Temporarily Closing Your Store aka "On Vacation"

[Carolyn J. Bickford]

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.

[Paul Wills]

Can you put a comment field in the on vacation feature so if a buyer can still search your store but see the comment that you set. This way they don't think you just disappeared.

[Carolyn J. Bickford]

@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would be available to buy, as well as send inquiries to Atomic Avenue, and to other sellers asking them to match the outdated price.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?

[Paul Wills]

Yes, that would be a good way to let customers know you have not disappeared.

 

 

[Mark Chapman]

I'm in the process of setting up a store. I have 2100+ comics to sell, but not all have been fully graded yet. Most only have preliminary/approximate grades, so I want to post only specific books or series of books for now. I know I can mark certain ones and upload them to my store, but then how do I see them without them being visible to the public before I'm ready? I have the store marked as On Vacation for now, but I can't see anything in my store. Not a single book. Is that how it works for On Vacation, or am I encountering a problem? ComicBase reports that my store is live.

If that's normal behavior, then how do I keep the store offline yet visible to me while I set it up? (I know I have to make all changes inside ComicBase, but I'd like to see what the public will see, so I can spot any problems before the books go public.)

When I go to Setup for my store, it reports that there are 15 books with a value of $13700+. There should be more like 92 books so far, and they are probably worth less than that amount. (I haven't tried to come up with a total yet.) I uploaded 77 books today and CB reported that they were posted successfully. I have no idea what's going on. I imagine I did something wrong, but I'm not seeing anything helpful in the user's guides and FAQs. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[Gregory Hecht]

9 hours ago, Mark Chapman said:

I'm in the process of setting up a store. I have 2100+ comics to sell, but not all have been fully graded yet. Most only have preliminary/approximate grades, so I want to post only specific books or series of books for now. I know I can mark certain ones and upload them to my store, but then how do I see them without them being visible to the public before I'm ready? I have the store marked as On Vacation for now, but I can't see anything in my store. Not a single book. Is that how it works for On Vacation, or am I encountering a problem? ComicBase reports that my store is live.

That is how "On Vacation" is supposed to work.  There is (at present) not a method for a seller to view the contents of their store via the AA site when they are on vacation.  If you can see your AA inventory on AA, then everybody else can, too.  (Long, long ago, "On Vacation" meant that your store inventory was visible to everybody but customers could not complete transactions with your inventory... which was very frustrating to customers and that is why the current set-up was implemented.)  

Note also that, as mentioned in last week's CB LIvestream episode (at approx. 29:50), it is a known issue in the AA site that browsing the inventory of a single store only shows comic books (items from the magazine and and book categories of CB can only be viewed by customers if they do specific searches rather than browsing in a single store).  So if any of your inventory consists of magazines or books, that is an additional complicating factor.  (It's a pretty fundamental issue, so I am hoping that it gets fixed soon, even if it temporarily takes some of the focus away from preparations of the release of the next CB version.)  

  

9 hours ago, Mark Chapman said:

If that's normal behavior, then how do I keep the store offline yet visible to me while I set it up? (I know I have to make all changes inside ComicBase, but I'd like to see what the public will see, so I can spot any problems before the books go public.)

When I go to Setup for my store, it reports that there are 15 books with a value of $13700+. There should be more like 92 books so far, and they are probably worth less than that amount. (I haven't tried to come up with a total yet.) I uploaded 77 books today and CB reported that they were posted successfully. I have no idea what's going on. I imagine I did something wrong, but I'm not seeing anything helpful in the user's guides and FAQs. Any suggestions?

 

You have a couple of options, but only through the ComicBase program and not via the Atomic Avenue website.  

When you go to post your inventory for sale, the pop up window should give you a tally of how many comics are marked as "For Sale" and their total value based on the prices that you have set.  It isn't an issue-by-issue view, of course, but it still gives you an overall picture.  

You can also do advanced searches that will get a list of all comics that have quantity ≥ 1 *and* have the "For Sale" box checked.  Advanced Search info is available over in the ComicBase message boards in two places:  @Steven L. Dasinger has started an extremely helpful Advanced Find syntax thread and there is another thread where people have posted their favorite/most useful Advanced Find protocols. 

Not suggesting that the above is the most ideal solution to what you want to do, but hopefully it will give yo some ability to monitor your progress towards curating your store inventory.    

One other item to be aware of in regards to your 15 item count vs. 92 item count:  double check your AA confirmation emails (the ones you should get after you post inventory to AA) to see if there is a list of unrecognized items in your store inventory.