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Carolyn J. Bickford

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Everything posted by Carolyn J. Bickford

  1. It is important to make sure any items sold on Atomic Avenue have been removed from your ComicBase inventory before you post inventory to Atomic Avenue for sale. ComicBase provides several ways to do so provided you know where these settings are. Most sellers use Sidekick to mange updates and posting to Atomic Avenue. If you are using Sidekick to automatically post your updated inventory to Atomic Avenue, go to the Checking Sales and Purchases setting in Sidekick and check Automatically deduct sold items and add purchased items to database. If you are not using Sidekick, you can set your ComicBase Preferences to check for new sales and purchases each time the program is launched. You will need to exit ComicBase in order to have it relaunch. If you are not using Sidekick and you want to leave ComicBase active all the time, you can manually remove sold inventory by going to Internet...Selling and running the check for sales command. As this is not automated, you plan on running the command at a regular time each day or after marking an order as shipped.
  2. When a seller cancels an item or an order on Atomic Avenue, buyers are encouraged to leave feedback. Sellers are aware that cancellations are prone to negative feedback from buyers, and are strongly encouraged to keep their inventory on Atomic Avenue up to date. Item cancellations are reflected in the seller's performance score and Atomic Avenue has, does, and will continue to ban sellers with inadequate seller performance scores, which include a seller's fulfilment rate. (This is also why sellers may offer to replace a missing comic in an order rather than have to cancel it.) Atomic Avenue pulls seller inventory from an inventory-management program called ComicBase. When an item is sold, it is removed from Atomic Avenue, but if sellers do not remove sold items from their inventory with a command or an automated assistant, when they post updated inventory to Atomic Avenue, it may show already-sold items. Before posting updated inventory (with new items, changed prices or other updates) sellers need to sold items from their ComicBase, which they can do automatically, either hourly, daily, or weekly, or at a time period of their setting using a ComicBase tool called Sidekick, or manually with the Check for Sales... command in ComicBase. If sellers have inventory sold elsewhere, they will need to remove sold items manually. ComicBase support will help sellers who are having issues with automated removal. If a seller does not manage their physical inventory (particularly if they are selling in multiple venues) or remove Atomic Avenue sales either with the ComicBase command or ComicBase before making subsequent sales, the seller may have to cancel missing items and have Atomic Avenue refund the missing item or items. Recently and occasionally, two buyers have checked out with the same item from the same seller in their cart within the same minute of one another. This can result in both buyers having an order for the same item. Atomic Avenue can and will confirm this as a synonymous order and quickly refund the latter order without it affecting the seller's performance score. Buyers can confirm this as the case directly with Atomic Avenue.
  3. Effective Jan 1, 2021, value added tax (VAT) must be collected for all goods entering the United Kingdom (UK). Previously, the UK collected the VAT directly from buyers upon receipt of the package in the UK; now it must be collected at the time of sale. There will be a 20% VAT rate on all goods valued up to £135 (about $180 USD). Atomic Avenue will calculate and charge this VAT tax to UK buyers, and this amount will be given to the seller in the disbursement for the order. The seller will be responsible for having a VAT number for the UK, including the VAT number on the customs form, and making quarterly payments and reports to the UK. To prevent your UK shipments from being delayed, held, or returned by UK customs in 2021, please take the following steps: 1. Register for a VAT number with the UK: https://www.gov.uk/vat-registration 2. Collect VAT at the time of purchase. 3. Make quarterly VAT return payments to the UK in UK currency. You may also need to file returns during periods when you have no sales. In addition, you should include your VAT number on your customs declarations. For sellers who wish to refrain from obtaining a VAT, currency conversion, and filing reports with the UK every 3 months, ComicBase and Atomic Avenue now support excluding UK sales. To do so update to the latest version of ComicBase and select the "Do Not Sell to UK" checkbox in the Internet > Sales section. Atomic Avenue will support cancelling 2021 orders to the UK as non-scoring transactions before they have been marked as shipped. If you have a UK order but do not have a VAT number, select Other... from the cancellation reasons and enter "no VAT number" in the reasons box. The order will be marked as non-scoring and the cancellation will not affect your seller performance score. At the seller's request, Atomic Avenue may remove negative feedback regarding non-shipment from UK buyers. After 2021, sellers who cannot ship to the UK should have an updated version of ComicBase which allows them to exclude UK buyers from their store.
  4. @Paul Wills We used to allow store inventory to be visible when a seller had set the store to be "on vacation." Unfortunately, it generated so many questions and aggravation amongst buyers that we chose to hide stores that are on vacation. Sellers typically do not repost and update inventory while their store is on vacation, and if their inventory included a comic that had undergone a price spike, value-oriented buyers would bombard the seller with email and phone calls wanting to know when the item (at that price) would be available to buy, as well as send inquiries to Atomic Avenue, and to other sellers asking them to match the outdated price. Sellers have various reasons for setting a store to be on vacation -- typical ones are going out of town or temporarily not having access to inventory; others are illness or care for others. In the latter case, the inquiries were unwelcome. And Atomic Avenue pointed out that if it was a store with a lengthy break (as might be the case for illness) that the prices would almost certainly undergo a price update before being placed into active sales again. Your concern about buyers having an impression that a favorite seller has disappeared is valid. Would it make sense for you as a seller to have a "will return by" annotation, even though it would only be seen by buyers who are looking for you by your user ID, as inventory would still be hidden?
  5. Buyers should be aware that USPS is experiencing unprecedented volume increases and limited employee availability due to the impacts of COVID-19, and the Universal Postal Union has declared a force majeure on delivery times, pending finding alternative routes for international delivery as many passenger routes have been disrupted due to the impacts of COVID-19. While following up on buyer inquires about delayed packages, we have the following reports to advise buyers as to when to expect an order placed in November or December of 2020. If a package is overdue, please contact the seller, who can initiate a mail search with USPS or their national carrier. An order shipped via USPS Priority 2-Day mail from Florida on December 15, 2020 arrived (first delivery attempt made) on January 7, 2020 in Virginia. An order shipped on time from New York state via First Class USPS mail on December 12, 2020 arrived on January 6, 2021 in Mississippi. An order shipped on November 2, 2020 from the UK arrived in Oklahoma on January 7, 2021. An order shipped on November 7, 2020 from the UK arrived in Oklahoma on January 11, 2021. This indicates intra-US packages may currently take up to 4 weeks to arrive even when sent via First Class/Priority mail; and international packages may take up to 3 months to arrive, possibly longer if from a country that has embargoed shipments or has disrupted passenger travel routes. Your local post office or national postal service should provide information about known delays and disruptions. All sellers mark orders as shipped when they ship their package, and you can view that data as well as tracking information by logging in to Atomic Avenue, going to My Activity > Recent Activity and clicking on the order number (under the Orders column) under the Purchases bar. The order page will also provide contact information for the seller, whom you can contact directly about overdue packages.
  6. In both those orders, our system calculated for flat rate shipping in a Priority 2-Day Flat Rate Envelope, which can hold up to 10 comic books, and costs $8.05.
  7. Only sellers see the shipping estimates; this is not visible to buyers. It's a guideline for the seller for choosing an appropriate shipping choice, but it's reasonable to add 1 to 3 days on to that when USPS itself is adding that expectation. We expect buyers to be aware of COVID-19-related delays (as well as other impacts such as the unprecedented volume increases reported by USPS this holiday season.) If we get an inquiry ourselves about late package arrival, we advise buyers of these delays and to check the tracking provided by the seller and their local postal service about known delays. We do not penalize the seller if the seller shipped on time. Just as examples, this Spring a Malaysian buyer reported his package was 2 months overdue from the UK. As his postal service should have advised him, Malaysia had put an embargo on packages from the UK and the buyer would simply have to wait until it was lifted. More recently, a US seller shipped a package via Priority USPS mail on time on December 14, 2020 which was not delivered until January 6, 2020; another seller shipped a package also Priority USPS on time December 15, 2020 and it was not delivered until January 7, 2020. If you are a US customer and a package is overdue by the current standards, the seller is in the best position to start a missing mail search, which you can do with USPS here. If after 7 days USPS has confirmed a package has gone missing, we'd advise the seller to issue a refund, file a claim if possible, and ask the buyer to return the order if it shows up late. In the cases where the buyer has involved us, USPS confirmed the package was still in their possession and in both cases, the package was delivered late. In short, all delivery services are still in a force majeure situation and delivery times may remain extraordinarily capricious for a while. We remain aware of this and keep both sellers and buyers aware of how to deal (and if necessary wait and accept) the situation reasonably.
  8. When magazines are fully established in ComicBase, we can have categories for them in Atomic Avenue. ComicBase is currently working on their new version, which should do this.
  9. Exporting is a ComicBase feature. We'll pass this on to ComicBase, but you may also post this in their forums at forums.comicbase.com
  10. The link to the previous Atomic Avenue forum is here: https://atomicavenue.com/forum/default.asp Not sure the hyperlink in the above message is working...
  11. Huh, you're right! And here I was thinking there were no new Feature Suggestions. (just joking) Feel free to post such suggestions in the General section for now. I will send a query on to see if we can get that fixed or the section removed.
  12. We are in the process of rolling out a new interface finding books and magazines. Right now it makes it hard to find them, but once it is in place, it will be easier than before for users to find such media.
  13. Our system ties directly into the USPS API so our rates are automatically updated when there is a postal increase. What was the order number? We can look at it directly to see how it was calculated.
  14. Thank you for the suggestions. We keep all suggestions in mind, even if we can't implement them immediately. To answer your questions and suggestions: 1) there is a link to the old message board here, though it's closed to new queries 2) For US sellers, the shipping rate is USPS shipping rates for weight and distance for First Class (under 1 lb.) and Priority Mail (over 1 lb.) both domestic and international. Similarly for sellers outside of the US (i.e. Canada Post, Royal Mail.) We have standard weights for modern and Golden Age comics, books, and magazines, and add about 4.5 oz to that weight for packaging and padding weight. We also calculate for the use of Flat Rate mailers and boxes if they cost less than regular mailing. We also calculate in insurance for orders over $75. It's not always exact, and we allow sellers to use any shipping method as long as the order gets to the seller within the expected time frame (which is 3 to 6 days for an order within the continental United States.) Showing the calculation details directly to the seller may help, but it doesn't help if the seller wants to use weightier protection or an alternate method. 3) I'm less polished in person or on camera than Peter is. Perhaps if I have questions in advance, rehearse my answers, and a p.r. advisor to shake his or her head in warning and shut it all down when I go off script, it may happen. Or it may happen without that, and become virally epic. 4) Yeah, books and magazines were in, then they weren't when the latest version of ComicBase arrived. We are rolling the interface books and magazines in, though for right now, you have to look for them by their exact name. They will be in correctly in the near, soon future. 5) This will also be refined and work better once the interface for buying books and magazines is fully in.
  15. Payments from Atomic Avenue will include the order numbers of the orders for which the seller is being paid, and the amount the seller is receiving together with the original order amount and the commission on the order like this: Payment for Atomic Avenue Order #130865: $47.83 ($55.23 - $7.40 commission), #130881: $35.09 ($40.68 - $5.59 commission), #130903: $46.47 ($53.68 - $7.21 commission) To see this information click on the payment in your Paypal file and see the Custom Note section.
  16. There may be times when a seller cannot ship an order within 2 days, for instance if the seller has to go out of town or is sick. You can set your store to be "on vacation" which will hide your listings from buyers until you can ship orders again. To do so, log in to Atomic Avenue, and go to My Account > Profile. You will see an "On Vacation" checkbox. Click the checkbox and then go to the bottom of the page and click the Save button. When you can ship orders again, go to My Account > Profile and uncheck the "On Vacation" checkbox, and click the Save button at the bottom of the page.
  17. The disbursement for an order queues up for payment on the following Monday two weeks after an order has been marked as shipped, and the disbursement clock is exact about time! So if you marked an order as shipped on Monday, August 3, 2020 at 6 pm, it went into the disbursement queue at 6 pm on August 17, 2020. The disbursement on August 17, 2020 took place at 5:52 am, so that order was not included for disbursement that day. Atomic Avenue disbursements typically occur on Monday mornings, but if staff is travelling or does not have access at that time, the disbursement may take place later in the day. If you were expecting a disbursement and have not received it by 11:59 pm on Monday, please contact Atomic Avenue support at support@atomicavenue.com.
  18. We are also reviewing our calculator as to why it charged $68.10 for this order -- but if you do see a discrepancy, you can contact the administrator at support@atomicavenue.com for a review. Sometimes the calculator is estimating for flat rate shipping in a USPS envelope or package, but that was not an option in line with an order of this size.
  19. Our shipping calculation is based on our best calculation for weight + shipping via USPS tying into their servers, but international orders are often fairly expensive, both to the shock of sellers and buyers, and sellers have to figure out ways to keep the weight light while also packaging appropriately by their standards. We do not require sellers use USPS, as long as whichever service the sellers use arrives within the delivery expectations. To that end, we have recently seen several of our sellers using the Easy Ship service to find more economical yet still timely shipping options. According to Easy Ship, you can send a 6 lb package to Australia with DHL or APC for less than $68.10, or an 8 lb package via APC would be close. Easy ship or similar services may be worth looking at if you ship internationally -- and hopefully sellers who have used the service may comment here on the pros and cons of using it.
  20. We do not specify which shipping service the seller is required to use, as long as the order is received by the buyer within 3 to 6 business days. USPS has been notably capricious about whether comic books may be shipped via Media Mail or not, both accepting and rejecting packages with comics shipped via Media Mail. Sellers often opt for media mail when shipping for free or shipping oversized or large books. If you believe the shipping method the seller used was inappropriate or grossly exceeded the seller's cost, you may leave feedback on the order -- your feedback will appear publicly on the seller's store and will affect the seller's rank and rating.
  21. About 80% of regraded books are cancelled by the buyer. Since buyers are disappointed in receiving a book not in the condition they originally ordered it in, we allow only buyers to decide on whether to accept or cancel a book once it has been regraded. On their order page, they need to click either the Accept or Cancel button next to the regraded book in order to unsuspend the order. If the buyer has not responded to the instructions from Atomic Avenue, and you have also contacted the buyer by email and phone, and there is still no response, remove the book from the order and ship the rest promptly. Odds are the buyer would not have wanted the regraded book, and it's not wise to hold off on shipping the rest of the order waiting for an unresponsive or indecisive buyer. If you believe the buyer would accept the book in its new grade, do make every effort to reach the buyer via email and phone to get a response in a timely manner.
  22. Current USPS shipping rates show little difference between sending a package first class/priority or parcel post. As a result, we have streamlined the Atomic Avenue checkout page to only show one shipping option. Buyers will expect their orders to arrive in 3 to 6 shipping days. You can use any shipping method appropriate to the medium you're shipping (i.e. books or comics), as long as the package gets to the buyer within that time frame. Also make sure that however you ship, that you have a method of tracking the order, such as USPS delivery confirmation so both you and the buyer can confirm the delivery.
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