[tkaplan]

To our Beckett.com Members,

We want to sincerely apologize for the recent slowdown in service to users of the organize software tool. We hear you loud and clear and understand your frustration with this portion of our website, as well as speed issues with other functions on the site recently. This problem can be attributed to growing pains as much as anything else. The good news is that we have more collectors than ever before accessing data, organizing their collections, and trading with other collectors on our site. The bads news is that we have not been fully prepared to handle the vast amount of quick growth that we've experienced in this area. No one wants this problem to be resolved as much as we do and we're not asking for you to excuse us from our obligations. You have our commitment to turn this short term speed problem into a long term positive change in how the backend architecture of the site is designed so that this will not be a recurring problem.

In short, new servers have been installed and we are experiencing noticeable improvements in speed. Heavily traveled and queried portions of the site, like organize, will be changed structurally to allow more timely access now and in the future. You should notice even more improvements in speed to Organize within the next two weeks and more permanent speed enhancements after all hardware and architectural changes are installed over the next four weeks. We realize that this can be a long time to wait, since you've already been waiting for some time, but we strongly feel that those who stick with us will be quite pleased with the final results and pleased with the array of enhancements and new services that will become possible in 2014 due to this hardware and software restructuring.

Direct Collector-to-Collector (C2C) buying and selling is just one of the many significant enhancements that Organize users will enjoy, but that's just for starters. We are committed to making Organize the fastest, most user friendly collecting software on the market and we hope that you will agree once we all pass this current road block.

Customer communication has not always been our strong suit and we realize it. We're taking steps to change this situation as well, and we trust that you'll notice improvements over the coming months on this front.

We thank you for your patience.

Dan Hitt
Senior Manager - eCommerce

[zeprock]

Thank you for letting us know that our concerns have been heard and are being acted upon. As you can tell from the sticky at the top of the Help forum there are a lot of issues that need addressing.

I pay a yearly subscription for the Beckett Baseball OPG and the cost is going up each year. This year I haven't felt like I've gotten my money's worth. Will there be any compensation to those of us who have to scrounge up enough for a subscription only to end up spending more hours of frustration than fruition?

The customer appreciation month is a cool thing for about 30 members. I think the rest of us might still be feeling a bit unappreciated.

[mmahoney]

Thank you for letting us know that our concerns have been heard and are being acted upon. As you can tell from the sticky at the top of the Help forum there are a lot of issues that need addressing.

I pay a yearly subscription for the Beckett Baseball OPG and the cost is going up each year. This year I haven't felt like I've gotten my money's worth. Will there be any compensation to those of us who have to scrounge up enough for a subscription only to end up spending more hours of frustration than fruition?

The customer appreciation month is a cool thing for about 30 members. I think the rest of us might still be feeling a bit unappreciated.

Well said. I couldn't agree more. I pay my subscription 6 months at a time and also feel I haven't got my money's worth. I have hundreds of hours invested in my org and plan on being here for the long haul.

[bcs]

Good points guys. The proof will be in our ability to deliver and not just talk about improvements. We'll get there. If our customer service department is not properly handling customer disputes and resolving issues you have with our products and services than that is a deficiency that we'll get corrected. We've already begun that process internally.
We don't intend to be strangers to our customers, but reading and responding inside the forums is the most time consuming way for us to communicate and, even then, the message sometimes reaches a small number of customers. We'll be making improvements to our communication methods and frequency in the coming weeks and months that I think you'll appreciate.

[ryanmo5]

Do you guys have anyone who has admin abilities/privileges on the forum end? Seems like you have no one that is directly involved with the forums that has any power to make changes such as reversing a banned user name who was banned by mistake. We have had several of the best members on here who have had to abandon their original names and orgs cause they were unfairly banned. Im a senior moderator on one of the biggest forums in the world and we have access and the authority to make basic calls and changes like this. Perhaps you should give a few mods on here some more admin abilities, sure would help.

Seems as if the forums are run very poorly and without much care and it's pretty sad honestly. The paying members and heavy users are the ones keeping your forums going with all the traffic they bring and deserve more imo. I'm not trying to be completely negative cause there are awesome reasons to stay here and the org is still an amazing tool but it seems as if it's getting worse not better and it's a disturbing trend.

[floydtown]

Mods do have full ban abilities but this particular issue with excessive IP logins we have no control over. They need to call Beckett and/or CS.

[tdog4468]

so the issue with getting into the price guide, (have to select one of subtopics then enter the price guide and deselect the subtopic and then enter my search) as well as the problem with organizer listing cards completely out of order in collections will all be solved soon?

I have only encountered these problems in the last couple of weeks so it seems it may be due the work being done.

[petesahuttt]

I mean, seriously. How many times have we gotten little letters like this in the last 3-4 years? And look at the site today. It runs faster most of the time but at what cost? Fixing one thing breaks another.
In all aspects of life I am an optimist, but when it comes to this website, well, not such an optimist.
I really do wish well for this site, but I'm afraid it's always going to be a case of a site half-broken.
Thanks Dan for the letter, looking forward to your successor's letter in about 10 months.
Peter St Jean,
subscriber to the site and someone who has lost his Org data (250,000+ cards) twice already

[reagle beagle 37]

Yeah, I've been here 12 years and nothing has ever been working properly for a long period of time. Really need some competition against Beckett.

[benner73]

I mean, seriously. How many times have we gotten little letters like this in the last 3-4 years? And look at the site today. It runs faster most of the time but at what cost? Fixing one thing breaks another.
In all aspects of life I am an optimist, but when it comes to this website, well, not such an optimist.
I really do wish well for this site, but I'm afraid it's always going to be a case of a site half-broken.
Thanks Dan for the letter, looking forward to your successor's letter in about 10 months.
Peter St Jean,
subscriber to the site and someone who has lost his Org data (250,000+ cards) twice already

Spot on post. We hear it every year. We hear your concerns and we are working on it. Why can't Beckett hire a competent IT company or give it's current staff the right equipment. It all just sound like a money problem. So please excuse us for not believing a word of what is said.