bunch of places to improve.  We are working across a number of these things now.  Improving performance is a top priority for us and you will see continual improvements in the coming weeks and months.  At this stage, there tends not to be a "silver bullet" that makes everything licketeddy-split, but there are a number of things we will improve that will add up to a much faster end-user experience.

Thanks again for your patience and know that we are working really hard to make everyone raving fans of the site.

Just curious; where is DASH's data center located?  Do you also have a colo for it?

 This dash site is confusing me. I thought I could go to the catalog tab and look for or mark items I've always been looking for. When I did that, I got nothing useful. Either that's not what it's for, or it's the worse search engine I've ever used.

 At least I now have the link to the Trainz auctions.

A note Scott at TrainZ:  I have purchased many items on Ebay.  Your company has always made good on any problem that I had. I will continue to bid on your listings on Ebay.  I do understand that Ebay's seller costs can eat into your profits.  It is too bad that Ebay does not recognize how much business you bring to Ebay.  They should offer your company a better deal to keep your listings on Ebay. Ebay and Pay Pal work for me. I have not tried your new auction site.  I have however purchased directly from your website many times with good results.  I do like "make an offer" on Ebay. It gives both the seller and the buyer the opportunity to negotiate a fair price.  This way the seller does have to "give a way" the merchandise if there are few bidders.

There are still issues with using this site.  I just tried to do a search for "Lionel Legacy".  It took 25 seconds to return the answer.  I find this unacceptable if you plan to use the site.  Personally, I still like the old Trainz auction site better.

I just wanted to make a comment about the performance of the search on the DASH site.  While we have made some significant improvements to the overall responsiveness of the site over the last week, we recognize that the search performance is slow.  We are aware of that and over the next month or two will optimize the search performance a great deal.  Thanks for the feedback!