Wagglepop 2: Deja Vu as Auction Site That Left Sellers Stranded Reopens

[xppman]

:

[Anita]

Alskling,
Love your posts!

[thentavius]

The site layout looks like a "cut 'n' paste" from eBay format

I piddled around over there out of morbid curiosity and noticed that the sign-in page, to name one of many, is identical in almost every way.

I wouldn't be surprised if he's hotlinking some of the little graphics.

[sneakymagenta]

Sneaky's Pin the Name on the Board Game!

I'm thinking of a board! Can you guess which one Ploppers?
Sneaky's Hints: a. a new thread is started every 8.3 days b. a new post is made every 3 days.
Name the board Ploppers!
:raypoop:

[Alskling]

I just did some basic math -- wish I could post it on the WP boards, but I'm sure it would be pulled if I did, because truth is against board policy (Karen calls the truth "E-think"). While the number of stores is going down over there, the number of listings is slowly going up. HOW CAN THIS BE? After doing some calculations, I discovered that almost 10% of the listings is concentrated among only 3 stores. That means that nearly 10% of the listings are concentrated in a little over 3/100ths (.035 percent) of the stores. Now, get this, two of those stores carry the same category of items -- sports cards. And the other store is books. The store with the most listings (the book store) has over 7,000 -- that's three zeros, folks, and a whopping (HOLD ON TO YOUR HATS FOR THIS ONE!) 27 feedbacks, at least half of which are from other WP store "sellers". 10 of these FBs are unique users, so in truth, a store with nearly 7,000 listings has only 10 feedbacks. All three stores set up shop end of July to August 1, so they can't use "being new" as an excuse for low FB. I know at least one of those stores says flat-out in its eBay store listings to go to WP to buy its items at a discount and when I investigated the "buy WP on Ebay" ad you get when you Google Wagglepop, I found Wagglepop was being used as a key word search, placed by one of the store book owners (I believe it was this one) and when you go to her eBay store, it simply states right there in the listing that the item is not available there and the buyer must purchase it at WP.

Apart from being rather shady (and suspect) business practices in my book, it means that a large reason WP is getting no buyers is that a good chunk of the listings is in books and sports cards.

So, although the actual number of listings in increasing, there's really very little to buy there. Great strategy, Ray!

[cranky_hippie]

Now, get this, two of those stores carry the same category of items -- sports cards.

Ray used to sell sports cards. I wonder if there is a connection?  :

[Alskling]

I wondered[quote author=cranky_hippie link=topic=3775.msg27492#msg27492 date=1160783730]

Now, get this, two of those stores carry the same category of items -- sports cards.

Ray used to sell sports cards. I wonder if there is a connection?  :
[/quote] I wondered the same, as well.

AND, here's another kicker. You have 3 stores making it appear as if WP has a gazillion listings. Who does this figure impress? Since buyers are not coming, it must be to impress sellers, making them think WP is growing when in fact it isn’t. After all, this statistic is on the HOME PAGE of the site, for potential sellers to see and think ""oooo, look at all those listings, they must be doing real good." Right next to it is a promo for the $10/mo PRO SELLERS program. Should those stores leave, Ray/Karen’s monthly income is not appreciably affected, but it looks bad because the listing numbers will go down a lot. Could it be that one, if not both of these stores are in some way associated with Ray and thus pay no monthly fee anyway. The stores are simply there to pump up the listing numbers. They get very little business and while Mr. Kumbaya brags and brags and brags, everybody sits and waits for something to happen to them – Hello, Earth to members -- wake up from you Kumbayatic stuper.

[sneakymagenta]

Hello, Earth to members -- wake up from you Kumbayatic stuper.

IGNORE THE NAYSAYER! STAY ASLEEP!  STAY AT WAGGLEPOOP! MOVE EVERYTHING TO WAGGLEPOOP!  I'LL PAY MY COMPETITORS $100 EACH TO MOVE TO WAGGLEPOOP! $500 AND A KISS TO MY LARGEST COMPETITOR IF HE JOINS THE POOPER REVOLUTION!  :twistedevil:






'Tis the season to make money at my website, Overstock, eBay, and uBid, fa la la la la   :twistedevil:

[rho]

Alasking, I don't know if either of the sports card sellers are the following individuals, but regic posted the info quoted below in this thread last month.

Ray is really, really interested in making things look much better than they are. If he can pull $10.00 a month from unsuspecting sellers, and convince newbies to bring their friends along, he'll generate a steady income. OnlineAuction has done this for 2 yrs now. Their cheerleaders are as spellbound as WP's.

Reading about WP community values and integrity was almost shocking after the way he treated members the first time around. Lies. All lies.

[quote author=regic link=topic=3775.msg22226#msg22226 date=1157255239]

Feedback importing is not supported at this time.

Karen - WP Customer Care

bullsh.it.  It's a built-in feature of the rscript software

ray's profile with imported feedback (1829 from ebay + 2 from WP)
http://www.wagglepop.com/bin/auction/vie...w_feedback&userID=1
ray's brother's profile with feedback imported from ray's ebay account: (1829 from ebay + 3 from WP)
http://www.wagglepop.com/bin/auction/vie...w_feedback&userID=6
ray's ebay feedback (1829_
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback&userid=paper272

[/quote]

[regic]

OnlineAuction has done this for 2 yrs now.

The site that issues misleading press releases that cite the 'total items' rather than the traditional  measurement stat 'number of listings' used by other sites.

Here is an example of OLA's BS from an announcement this week concerning a new database.

Our new database is much more robust and capable of handling 100 million items and more. Today our total items listed on our site is 2,263,993 and growing rapidly.

If a site has 160,000 listings as OLA does there is virtually no difference in the database storage required if there are 160,000 total items or 2.2 million total items.  Each listing is a separate row in the database and the quantity (total items) is just one of the fields in that row.