[bojesphob]

From a data standpoint wouldnt the extra 20,000 unpaid orgs cause an unneeded drain on the processing time?

If you have a data sheet (excel for personal use) for all the cards you own and if you traded or sold cards but left them on the spreadsheet (because you MIGHT get them back eventually) - after awhile wouldnt the additional cards create a drain on load times when opening your spreadsheet?

It seems to me that excessive entries in the "free" orgs are causing unneeded problems on the overall performance for the paying members and they are giving the non paying members an opportunity to lock in the price before the increase.

Many of the complaints that I am seeing are "I pay for this why isnt it fixed?" where I'm sure having an additional 100,000 cards loaded into peoples orgs who arent even active are causing problems for those that actually do pay. I have paid for an OPG subscription for 6 years now and even if I dont use it for a month I still pay for it. You dont cancel your electricity because you go on vacation - it would cost you even more to reinstate it - so why think people can take a "break" and still have something they dont pay for stay as it was the day you left? If you take a break from the hobby then pay the $20 for a year to keep your items intact or lose them all.

I cant think of ANY business that will let you keep your stuff for free if you leave for an extended period of time - so why should Beckett?

While yes, it does take more processing, when designed correctly a database has no issues with more data... I mean, that's what a database is for! The database I designed for my job has around 700,000 customers in it with many rows of data in it (approximately 80 million). When the customers access their accounts, their activity data that's pulled from the 80 million rows takes around 2 seconds to be returned, and that's with calculations being performed on the data as well. If it can't handle the load of whatever their customer base is (even with the people who don't pay) it's either a design flaw, insufficient hardware, or both. With the sorts of hardware out there, even with database design flaws you could brute force speed out of it with a powerful enough server.

Of course, you have to be willing to pay for the hardware and the proper design...

[ceocards]

From a data standpoint wouldnt the extra 20,000 unpaid orgs cause an unneeded drain on the processing time?

If you have a data sheet (excel for personal use) for all the cards you own and if you traded or sold cards but left them on the spreadsheet (because you MIGHT get them back eventually) - after awhile wouldnt the additional cards create a drain on load times when opening your spreadsheet?

It seems to me that excessive entries in the "free" orgs are causing unneeded problems on the overall performance for the paying members and they are giving the non paying members an opportunity to lock in the price before the increase.

Many of the complaints that I am seeing are "I pay for this why isnt it fixed?" where I'm sure having an additional 100,000 cards loaded into peoples orgs who arent even active are causing problems for those that actually do pay. I have paid for an OPG subscription for 6 years now and even if I dont use it for a month I still pay for it. You dont cancel your electricity because you go on vacation - it would cost you even more to reinstate it - so why think people can take a "break" and still have something they dont pay for stay as it was the day you left? If you take a break from the hobby then pay the $20 for a year to keep your items intact or lose them all.

I cant think of ANY business that will let you keep your stuff for free if you leave for an extended period of time - so why should Beckett?

My biggest gripe - is that they've always, from the very start told users that their data would be kept & kept safe if they let a subscription lapse.

You're right, that probably wasn't the best business decision from the start, but to pull that rug out now feels like a bait and switch tactic to me.

[branesergen]

What about the members that pay the $10 a month for the actual Magazine, and still use the org to trade?

For example, I personally buy the Magazines, because I like reading the articles, hot list, ask Beckett questions, etc.. stuff that is not provided on the website, and I use the organize to trade with, so since I am paying that $10 a month at the news stand (actually $40 a month), why should I have to pay extra money just to use Organize?

And then to have them raise the price, all they are doing is trying to give their customers a screw job to pay for their stupid auction service, fantasy site, coin price guide etc..

2 totally different entities. Just because I subscribe to Playboy doesnt mean I get Playboy TV for free. Just because I buy Barilla noodles doesnt mean I get the sauce for free. Just because I pay for grading doesnt mean I get the storage boxes for free.

The Trade system is a WEB based service designed to work with the WEB based ORG and OPG, not the print versions. Imagine if everyone used the print version to trade - I would have to look up both their cards AND mine - Kinda like trading on other sites - thumbing thru buckets, instead of typing in search words, then trying to price them either on Ebay or thru Beckett, instead of having the price already listed, then having to total everything up, instead of the total already being calculated for me.

You pay for the convenience of having everything organized for you. $20 a year is worth it for me to be able to know if I need a card or not in meer seconds as opposed to thumbing thru 1500 pictures on photobucket or relying on my memory.

Everything costs money, from the Customer Service person answering your calls to the IT guy trying to get this fixed. The better the service provided the more its going to cost. Look at how basic the "Free" trading sites are and how ad based they have to be and what you have to go thru to complete a trade. Then look at Beckett. I can complete a trade in 3 minutes here vs 15-20 on other sites depending on how cluttered their bucket is. Type in Peyton Manning, check mark the stars, even out the value, click "send counteroffer", wait for acceptance.

---

My biggest gripe - is that they've always, from the very start told users that their data would be kept & kept safe if they let a subscription lapse.

You're right, that probably wasn't the best business decision from the start, but to pull that rug out now feels like a bait and switch tactic to me.

I can agree with that. And I can understand how those users must feel. But I can also understand why they may have to do it.

Now if it turns out the the Execs are in their offices getting greedy and really trying to screw over the members, then I would be gone in a second. But it feels like, to me, that this is a numbers issue and having 100,000 cards in a system that arent being used is going to cause issues for the people who actually pay for the service.

I guess I can say I dont want to have something I pay for broken to support those that dont pay. Kinda like buying an express pass at Disney only to have to wait at the end of the line like everyone else.

[jacobystealshome]

My biggest gripe - is that they've always, from the very start told users that their data would be kept & kept safe if they let a subscription lapse.

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS

honestly, i look at this particular aspect as breach of contract.

you want to archive them? go for it. outright deletion is utter bulldung

[shezdoni]

2 totally different entities. Just because I subscribe to Playboy doesnt mean I get Playboy TV for free. Just because I buy Barilla noodles doesnt mean I get the sauce for free. Just because I pay for grading doesnt mean I get the storage boxes for free.

The Trade system is a WEB based service designed to work with the WEB based ORG and OPG, not the print versions. Imagine if everyone used the print version to trade - I would have to look up both their cards AND mine - Kinda like trading on other sites - thumbing thru buckets, instead of typing in search words, then trying to price them either on Ebay or thru Beckett, instead of having the price already listed, then having to total everything up, instead of the total already being calculated for me.

You pay for the convenience of having everything organized for you. $20 a year is worth it for me to be able to know if I need a card or not in meer seconds as opposed to thumbing thru 1500 pictures on photobucket or relying on my memory.

Everything costs money, from the Customer Service person answering your calls to the IT guy trying to get this fixed. The better the service provided the more its going to cost. Look at how basic the "Free" trading sites are and how ad based they have to be and what you have to go thru to complete a trade. Then look at Beckett. I can complete a trade in 3 minutes here vs 15-20 on other sites depending on how cluttered their bucket is. Type in Peyton Manning, check mark the stars, even out the value, click "send counteroffer", wait for acceptance.

---

I can agree with that. And I can understand how those users must feel. But I can also understand why they may have to do it.

Now if it turns out the the Execs are in their offices getting greedy and really trying to screw over the members, then I would be gone in a second. But it feels like, to me, that this is a numbers issue and having 100,000 cards in a system that arent being used is going to cause issues for the people who actually pay for the service.

I guess I can say I dont want to have something I pay for broken to support those that dont pay. Kinda like buying an express pass at Disney only to have to wait at the end of the line like everyone else.

so what your saying is my money is not good enough since I don't pay for the OPG, but buy the actual magazine, when in fact it is the money from the sales of the actual magazine that have even made the OPG/Organize possible in the first place.

and as for it taking a longer time to complete trades on other sites compared to here, that's a bunch of bull and we both know it How many times have you left a proposed trade or had a proposed trade left setting in your trade area, because of no reply, etc..?

And to be honest, I would rather look through a persons bucket, than have to sort through thousands of common cards listed in the organize, even you can admit this, when it comes to photo bucket trading, very,very,very few people take the time to scan every common card, but they do scan the mid to high end stuff, and I personally would rather see a scan of the card so I can see for myself what condition it is in, compared to having someone incorrectly mark condition in organize.

[bselje]

My Football OPG expires in 9 days and have just removed the auto-renew. I've decided I can no longer support the current regime and their horrible decisions they have made lately and that the org and trade functions are never going to get fixed. I have been a member since 1997 but I am officially done here. I dont trade enough to care about BV's anymore and have decided that there are other ways to put a value on cards than Beckett.
To everyone whom I've traded with, and friends I have made, I bid you farewell and hope to see you on other sports card sites.
It's been a great run, but its over now - thanks for ruining a great community, Sandeep and co.
I'm out.

[jplarson]

Well, to be completely honest, if you're going to move say 10,000 paid people's orgs into the new stuff, you've already got the scripts to do it and while it will take a little more time to do the extra 20,000 people who have free orgs, it really shouldn't take any more actual work... just server processing time. It's probably MORE work to go through and delete unpaid people's orgs than it is to just convert them all at the same time (from my own professional dba opinion). Even if the number of people are higher than that, it would still be more efficient to do them all at the same time. This sounds to me more like a business decision to try to force more people into paying for the Org than an actual IT decision.

I agree. As for the server processing time, the biggest hit in moving inactive accounts would be the first time they enable this. Each month after there's much presumably a much smaller number of accounts that went inactive (or active again in my scenario). They intend on removing inactive orgs anyways after each period of inactivity so the effort would be the same to offload vs delete. Wouldn't even need as powerful db or machine to hold inactive accounts since there'd be very little to no active use on it.

From a data standpoint wouldnt the extra 20,000 unpaid orgs cause an unneeded drain on the processing time?

I cant think of ANY business that will let you keep your stuff for free if you leave for an extended period of time - so why should Beckett?

For the first part I would say no because you can move those orgs to an archived section that would never get hit by active queries and requests from the paid users. So no slow down from the inactive accounts.

For the last part I would say because Beckett would hope that inactive users would come back someday and at least for me I would be much more likely to renew an account if I didn't have to reenter everything again. I suppose the negative would be that Beckett would be more likely to keep a paying customer if they were afraid of losing their work put into the org vs a customer going inactive and active later again. But that's not very customer-centric in my opinion for a company built on serving customers.

My biggest gripe - is that they've always, from the very start told users that their data would be kept & kept safe if they let a subscription lapse.

You're right, that probably wasn't the best business decision from the start, but to pull that rug out now feels like a bait and switch tactic to me.

Agreed.

[branesergen]

so what your saying is my money is not good enough since I don't pay for the OPG, but buy the actual magazine, when in fact it is the money from the sales of the actual magazine that have even made the OPG/Organize possible in the first place.

and as for it taking a longer time to complete trades on other sites compared to here, that's a bunch of bull and we both know it How many times have you left a proposed trade or had a proposed trade left setting in your trade area, because of no reply, etc..?

And to be honest, I would rather look through a persons bucket, than have to sort through thousands of common cards listed in the organize, even you can admit this, when it comes to photo bucket trading, very,very,very few people take the time to scan every common card, but they do scan the mid to high end stuff, and I personally would rather see a scan of the card so I can see for myself what condition it is in, compared to having someone incorrectly mark condition in organize.

I'm actually the opposite - I hate bucket trading. As I stated I can "search" thru 10,000 cards in a persons org looking for what I want, Peyton Manning, and if its not there I can filter thru whatever it is I may think I want. If nothing exists, I respond and cancel. With photobucket I have to go thru the cards looking for something and then have to look if I have it or not. My "trade" bucket is 14 pages and I've seen some with many more, and with 100's of pictures not even related to cards. I don't want to go thru 14 pages looking for the Peyton they may or may not have when, thru Beckett, I knew within 2 minutes of opening the trade. I'm not a "any card" type of trader. If I don't have it marked as wants then I don't need it. Wait time is irrelevant. It is simply based on finding my end of the trade and the time it consumes. Sitting in my trade manager is not me scanning pages of a bucket and also waiting for a reply. Anything outside of actually finding cards you want can be seen as the same on any site. I wait for you to look over the trade on Beckett, I also wait for you to answer my PM on Blowout, I wait for you to accept here or counter, I wait for you to accept or counter on Blowout. All that is the same.

As for making money off you - you pay $10 a month to get the guide and read the articles, readers write, whats hot etc etc. No where does it say with purchase of this magazine does it allow access to the OPG. You are paying for exactly what you buy it for. I pay $9 a month for the OPG - should I get the Mag too? But our debate can end as jplarson has enlightened me that its not that big of a drain and would be easily remedied - so long story short, you are right and I can see where you are coming from.

---

I agree. As for the server processing time, the biggest hit in moving inactive accounts would be the first time they enable this. Each month after there's much presumably a much smaller number of accounts that went inactive (or active again in my scenario). They intend on removing inactive orgs anyways after each period of inactivity so the effort would be the same to offload vs delete. Wouldn't even need as powerful db or machine to hold inactive accounts since there'd be very little to no active use on it.


For the first part I would say no because you can move those orgs to an archived section that would never get hit by active queries and requests from the paid users. So no slow down from the inactive accounts.

For the last part I would say because Beckett would hope that inactive users would come back someday and at least for me I would be much more likely to renew an account if I didn't have to reenter everything again. I suppose the negative would be that Beckett would be more likely to keep a paying customer if they were afraid of losing their work put into the org vs a customer going inactive and active later again. But that's not very customer-centric in my opinion for a company built on serving customers.


Agreed.

If this is the case then I can see why people are upset.

I do agree with returning members being more inclined to return if their stuff was still there. And if its an easy fix then this shouldn't be happening.

[no1dolphan]

You can buy a 5 TERABYTE hard drive for around 200 bucks, but Beckett can't afford the space to house users' databases !? C'mon, Beckett, this may go over on simpletons, but it's very obviously a strong arm technique to increase memberships. You know the best way to do that? Improve the product. I will say that, of late, it has been fairly smooth. That said, I use the ORG mostly from 4-6 am before work... it's "UNDER MAINTENANCE" an average of 2 days a week; Where's my refund for that? First, you don't need to do "MAINTENANCE" that often and second, it's called mirroring, buy a book and learn about it.

[jacobystealshome]

You can buy a 5 TERABYTE hard drive for around 200 bucks, but Beckett can't afford the space to house users' databases !? C'mon, Beckett, this may go over on simpletons, but it's very obviously a strong arm technique to increase memberships. You know the best way to do that? Improve the product. I will say that, of late, it has been fairly smooth. That said, I use the ORG mostly from 4-6 am before work... it's "UNDER MAINTENANCE" an average of 2 days a week; Where's my refund for that? First, you don't need to do "MAINTENANCE" that often and second, it's called mirroring, buy a book and learn about it.

space is different than speed