Very well expressed comments.We all have something in common and that is we are Stakeholders in AA.As has been mentioned we all care about AA for varying reasons.Its profitable,entertaining,enjoyable and various other reasons.In accounting the net worth of a business is tallied by adding the net assets after subtracting the net liablities to give you the net capital(Worth)The problem of this simple equation is when selling your business one figure often omitted from the balance sheet is GOOD WILL.Sometimes this figure can be up to 20% or more of the entire value of the business.

My point is simple.In your desire to expand the net profit of your business the value of your company may have dipped cosiderably because of a loss of good will.This is merely my opinion.My business degree is only from the community college but in trying to save nickles you are losing dollars.

Bob I'm not trying to win any argument.I'm not ticked off about this system.My tekkie says its not the best but its workable.I do care about the big picture and YES about me too.I've got 1,600 positive feedbacks here and don't want to see my favorite venue fold up or have to charge uncompetitive prices to make ends meet as you've intimated.The only thing that I am angry about is people I have great admiration for as pioneers in internet selling feeling disgusted and betrayed when before this system were entrenched loyal sellers.To me its a shame.I never have been a NET PROFIT ONLY guy.I like to feel good about where I'm dealing as well as make a good profit.My personal feelings are still filled with lots of loyalty to AA.As I mentioned I don't have a deadbeat bidder problem.Maybe one out of the last 200.I call people on their phone prior to listing a negative feedback and I have yet to find MY FIRST non payer who claims to have not received my notifications.Its always buyers remorse or no money.I only have my own experience to go on.Perhaps other sellers would share theirs.Hopefully some eventual good will come of this.

I'm always open to suggestions - but if your suggestion is to chuck an entire system of communication because you don't like talking to users, then you're in the wrong business. And what's this about lack of trust of sellers? Are we supposed to open our doors and let sellers do whatever they want, regardless of the consequences to everyone else? Sorry, it doesn't work that way. It wouldn't be a fair marketplace for both buyers AND sellers if we did. We establish the rules and mechanisms for making sure everyone is treated as fairly as possible. I would think that everyone wants that.

You are missing the point.

The one and only point here is that you have unhappy customers.

Again, a lot of the complaints you’re receiving stem from how this has been handled on your part.

You offended allot of people.

In your very first post on this thread, post 16 you state “The problem that we face is that there are folks out there using our system to conduct off-auction sales. Bad for Auction Arms as a company, and ultimately bad for all it's users.”

In effect allot of people felt that this was being forced on them to prevent the off auction sales and felt you didn’t trust them so you had to enact this to protect yourselves

It wasn’t until post 60 that you or anyone else from AA even mentioned that this was brought about because of problems with getting messages through by the old way. It kind of feels like this was an after thought. Almost like you realized you had offended people and then thought up a new reason to keep your new system.

Then when the s**t really started to hit the fan you posted in your post number 157 “I am less worried about theft than I am about buyers and sellers not being able to contact each other - a far larger problem. The primary reason for the messaging system is to eliminate email as a problem. This keeps being brought up as if it's the only reason we brought it up, and it's really secondary to the primary problem of email not working very well.”

Again here it feels like you know the people are mad about the distrust you showed and now you’re again covering your distrust up by claiming it was all really about the email.

We know you worked hard to get this up and going but you need to address your unhappy customers concerns not defend the actions that made them unhappy.

It’s not going to matter how well you get the system running. You went and P*s**d off your customers. They see the entire system as a big slap in the face and as long as you keep it, or any part of it they will continue to see it that way.

Nhmoose have already pulled their business from here because they are unhappy.

So finding myself in the position of trying to enforce rules with the implementation of code is only useful in that I know how those rules can be subverted - but I find the process of preventing it annoying as hell. In the end, I'm only interested in making this marketplace the best it can be. Which doesn't necessarily mean peering over everyone's shoulders to make sure they're doing the right thing. Worrying about that kind of stuff only waste my, and my staff's time. And I've got better things to do.

So you have my unqualified apology. It was never my intent to generate any distrust regarding our new messaging system. So, if you don't want to use it, you'll never need to see it again - as it no longer appears when you log in. There are a lot of folks using it to overcome many of the problems I've mentioned in previous posts - so I can't get rid of it, now. But I realize that my last post was pretty snarky, and that's not usually my way. Again, my apologies.