AUDIOGON's new format - Page 7

Anybody with a half-way decent model would be cleaning-up IMO. I just don't know of another site.

CD

I think I may start posting more items for sale here on AVS (I don't usually buy on AG, but have sold plenty there). Not as much exposure, but better than nothing.....

I emailed them last night (through their system email page), and the response I got back was "thank you for your feedback".

I think I may actually look into posting things for sale on a few of the popular AV forums (especially AVS Forum) instead of AG!

Fwiw, here is the email I sent (I plan on responding with what I just wrote above):

"Hi,

I have used your site for years.
Wow, your site is almost unusable, people all over the AV online community are outraged and are not even using your site any more. Some are even talking about starting their own websites to buy/sell AV equipment. You might want to seriously consider changing your site back to the way it used to be, or you may find yourselves out of business......

Good Luck!"

Broken links are worth complaining about, but browsing is hardly any different than before and the differences that do exist are beneficial rather than detrimental (i.e. more ways to get to what you want and sort features that didn't exist before). What's the deal?

Question: have you actually "used it", before and after? And I am not talking about browsing. People use this site for business and actual buying and selling. If you have used the site for as long as I and many others have, you would know "what the deal is"....

I bought something once, but mostly I use it for researching brands I haven't heard of before. Also, righteous indignation!

Use it actively for about the last 10 years and then maybe you would have a better point of reference, like the rest of us.....
Nothing wrong with change as long as it improves things for those that actually use it.

How about I just watch you guys swarm around each other like a bunch of angry bees instead?

They have replaced the Auction/Classified colum with Category so things can be sorted they way it used to be. You can now sort by Category, Price, Time and Item, something you could not do on the old system. The searches are case sensitive and probably should not be. The Category column is actually sub-category, which takes a little getting used to. Probably that way because of space limitations.

On the left, you can sort by newest and oldest dates, as well as filter by particular sub categories.

I think they still need an option to allow the category field to be fixed and then sort by the other columns. But they are making progress. Some of these options are probably part of the reason they re-did the system. Certainly has a ways to go, but they are making progress.

I don't know about others, but I am not just spouting off. I am looking for other solutions. And that is usually how these things are found. Where there is a need.....

I really appreciated what Audiogon has done for the community over the last decade. Without them, most people would have had a lot less opportunity to upgrade. Yes, they did a bad job on this update. But they still have far more to sell than other sites. I would give them another month and see where they are. Quite frankly, I am very able to find things I am looking for. Yes, I have had to change my search patterns, but the added functionality will be nice over time.

I understand that people are having problems with things like communications between buyer and seller. Unfortunately, some of the restictions apparently came about because of a significant number of sales being done privately without appropriate payment to Audigon. Unfortunately, not all users are honest.

Fell free to try another site. But, a little more patience may also be in order.

I just looked at the new items posting for today. They are 200 new listings. That is a month or more activity for other sites.

I hear ya.

But a couple of things, they should not have put up the site as what I can only describe as a beta test site for their customers. I appreciate them being here for the last 10 plus years too, but lest us not forget that they are in the business to make money, not solely for our convienence.
Like anything else when products are good and well thought out, people will "buy them" (or in this case use their site). When the product is not good, people will find alternatives, AND opportunist often will come up with a better product. Not saying that will happen in the case of AG, but it may and they might want to be a little careful.....

As far as the tightening of communication so they don't get ripped off. I would have been all for just raising their initial listing cost, and leave the buyer to seller communication the way it was. They complicated things even before the latest website move in my opinion.
When you restrict all communication through their website, that is a recipe for disaster on a few levels. Most importantly messages not being delivered etc. Over the years I have had many lost messages through them, luckily I could contact the buyer/seller directly. Now that is not an option. Managing a mail server especially one with these type of specifics is harder then one would think. I used to be a Sys. Admin for years, so I know. And the bigger it gets the harder it is to manage....

My advice at least on that particular front is to raise the initial list cost and simplify the rest. The more "Big Brother" you get about things the more the masses will resist, guaranteed!

The problem with charging up front seems to be the listing fee could be pretty high for high priced items. How much would you charge someone to list a $25,000 set of speakers that had maybe a 50% chance of selling? Unfortunately, it is hard to come up with a simple model that is fair across the board and also generates enough revenue.

My guess is that they will relax the tight communications control over time - or people will figure out how to get around it by posting email addresses or phone numbers. I can see having an email address just for Audiogon if you do a lot of transactions and posting that in ads.

Here's an example of a site attempting to build a sale/trade section:

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/forumd...e-Trading-Post

Perhaps your input there could steer it in the direction needed to fill any perceived void.

Lee

This is a graph of Audiogon usage from their blog. According to them, traffic has not dropped significantly. They claim that other services, like Quantcast, are only measuring the old pages, not the new one. Go to their blog for more details.

Of course, what else would they say? It is their blog. Then again with as many times as their pages have not loaded (with people having to reload pages) and with people trying to figure out where things are on the new site, I could see why their "traffic" may look normal. That said I know quite a few people that are not even visiting the site until the smoke clears.,,

I listed something and now im scratching my head trying to figure out how audiogon has decided to sort things. Clicking on speakers from the front page gives you a list of "best matches"... which is just a jumble of different results.

The old audiogon would give you, believe it or not, the listing based on newest results!

http://app.audiogon.com/listings?fil...&price_range=0

http://app.audiogon.com/listings?sea...&price_range=0

look how vastly different the results are once you go to "newest listing" (only thing people care about)

wtf is going on

Seriously how do they decide what constitutes a "Best match" when all youve done is clicked on "Speakers" and nothing else!

To get Speakers listed by listing date, just select Speakers and click on the time left column. You can sort by newest or oldest speaker listings. Different than before, but actually more flexible. You can also sort by price or item by clicking on the column header. I like the ability to sort myself. With the new platform, I would expect that the sorting options will get even better over time. It does take some getting used to, but is really not that hard to do.

I made the same point long ago...lol. DTC is right; the new search options are more flexible; but how about allowing us to select a default, that isn't "best match" (since, as omegaslast points out, it is absolutely worthless).

CD

With the new platform, that might be possible in the future. It was not possible with the old platform from what they say. They launched this way too early but I am hoping they will do a lots of improvements over time that could never have been made on the old system.

If Audiogon thinks they can prevent people from communicating directly they are not very bright.

All you need to do in your first message to a buyer or seller is to say "please email me directly at (your email address) and please let me know your email address so we can communicate directly." This works perfectly. This way the seller can easily avoid seller's fees by transacting privately.

Here is a second way to get around the "new improved" Audiogon system. If a seller wants to avoid paying seller's fees all they need to do is go to MY PAGE and click on CLOSE and the transaction disappears. You receive an email from Audiogon that the item did not sell. The seller pays no fees. Audiogon's "new improved" site has actually made it easier to close the books without paying.

After nearly a month of posting "good news" about all the improvements on their blog they still have not been able to figure out how to sort listings under each manufacturer's -- speakers grouped together, integrated amplifiers together, etc. It is crystal clear they have given the "site improvement" work to a bunch of rank amateurs. This elementary school programming project has turned Audiogon into the high end audio "site of last resort".

The data can easily be sorted by category for a given manufacturer. Search on a manufacturer and then sort on category by clicking on the category column label. Pretty simple really. Give it a try. The category names are actually sub-category and it would be nice if they could have category in there also (e.g. Speakers - Full rather than just Full) but they seem to be space constrained. But it is pretty easy to use the sub-category info if you know anything about the manufacturer. You can also sort by time left, by price and by item, things you could not do before. I would like to be able to do those sorts while keeping the category grouping fixed (i.e. sort by price, time left or item within a sub-category) and have given them that suggestion.

Hi, thanks for letting me know this. But no one except the programmers created the space constraint. It did not arrive out of the blue -- or by necessity. IMO the intelligent thing would have been to sort everything by category like on the old site. Now, people like me have to discover the new tricks -- new hoops to jump through. For each sort you have to click at least twice. This is not what I call "new improved". It is what I call "new dis-improved." They are taking pains to make the new site user unfriendly. All the while pretending that everything is fine, just fine, or it will be soon, just as soon as they get some genius programmer to figure out how to confuse everyone.

The person on this forum who mentioned it looks like they sold Audiogon may have hit the nail on the head because there is such an obvious disconnect between the old site and the new site. It is as though the latter has been created with no understanding at all about the positive things on the old site that made it useful and pleasurable for users -- the things any half-witted management team would have made sure to incorporate in a truly "new improved" site. No, there is something very fishy going on here, IMO.

Yes it is different. I like some of the changes, think others need to be improved. But I can find everything I am looking for. And they are making progress. Everyone acknowledges that they released this too early. But I still find it functional and I like many of the changes, which they could not have done on the old site. Are you a recreational browser, an actual buyer/seller,or just a GUI critic? I can find what I am looking for pretty easily. They are not going back to the old format. Time to learn the new one and move forward.

Hi, I realize they are not going back to the old site. But by using this as a guinea pig experiment they have lost the trust of many users. I don't spend nearly as much time on the new site. They have created a difficult and unpleasant environment. Many people have been very vocal about not being pleased about it. We will use it but we will seek out alternatives for much of what Audiogon offers. They have not done users any favors and they have not done themselves any favors either. There is a very strong undercurrent of sentiment against Audiogon now. I think this is very easy to perceive.

There are money issues a lot of people have complained about. I have one money issue that I don't see written about. I have bought and sold recently. I have a positive balance of over $70 in my account. Every time I list they still ask for the $4 instead of taking it from my account. This is incompetence. It is not about the money, of course. It is about how they take care with things. It is clear that they do not take care. Hence the loss of confidence. They have shot themselves once in each foot, IMO. I buy and sell and I used to enjoy browsing the forums. My Audiogon ID is Sabai.

What is GUI?

So, take a look at AVSclassified. And at AudioXchange. They have a very small number of items for sale. Traffic on Audiogon has not changed that much and it looks like lots of items are still being posted. Many days there are more additions to Audiogon than the total postings on AVSclassified or AudioXchange. Audioasylum Classifies have more offerings, but a primitive interface and still a lot less traffic than Audiogon. If you want traffic eBay is your place, although I will not buy a $10,000 amp - or even a $1,000 one - on eBay. Sure the new site is frustrating, but do not think you will find a better option. The new Audiogon Graphic User Interface (GUI) is better than the other sites, in my opinion, and the site has a lot more offerings.

Hi, I do visit other sites to look at the offerings. I have just finished major upgrading so this is not an area of interest at the moment. Of course, Audiogon is the king of the audio offerings castle and will probably remain so -- for now with no challenger stepping up to the plate. But for the sheer pleasure of visiting the Audiogon site "The Thrill is Gone". There are 2 elements in the ballpark here -- the commercial and the spiritual. Audiogon may remain commercially supreme but they have lost the spiritual battle. The latter may ultimately determine the future for them. If someone else captures the spirit it will not take much to challenge Audiogon commercially. Just some money and some good programmers and designers.

It keeps getting better. This is bordering on criminal, AFAIC!

Just made my first sale, post AG-undoing. I gotta fill out this crazy invoice now...so it has the price of the item already; the only field is for s&h. I put in the actual s&h amount, but there is no way to account for PayPal fees (which EVERYONE adjusts for).

No biggie...the buyer and I have our understanding; except, he says it won't allow him to pay more than the invoice amount. Think there's a way to edit the invoice? If you guessed NO WAY IN H*LL...you win the prize!

On top of which, I actually got a notification from AG that payment was made!! Yet, there's nothing in my PP account. They're slow to respond to the "service ticket" I had to open up...and I know my guy is gonna use this as an excuse to flake.

We're not talking about the look, or the filters here; we're talking about MY MONEY they're screwing with. I'm more convinced than ever...AG is no more; they sold it to some foreign conglomerate or something. These people have NO IDEA what audio even is; it's just words and numbers to them.

H*ll...when I filled out the service ticket, there's not even an f'ing item number to identify the auction anymore. How the h*ll are they suppose to know what item I'm referring to??

What a joke,

CD