Well, unless someone from Beckett takes the initiative and contacts me directly (good luck, I know), my verdict is in–I tired to be diplomatic, I tried to keep an open mind, and I still appreciate the thankless job that Eric has done–but the new site sucks (at least for what I want out of it), and I won’t be re-upping my subscription with them, online or off.
I tried to get a simple checklist for a site today–I prefer to do my inventory in Excel–not only will they only show 100 cards per screen max, but the copy/paste ability of the new site will not work for my needs at all.
I don’t want to organize collections on your site. I don’t want to wait 5 minutes for your tutorials that I shouldn’t have to watch load (seriously, you had to make one on how to stop auto renewal of pricing subscriptions? If anything of mine auto renews, expect VERY angry emails and calls). I don’t want to trade (on your site), and I sure don’t want to buy any cards or other licensed apparel from you–there are hundreds of better places for that kind of things online. I don’t see a “personalize this page” link at the top right of the homepage, and I really don’t want to change my content around that much anyway. And I really don’t want an annoying splash page trying to tell me where to go to find what I’m looking for.
What I do want is to be able to pull up a full list of cards from a set, so when I’m busting packs/boxes, I can scan the list for the cards I see. I want that list to load fast (unlike the old site) if it’s not going to be dynamically updated throughout the month (like the old site), or I want it to be dynamically updated, if it’s gotta be so database intensive–and right now, it’s slow AND not dynamic. (And did I mention I can’t get a full set list to display at once?)
Add in a whole bunch of content on the site that I just don’t care about and a pricing model that is absolutely ridiculous (I get a “sports card” magazine subscription with pricing, have to pay extra to get the content online, and when online have to pay for each individual sport, AND pay extra if I want the newest pricing when it first comes out), and you’ve lost yet another subscriber. I could handle some of the crap, but not all of it piled on.
Let me know when Beckett 3.0 is in the works–I promise I’ll be a more vocal beta tester this time (if I remember to login to my account). Better yet, drop me an email–I’m sure my company would love to pitch a proposal for solving this mess for you.
I could not have explained more clearly. I have left a few unhappy subscriber emails stating why change what already worked well. Or……..I guess at least worked for the most part, easy to navigate, complete lists, slow but reliable. NOW………ohmygoaaawwwddddd. When my subscriptions are done, so am I. Any suggestions where to get current pricing??????
Good luck to all.
BOBBYO – Thanks for the comment–I know it isn’t a perfect system, but I use eBay when I need to know a card value, if I’m looking to know what it would sell for. If I were looking for insurance, or something like that, I would probably just go buy the occasional copy of the sport specific Beckett, or something similar (the old Tuff Stuff?). There isn’t much out there, unfortunately.
Well, I can’t “argue” how you feel about the new site, but I can point out one fact you state that is not correct (anymore). There is no New Release Pricing anymore. We did away with that with the launch of the new site, all prices are included now. With the new Dynamic Pricing, the prices are updated every evening as well.
The reason there is not an easy way to import into Excel at this time is that certain people/groups were stealing our copyrighted content and using it for profit. That is an issue that will be taken care of in the near future.
I am always glad to help where I can, so just let me know if you need anything.
Eric – Thanks for the update–I’m not sure if I missed the news about new release pricing/dynamic pricing, or if it wasn’t hyped enough amongst the other features. That’s definitely a step in the right direction.
I also have noticed that in recent days I’ve been able to get closer to full set listings–I still preferred to get all subsets, inserts and parallels at the same time–but I got more than 100 cards to a page, which was nice.
Not enought to get me to renew immediately–but if improvements continue, I will likely come back (as long as pricing is reasonable), as I do find it to be a valuable resource.
I still don’t want to do most of the
A few comments/questions from me, a collector for years, and new to the internet side of collecting (<1 year)
Eric, When you say that the pricing is updated daily, I assume you have some sort of mathematic formula that calculates the value.
Why not make the value of the card something more accurate?
For example, Rather than seeing a card of mine stay at $50.00 for months and months, it would be more interesting to watch it go from $49.83 to $51.27 over the course of a week or two.
I would love to be able to trade cards more easily, and browse through what is up for trade in a seperate application, rather than wait for something specific that I had to Search, Check off, Add to Collection, Change Qty to One, etc. etc. etc.
I never used or subscribed to Beckett before last week (This is also my first time on this site).
I started entering in some of my football cards a week ago, and must agree that the system is very difficult to use. When I busted open a box of 08 SPX, it was frustrating and time consuming to put these in.
Once or twice during using the My Organize Feature, it would freeze, I would have to open a new Explorer window to get back into it, and the update I just tried to do didn’t take. I have only entered about 50-60 cards so far.
I have made My Collections public, and subscribed to Football Pricing, but my total doesn’t show up on my main page. This is one of about 15 problems I have encountered.
I also agree with the main article that the default # of cards per page should well exceed the # of cards in that set.
That way I can just scroll and check off what I just opened.
Probably won’t be updating my subscription either, if there are no significant changes.
The new beckett absolutly is deplorable . and there service and attitude is brutal . I will never use it again