Poll: Who is to blame for sellers leaving Wagglepop en masse?

xppman · 05-20-2006, 02:55 AM,

Well I guess you have to have server to handle the load too.

And techs. And knowledge of how one can see when DOS attacks are coming in.

BBH and those smart guys know about this stuff.
I have no clue.

I was reading about WP close to the end.

From my prospective I've noticed a LOT of counter / anti Raypop
and still think a lot of that may have been orchestrated by ebay to shut him down.

and they DID.

Still does NOT excuse having DATA on folks from a wiped out system.

But consider how ebay treats your "data"???

Could the guy have been sabotaged by a larger and POWERFUL company?

Just like the movies?

bargainbloodhound · 05-20-2006, 04:02 AM,

Quote:Well I guess you have to have server to handle the load too.

Ray didn't have a server or software that could handle the load. The software and database he chose for the original WP couldn't handle the load that week. That script had never been used on a site with even 5,000 listings, let alone 10,000, before WP. The extreme slowness of WP seemed more like it was a result of an overloaded database/server than it did a DDOS attack because during a DDOS attack you don't just get slow pages, you are generally unable to connect to the server at all because it is so flooded with connection requests.

I've always thought the real reason Ray closed down the 1st WP was because he knew its software was pushed to the limit and the only way to fix the problem would have been a COMPLETE rewrite of the crappy script he bought. Completely rewriting the script wasn't an option with a live site that needed immediate help to fix the overloading. He also had to know there was no way that site could even handle growth to 20-25,000 listings with the traffic it was getting (it couldn't even handle 10,000), so he decided to shut it down because it was either that or he would have had to explain to people why he couldn't accept any more listings (i.e. why his statements that the site could handle unlimited traffic and listings were BS.

I think the abrupt closing was a way for him to save face, and was done to give him time to completely redo the site with a script that wouldn't slow to a crawl after only 10,000 listings.

Quote: anti Raypop

At the moment I fall into the anti-Raypop category. I think his actions last time proved he's no different than eBay's management and he has no problem screwing sellers or feeding them a steady string of BS in order to achieve his goals.

eBay really should have paid Ray last year, because his actions resulted in a lot of sellers who were looking for an alternative after the fee hike instead returning to eBay permanently because after their experience with Ray they think every site owner in the off-eBay world is like Ray.

stardust · 05-20-2006, 07:28 AM,

46 stores, 7 featured. Slowed down a bit...

xppman · 05-20-2006, 02:02 PM,

Quote:At the moment I fall into the anti-Raypop category. I think his actions last time proved he's no different than eBay's management and he has no problem screwing sellers or feeding them a steady string of BS in order to achieve his goals.

From what I'm reading here and there your quote above sounds on spot.

I've learn a long time ago to never trust these online "companies" who proclaim
to be out there to "help" others make money. Nono

I was prepared to give the dude / site the benefit of a doubt but it is disturbing to know
he kept data that he said was erased and that people I respect from here
are likening him and his actions to the same type BS we get from ebay.

Another thing that bothers me is his proclamation that PP is safe and
his support for SKYPE and PP? :blinkie:

I listed a couple of items over there.(with links and all to my site). Laughing7

Maybe the popper staff will find them and remove them for me so
I don't have to pay the 40 or 50 cents it was to list them.

Maybe eBay has paid Ray this go around to re launch, because how
his actions resulted in a lot of sellers returning to eBay permanently last time? Dontknow

Perhaps a lesson of sorts is in the work here to teach all those unhappy
ebay sellers out there now, that MEGS game IS the only game in town.

iron_chick · 05-20-2006, 02:44 PM,

OK, I wandered over. Registered an ID (like others have, so no one else will get it).
1) Among other things, Ray needs to work on his html. Several pages are broken in firefox.
2) It appears that the majority of sellers, even those who have opened stores, are in the "I'll list a handful of things and see what happens" mode.

**Kristijntje** · 05-20-2006, 02:51 PM,

[quote author=iron_chick link=topic=3775.msg14549#msg14549 date=1148136254]

1) Among other things, Ray needs to work on his html. Several pages are broken in firefox.

[/quote]

They're broken in everything but IE

http://www.wagglepop.com/bin/Help?cmd=view&pages=browser_comp

iron_chick · 05-20-2006, 03:03 PM,

;D So he KNOWS and he just doesn't care! :o (I'd been giving him the benefit of the doubt and thinking he just hadn't checked browser compatibility and didn't know.)

stardust · 05-20-2006, 04:05 PM,

He states on the site that the HTML only works correctly in IE.

Folks are rather sick of spending a whole lotta time listing for *nothing*, so they're tiptoeing around serious effort.

What always bothered me about Ray's business plan was his total and complete lack of concern for fraudulent knockoffs and scamming. He believes in the 'buyer beware' theory, and doesn't care to make any effort at the gitgo to curb it. In all actuality, there most likely is no real answer to curbing it, so why spend the big bucks and bookoo time on the issue?

The email list was probably saved from the FAS boards post. I never posted my email on that thread -- I sent it to him directly -- so I did not receive an invite.

Quote: So he KNOWS and he just doesn't care!

I still say this was done on the fly again, just because he saw another HUGE opportunity.

xppman · 05-20-2006, 04:26 PM,

Quote:I still say this was done on the fly again, just because he saw another HUGE opportunity.

stardust you could be right about that. : Smile

bargainbloodhound · (This post was last modified: 05-20-2006, 04:43 PM by bargainbloodhound.)

Quote:I still say this was done on the fly again, just because he saw another HUGE opportunity.

I noticed that the pages were redirecting to the /Auction and that an authorization box was popping up several months ago so it wasn't done recently , but you might be right that it was done on the fly to take advantage of another eBay protest opportunity...BUT I think the opportunity Ray was hoping to take advantage of was another fee increase in January because the SSL certificate was registered in December (and after seeing the discontent on the boards last November/December he probably thought a fee increase would create a bigger explosion than last year). I think when the January fee increase failed to produce an exodus, he decided to wait until the right time...like now.

Quote:The email list was probably saved from the FAS boards post.

Ray's complete lack of caring about fraud prevention always bothered me, but since I'm extremely careful (to the point of paranoia Smile

) about server security, it was his total lack of caring (and total unfamiliarity with) the security of both his site and user's personal information as exemplified by that email list out in the open (which I objected to 5 minutes after he posted it...2 minutes after my objection Ray deleted my post...the first of many posts he would delete on FAS) that bothered me the most. He showed the same lack of regard for security when users complained that their credit card numbers weren't masked (quote is in the Auctionbytes story about the WP 1 launch)

EDIT to add: I think his lack of caring about all 16 numbers of users credit card numbers being visible last year is why the new Wagglepop only accepts PayPal. Failing to encrypt, or mask the first 12-digits of a credit card number that's stored on a server database is a huge merchant account no-no and can get your account canceled.