Boinktard of the Week Award: Bidzig.com Plans to Reopen

[amy]

This site owner should be enshrined in the hall of fame.




Closed site bidzig.com just  put a 'relaunch jan '06' sign on its site

A failed site owner who profusely posted advertisements for his site on every OAI forum around lin  February 2005  during this year's eBay fee increase uproar-- only to shut down his auction site 2 months later is planning to return to take advantage of the next (anticipated) eBay fee increase . 

This email was sent out to all of the old registered users of Bidzig tonight.

BidZig is re-opening it's website! Some of you may remember the rollercoaster ride we all took early this year with BidZig.com. I opened bidzig as a hobby site  , never intending on it exploding like it did. I was in a very critical transition with my Job, and sadly had to shut the doors to bidzig. Here's the good news! My new career is going fantastic, and now it's time to re-open the doors to the freshest auction site on the internet. I'm adding a ton of new features, and refreshing the old ones. This time I'm testing the site before I launch so we won't run into the onslaught of feature requests when the site first opened.

BidZig is taking on a new role as a free auction site that will be more then just a hobby site. It's received a complete make over that is even easier to use then the original site. I know some of you may be concerned about it staying open this time , but I can assure you that it will not be closing again. A lot of you got to know me on the site, and you know that I'm an honest person. The site doesn't have a definitive launch date, but I'm shooting for something in January. Are you ready to become a Ziggie again?

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments!

Best Regards,
BidZig.com

The owner gets in some free forum advertising by announcing the opening of his site on FAS on January 21st:

[Link removed:  the site linked to has disappeared]


Here's the owner himself posting on February 2nd on FAS "Bidzig is growing mad.  Come join Us"

[Link removed:  the site linked to has disappeared]


Here's the announcement of the site's closing only 2 months later:

[Link removed:  the site linked to has disappeared]

Dear Users,

Due to circumstances beyond our control, BidZig will be shutting down operations. We truly appreciate all the wonderful support you have shown us in the past few months.

All accounts will be deleted on the 10th of this month.

Sincerely,
BidZig Team

Please feel free to finish all currently active auctions. The last day of operation will be 04/10/2005

A Big Question: if all accounts were deleted on April 10th as promised how was this self described "honest person" able to email all of the former users 7 months later?.  :

[bargainbloodhound]

A Big Question: if all accounts were deleted on April 10th as promised how was this self described "honest person" able to email all of the former users 7 months later?.   :

That is also my biggest question and complaint.  If he had held to his word and deleted the accounts it would have been impossible for him to email all of the former users yesterday. Keeping members' personal info for 7 months after he had told them he had deleted the info is a huge privacy no-no and even forgetting the rest of his email for a moment would make him a huge:



Nooooo, I'm not done ranting,I'm just getting started! 

I opened bidzig as a hobby site 

Funny, clown boy, but all of the sellers you screwed over were completely unaware that it was just a "hobby" to you...to them selling was/is a way to put food on the table or pay the bills and you should have been upfront with them from the beginning instead of hyping your site on every OAI forum with statements like "BidZig.com is growing mad! Come on over and join us!"  Nowhere in the threads on either FAS or OTWA do i see the words "hobby" or a statement like "I have 3 jobs that require my attention and this is just something I do in my spare time"

Here's the announcement of the site's closing only 2 months later:

Reading through that "final days of Bidzig" thread  I become more annoyed.  True he gave sellers a whole 7 days notice  : of the site's closing by email but he didn't even bother to put a notice on the site. People who didn't receive that email and were unaware of the impending close were registering and listing right up to the final hour before he turned the site off.  Completely irresponsible and his actions showed little regard for the business' of sellers.

My new career is going fantastic

So basically, you have a day job and you will once again be a part-time auction site owner.

When there are already large viable free-to-list auction/fixed-price sites with FULL TIME OWNERS and the necessary $$ to advertise their sites like Yahoo Auctions , iOffer, eBid and large well financed classifieds sites with millions of listings (and millions of dollard in financing) like Craigslist,  LiveDeal, the new Google Base, and several others  I fail to see what a part time owner brings to the "free to list" arena that other sites already don't offer.

[BidZig]

Wow, a boinktard. That sounds harse

Let's see, where to start. I did start the original bidzig as a hobby site. I made that clear in the bidzig forums during the time the site was open. I never intended for two things to happen. One, the site growing as fast as it did and two my career taking a new direction. I left a comfortable job at the University of Texas for a partnership at a technology firm. The original plan was for me to start on 7/1, but that got pushed upto 5/1 because of rapid growth at the company. I had to make a quick decision to filter out a lot of things in my life, including bidzig, to start on my new career path as a business owner/partner. You guys have no clue how stressful my life was during that time, and I don't expect you to understand. I did what I had to do and I'm comfortable with that decision.

Why am I re-opening? My new career is going great, and I'm back to working 40 hours a week instead of the 80-90 when bidzig first opened. I can maintain the site now, spend time with my family, and still concentrate on my career at Omegabyte.Networks. I expected some harsh words about me, but I was ok with that. I know I should of handled the site shutdown differently, but at the time it felt like the right thing to do. I didn't charge anyone a penny, so it's not like I took anyones money an ran. It was FREE site that ran into problems.

When I shut down the site, I simply turned it off in IIS(webserver). I haven't touched the code/database since. Yes I still have all the auction data, and this is how I was able to email the old members. I didn't delete the data because of two reasons. 1) I knew I'd probably re-open the site in the future, and two I just wanted(At the time) nothing more to do with it. A week before the closing my wife expressed concerns about my work habits and the lack of time that I was spending with my two boys. It really hit home with me when she told me this. Everything was happening so fast, I just had to run away. I don't expect you guys to care about anything I just said, but there it is. If you have any concerns, flames, hate words, encouragements(I'm reaching here), then you can email me at jason@bidzig.com

Just remember we are all human, and I broke down when things got to crazy.

Regards,
Jason

[Nat]

[quote author=BidZig link=topic=1328.msg4952#msg4952 date=1132339022]
When I shut down the site, I simply turned it off in IIS(webserver). I haven't touched the code/database since. Yes I still have all the auction data, and this is how I was able to email the old members.[/quote]

So then you admit that you flat out lied when you said, "All accounts will be deleted on the 10th of this month.

No offense but I (and I'm sure many others) are not about to register on a site where the owner opening admits to lieing about harvesting old member's emails to spam them later one. 

[BidZig]

Actually I've received about 98% positive feedback on the site re-opening from almost all of the old members. I don't blame you for not wanting to join, I made a mistake and I'm trying to do my best to correct it. I never expected such a huge positive response, and that's why I'm going forward with the site re-launch.

[Nat]

[quote author=BidZig link=topic=1328.msg4962#msg4962 date=1132365000]
Actually I've received about 98% positive feedback on the site re-opening from almost all of the old members.[/quote]

What do you consider positive feedback from your old members? By their replying to your email or by not replying at all and assuming no comments is positive?

The reason why I ask is because if you had say 100 members registered on your site that means 98 of those people actually wrote you back?  Somehow I have a really difficult time believing that because most people don't reply announcement emails, most of them just delete them.  Now if you only had 5 members registered before and 98% of them replied then yes, that would be believable because 98 of 5 is not many people at all.

Good luck with your site, as you know, there is a ton of competition out there.

[Mojavelyn]

Jason, what about the sites that were left to face the naysayers, detractors and doom and gloom prophets of alternative sites and worked that much harder to prove themselves while you got off scott free?

[vitalfinds]

I spent days getting my inventory listed on your site ... so yes, you cost me money.

[vitalfinds]

[quote author=vitalfinds link=topic=1328.msg4973#msg4973 date=1132373544]

[/quote]
I spent days getting my inventory listed on your site ... so yes, you cost me money.

oops ... double post.

[bargainbloodhound]

hmmm...That Vital Guy's post said what I'm about to say.   

I didn't charge anyone a penny, so it's not like I took anyones money an ran. It was FREE site

The old saying "time is money" applies here.  There is no such thing as a "free" auction site because while there may be no listing fees, there is a "time" fee.  Even though  sellers aren't receiving an hourly wage for their labors, there is a cost to the time invested to list on any site.  When you factor in the time cost, many of the so-called "free" sites which lack basic features like bulk loaders, etc. wind up costing sellers more to list than pay sites which have these features. 

There is also the ROI-Return on Investment factor which makes the hourly cost of the labor involved in listing on many "free" sites even more expensive: 10 hours work that results in $20 in sales on a small free site winds up being much more costly than 10 hours work that results in $200 in sales on a large pay site.

I still have all the auction data, and this is how I was able to email the old members. I didn't delete the data because of two reasons. 1) I knew I'd probably re-open the site in the future, and two I just wanted(At the time) nothing more to do with it.

You should have emailed the members to let them know you still had their information since they were under the impression you had deleted everything.

Just remember we are all human, and I broke down when things got to crazy.

This will seem harsh, but from the average customer's perspective (especially if your customers are in a B2B relationship with you, which is the relationship between auction sellers and site owners) the response you'll receive 9 times out of 10 is "so what, who cares".

As a business owner, especially one who is dealing with other business owners, you have to keep your personal life (stresses, emotions, whatever) out of your dealings with customers.  Customers don't want to hear excuses like "how stressful my life was" or "I couldn't ship that Express mail package today because I had a headache" when they are dealing with a business.  If you took your car to a mechanic and he connected a line to the wrong part and your breaks failed as a result of his error would you be as accepting as you expect others to be when he offered the excuse "I'm only human. I was having a really stressful day"...the odds are you wouldn't be that accepting.

Things got crazy and you broke down, things got crazy and Ray Wagglepop broke down, but should their customers really be expected to bear the burden? The answer is no.  I'm sure that every CEO (even Meg and the google boys)/ business owner/executive have a lot of really bad stressful days, but they know that as business people they must not let their personal lives affect their dealings with their customers or the level of service they offer their customers.

[quote author=Mojavelyn link=topic=1328.msg4972#msg4972 date=1132372100]
Jason, what about the sites that were left to face the naysayers, detractors and doom and gloom prophets of alternative sites and worked that much harder to prove themselves while you got off scott free?
[/quote]

I think I've said something similar to what Lynette is saying here--see my comments elsewhere on this board on the January's OAI Stars/Lunarbid thread for my full ranting...or see the "Problems" thread on the BidChaser board here for an example of the destruction that actions like April's sudden closing of Bidzig cause 

Lynette is right, the effects of a series of disappointments caused by small site owners who hyped their sites incessantly on OAI boards only to abandon their users later (Wagglepop, Bidzig, LunarBid, BidChaser are the biggest names, but the list is very long) this year have convinced many sellers that all OAI sites are like the ones that built up their hopes and then left them stranded--as a result of this many sellers have returned to eBay and will likely never venture off it again for fear that they'll be screwed over once again.  ...and as Lynette said the sites that have been there for their customers have had to bear the brunt of the fallout caused by site owners who abandoned their customers.