Flea Market Poll

beemerdons said:

most Members here have given up on the BMW MOA Flea Market

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Most is kinda a big word Don. Could you send me the stats via the private message system?
Try to remember, the old F/M had to go due to technology, when we had it in the forum itself (like ADV), there was a lot of complaining, and now we are working through this system.
If you have had a specific problem, let me know and I'll work with you to get you through it.
Gary

Omega Man said:

Your welcome! Now this is just my view as I have nothing to do with what goes on in the background- only this side of the screen. I see it as very complicated to have two sites that need authentication off one password/login and they seemed to have done it for the most part. You can spend money on the home page which is a security complication, you can go from the forum to the home page (provided you have logged into both) and spent money (security again). Having these systems hold as one bounces back and forth is a big deal to figure out.
The new home page has much more to it and it will take time to figure out how to get to what a member was used to seeing, what they want to see and what they need to see.
A replication of an old system never occurs in the computer/web world unless it's from some country you've never heard of
Gary


Well, I am sorta confused as it seems you interpret my comments as telling "everything is fine". I don't know if everything is fine- for every user. I myself don't use the flea market and only go to take a look when a member has a question- and try to find an answer.
I actually think that that the younger demographics will do better if they joined say- tomorrow. They would have no knowledge of the "old" flea market and therefore wouldn't be trying to run or see the new flea market as the old.
I am still of the opinion a lot of the view trouble is user based, that is the members choice of computer brand. If I was to go and purchase comparable hardware from Sony, HP, Acer, Toshiba and Dell, running Windoze 8, when I turned them all on- the views and operation would be different. They would all do the same thing 12 ways thanks MS, but they would have to be figured out.
There a probably some glitches but this is what we have. I will be something to work on and there will always a different view/ way to work the system.
Gary

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Ok, I'm going to chime in and Omega Man, please don't take this the wrong way. I appreciate all you do for the club. However, I don't believe our problems are caused by different brands of computers or even PC vs. MAC vs. iPad vs. Android tablet. I've frequented quite a few forums with flea markets (including the old MOA one) and have never had the problems I've had with this one. The MOA flea market for me is one of the most important parts of my membership. The new Panjo Marketplace is second-rate and I am wondering how well vetted they were when the decision was made to use their services. Did anyone review the features with them before launch? If so, it seems that whoever did was not a user of the old Flea Market. For instance, the Buy Now button is not in the spirit of our members who like to interact by email or phone when buying/selling items. I had an item for sale and had an interested buyer email me, and before we could exchange information, another buyer hit the Buy Now button. A couple of us gave feedback on that at least a month ago and it has not yet been addressed. When placing an ad, it asks for my PayPal information purportedly to make it easier for the buyer to pay right away with no interaction. I will not enter my PayPal information when placing an ad, because who is to say my information is safe with an entity that can't put forth a site that works? One other issue is that the sort function works maybe half of the time when I try to sort by type of motorcycle (i.e. Airheads). A blank screen comes up. That happens for a lot of us when merely trying to access the Marketplace, according to the poll. Those of us members who utilize this feature of our membership been very patient with this process. It took a long time, if I remember correctly, where we did not have a working Flea Market because the new one was being built. Now that it's here, it does not work and our feedback seems to be falling on deaf ears. Quite frankly, I am tired of hearing excuses and questions about what browser a person is using. Please! We need professional help with our site.

Thanks for taking the time to post these comments Penny. I agree. As I have posted before all of my testing is done on up to date devices fully patched of different types and flavors including multiple browsers. I have made a living as an IT Director for 20 years. The problem ain't me or what I am using or how I connect, he said hoping someone would hear.

Penny -

My thoughts on your post:

The MOA flea market for me is one of the most important parts of my membership. The new Panjo Marketplace is second-rate and I am wondering how well vetted they were when the decision was made to use their services. Did anyone review the features with them before launch? If so, it seems that whoever did was not a user of the old Flea Market.

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Since the old FM was not in a state to be continued or transferred to the new version of vBulletin, it came down to writing a completely new FM or using an existing marketplace. The former approach was well outside what the MOA could afford...I'm not privy to the finances, but that seems a reasonable statement. Since Panjo was an existing utility within vBulletin, that was strongly considered. I contacted 3 webmasters who were running Panjo and they gave me a review which basically said they liked and had no real issues. But you're probably right, I'm not a user of online markets so I was looking at them that way. I was relying on others who have used Panjo and there wasn't any serious downside that was relayed to me.

One other issue is that the sort function works maybe half of the time when I try to sort by type of motorcycle (i.e. Airheads). A blank screen comes up. A blank screen comes up. That happens for a lot of us when merely trying to access the Marketplace, according to the poll.

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I thought the poll was about whether the new market hangs when loading...I didn't see it being specifically an issue with sorting. The old FM was really bad at sorting. If I wanted to see all Airheads, I'd click that category and if I wanted to see more than just 10 on the page, when I clicked on 50 per page, I ended up getting the entire FM, not just Airheads. People seem to forget the bad features of the old FM. When I've gone to the new marketplace to look into problems that people are having, I've never really had an issue. It sorted all Airheads just fine for me right now. And there is the very real fact that it works fine for some people while others have problems. That's a hard nut to crack. But people have to realize, there are an incredible number of options for hardware and software, not to mention the fickle Internet that exists between all of us and the flea market.

Now that it's here, it does not work and our feedback seems to be falling on deaf ears. Quite frankly, I am tired of hearing excuses and questions about what browser a person is using. Please! We need professional help with our site.

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I can assure you that people are looking at this. Everyone's feedback is appreciated and it's great that people are responding to the poll, etc. This helps to define some of the issues that the users are having. Please keep providing any input you might have. If you want to contact the people who are actively working on the new marketplace, I'd say contact the MOA market admin at marketplaceadmin@bmwmoa.org and/or Panjo at info@panjo.com.

I just clicked it for the first time. It loaded fine.

I don't see anything I want to buy but I sure do have a lot of BMW stuff that I could sell.

gfspencer said:

It loaded fine.

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As I posted earlier it does seem more stable lately but until someone chimes in to tell us what has changed we have no idea if it will last. Here's hoping though.

Not sure when the new FM will be stable and work correctly, but there's hope. Heck, I think we could get along just fine utilizing just the Member Marketplace section of the forum. AdvRider and other sites work well this way. Little bit of a learning curve to post pics but it's doable.

8ninety8 said:

With the old format can't remember any thread going on and on about flea market not working. Maybe some complaints but I never heard them.

Seriously, I don't bother looking at it now and in the past I bought stuff. In the old days I found it easy to use the printed adds. Get home from work, call a dude up LD touch dial land line, cut them a personal check, week later stuff arrives on front step. No inter web needed.

Last summer kid asked me, "What's that?" I said, "A radio!" He asked, "What's that?"

There's a point where progress becomes redundant. Slick becomes white noise.

Remember when a paper kid threw the want adds on the step, you grabbed a cup of joe at the kitchen table on a crisp Sat. morning and looked through the motorcycle columns?

There it was, your next bike in all its glory, a 1975 BMW R90S, and only 2500 bucks. Hey, I'll call on the phone and hear what the guy has to say.

No staring at a screen as battery powers down, no trying to refocus your vision if you look up, no clicking around in frustration, no bogus adds, caveat emptor reigned, close the adds and put them in the bird cage. There really wasn't much of a problem.

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+1
Get rid of Panjo...

mikegalbicka said:

As I posted earlier it does seem more stable lately but until someone chimes in to tell us what has changed we have no idea if it will last. Here's hoping though.

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Hanging this morning - knew it was too good to be true. Five load timeouts using the default style. Changed it to Blau and it finally loaded. Changed it back to default and it loaded again.

Mike -

When it was hanging, it would have been a good time to try my suggestion here:

http://forums.bmwmoa.org/showthread...eedback-Thread&p=974999&viewfull=1#post974999

bobs98 said:

Sorry, the marketplace cannot load on Internet Explorer 8 or below.

In our quest to provide you with the best experience possible, the marketplace uses features which Internet Explorer 8.0 does not support. Don't get us wrong, we love Microsoft, but even Microsoft stopped supporting IE 8 in April 2014.

Below is a list of compatible browsers:
Google Chrome
Mozilla Firefox
Opera
Latest Internet Explorer

Thanks!

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Updating this post.

I just tried Flea Market link this morning from home and the Panjo Marketplace loaded quickly and appeared to be complete.
I was able to sort by bike type and viewed the R1150R Rockster, then went to the "Other BMWs" category and looked at a C.
After that, it would not take me back to the "Other" category and I couldn't even get to the main Flea Market page.

I will continue to look at the ads in the Forum section as threads, but find the actual Marketplace to be cumbersome and unreliable.

Fortunately, there is not much that I really "need," but I will not be trying to sell anything here.

20774 said:

Mike -

When it was hanging, it would have been a good time to try my suggestion here:

http://forums.bmwmoa.org/showthread...eedback-Thread&p=974999&viewfull=1#post974999

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I did when I got to work. See that thread for results.

Cromwell2 said:

Not sure when the new FM will be stable and work correctly, but there's hope. Heck, I think we could get along just fine utilizing just the Member Marketplace section of the forum. AdvRider and other sites work well this way. Little bit of a learning curve to post pics but it's doable.

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+1

mikegalbicka said:

I did when I got to work. See that thread for results.

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I guess I missed it. My suggestion wasn't to change styles/skins but to go to another forum also running Panjo.

20774 said:

I guess I missed it. My suggestion wasn't to change styles/skins but to go to another forum also running Panjo.

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I didn't change the style. When I went to your link it loaded the default style for that link automatically which was planet 9. Same when I came back to ours. It loaded the default.

mikegalbicka said:

I didn't change the style. When I went to your link it loaded the default style for that link automatically which was planet 9. Same when I came back to ours. It loaded the default.

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Thanks...that's interesting. The planet-9 marketplace is about as stable as they come according to the owner. They have stable plug-ins on their site...something we might have to investigate.

gfspencer said:

I just clicked it for the first time. It loaded fine.

I don't see anything I want to buy but I sure do have a lot of BMW stuff that I could sell.

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Please report back with your experience after you've used Panjo to post your For Sale items. I'm curious to see if your impression changes.

I think the guideline in business goes like this: What you can do well, do. What you cannot do well but wish to do, farm out to someone who can do it well for your company. If you can't afford that, then just don't do it--concentrate on what you can do well and be happy to direct customers to another business (or site) that can better handle that portion of their needs or wants. Maybe that's where we are at--focus on doing a great job with ads in the magazine proper and direct electronic ads to a site that can better handle them?? There are just a lot of us who have difficulty understanding why it's so easy to post or find a FS item on I-BMW.com, ADVRider.com, or IBMWR.org and so difficult in Panjo. IMHO, of course.

Best,

GTRider

I can't find the flea market on the mobile site. Does anyone know where to find it? I have notifications, search (which only searches entries) messages, etc. No categories like on the website.

pockomoth -

I don't usually use any special skin to visit the forum when on my smartphone...I just view with a normal browser. But if I choose the Mobile Style, I get to this type of screen after I click on the small box at the top right of the page...takes me as high as I go. Is this what you see? If so, I certainly agree with you there's no way to get to the Flea Market.

Is there anyway you could navigate to the BMW Homepage and select the Flea Market link from there?

For the bottom row of items, only the photo shows, no description.