{mosimage}Wagglepop’s seller membership has been dropping steadily since Ray Romeo increased the fees to $29.95 a month.
In a long crybaby post, similar to the “Wagglepop we hardly knew ya” from Wagglepop 1 days, Ray Romeo (appearing here once again as Andrew Pittino) lays out all the blame and shame on ignorant sells that can’t see his Vision. It seems this may be one of the last great paragraphs of hooplah we may see from Ray and his second failed Wagglepop site, due to these ignorant sellers that “don’t believe in a trust based system”.
He also makes threats and gestures to the sellers that have signed up and not paid for the Wagglepop non-service.
I gleaned this here from TulipTools.com.
Just a small update for loyal membership and our dedicated seller base on how the restructure is progressing.
As expected, as we abandon completely our original vision for Wagglepop as an eBay competitor (due to pronounced lack of good faith participation in the numbers required to do so ) and re-invent ourselves as a diverse retail-type marketplace, we start a new chapter in the history of our company.
Existing Wagglepop Marketplace sellers continue to leave, and we anticipate a merchant body of around 75-100 independent merchants will remain under SmartSell Enterprise. At some point we expect to cap that number and likely close the Marketplace to new merchants while we introduce a new requirements package to join the Marketplace.
The very fact that so many (who are leaving or who have left) consider less than $1.00 per day in fixed operating participation costs – in totality – to be too much to continue only cements for us as a company that the decision to set aside the original vison for Wagglepop as an eBay competitor was indeed the correct one to make and implement.
Wagglepop continues to represent an afforable and feature rich online selling opportunity – but outside of the handful of wonderfully visionary and dedicated members we have currently – woefully underutilized or underappreciated in general.
In many ways, that might have been expected to some degree – eBay has “institutionalized” it’s seller body in many ways by making the very mechanisms that it offers seem as if they are the actual business dynamics, such as “listing” alone being a sum total of a business plan.
Based on current numbers, eBay sellers do not mind very much the fees and fee increases (beyond public complaints), and eBay apparently knows that and will continue to exploit that. Our own research indicates two more increases over the next 36 months as likely.
We will continue to offer a truly effective and affordable alternative, though we have very little expectation that we will increase the anticipated merchant base of 75-100, total. Should the merchant population drop to 10, then that is the number we are prepared to support.
Wagglepop was founded on a simple principle: That people would and could come together to support their own auction-style site, and based on that ability to organize generate the media attention and activity that would start and sustain growth.
Unfortunately, quite the opposite was the case. Sellers came, gave it 30-60-90 days, listed a few things, and left – oftentimes without honoring their outstanding balances, now in collection.
For some of us here it is difficult to verbalize our feelings about that. An awful lot of time and expense went into building and sustaining Wagglepop, and the continuation of it in any form reflects that very effort. We want those who wish to be here to get the very best site we can provide. Dedicated membership deserves nothing less.
As far as eBay goes, I can state with full assurance that the original Wagglepop vision and support structure was most likely the last best chance eBay members had to support something of their own. Built independently with private funds, we were prepared to re-invest every penny of participatory revenues back into the site to keep growing towards our competitor goal based on participation.
Sadly, none of that original vision has come to or will ever come to pass.
Many smaller independent sites are now closing (such as Bidville) or are woefully understructured to handle either traffic or customer needs.
For those remaining with us, we are honored to have you as a part of the Marketplace and we will soon begin population of the site under Wagglepop Marketshare so that we may offer a truly item and product rich destination for online shoppers.
I am unsure exactly why the online selling community continues to discard opportunities such as Wagglepop and favor instead villification of any attempts at non-eBay alternatives. While I understand that everyone wants to be heard – to have a voice on forums and blogs – I am confounded that so many would not recognize that a single voice of people building and working together at an alternative would speak volumes to both eBay and the media.
I am disturbed that so many of the so-called “independent” reporting/help sites have ignored Wagglepop, yet continue to tout themselves as impartial and part of the solution rather than an obvious symbol of the problem that eBay itself represents.
We waited two years for the online selling community to recognize this opportunity and do the work required, together, to finally show eBay that they work for membership, and not the other way around.
As a company – at worst – we lost some invested finances in the original Wagglepop vision through construction and operation. We can and will write much of that off in coming statements, and the restructure near ensures our ability to continue operation for many years to come.
The general online selling community and the people they serve?
They lost so much more.
Ownership has made it very clear to myself and staff that it is our responsibility to ensure that all merchants make on-time payment of seller fees as invoiced monthly.The payment record for the “30-60-90″ day crowd is utterly abysmal, and ownership contends that our management policy of a fully “open” marketplace is partly to blame.
I agree. I am personally tired of witnessing over 50% of staff resources dedicated to account referral and collections, malicious behavior, and processing of closures or suspensions.
New merchants who understand the User Agreement? We welcome them with open arms.
A continuation of past non-payment history? Ownership says “absolutely not”, and I agree and support that 100%.
Expect changes related to that in the coming weeks, including introduction of a “requirements” package that will ensure we do not dilute oue existing dedicated merchants with dissimilar ones and/or waste valuable staff resources on basic User Agreement enforcement as related to seller invoicing and payment.
{mosimage}Oh, this is funny stuff, TOO funny.
A while ago, Ubid.com bought out Bidville, for no apparent reason, and now Ubid.com has decided to close down the consumer to consumer auction site.
Now, Ray Romeo (going by the name of Andrew Pittino) of Wagglepop.com states to his sellers with no bidders that he had offered to buy Bidville, but the price was just way too high! Wagglepop sellers actually BELIEVE that the closure of Bidville will bring more sellers to Wagglepop, and Ray is shooting rainbows out of his ass!
Bwabhwhabhwhbhahbhwah.. LIES!
Bidville has always been of great interest here as we aspired as companies to similar markets. The shuttling of Bidville entirely is a curious decision overall to us.
While we recognize the parent company (UBid) as seeking to support more of a business-to-consumer model rather than a comsumer-to-consumer model, the valuation they have assigned to Bidville seems designed primarily to ensure the closure of it.
We saw their announcement as a possible opportunity for action, but our own valuation of Bidville and the estimated purchase price range given to us by Bidville upon our inquiry are wildly disparate.
Our hope now is that the many Bidville members looking for alternatives find us here at Wagglepop to buy, sell, and continue or make new friendships and relationships.
This is from the same guy that said he spent $45,000 in advertising, with nothng to show for it. This is the guy that claims that Wagglepop’s operating loss is over $320,000. WOW! Just as with the first Wagglepop, Ray increases the amount of BS when he’s realized his site has failed. A FOR SALE should appear before October.
This information was gleaned from TulipTools.com:
http://community.tuliptools.com/index.php/topic,3775.17550.html
{mosimage}Determined to burn Wagglepop to the ground, Andrew Pittino (aka owner Ray Romeo) throws out his knee jerk reaction to give his auction site 6 months to lose sellers, and he immediately moves up the date for changes to June 1st, promising to give his remaining sellers “a few surprises”. During the time, the site has been down for over 4 hours in the last week due to some configuration problem with Ray’s DNS servers.
Those surprise(s) include removal of final value fees, which most sellers at WP weren’t incurring anyway. The “other” big surprises were that Ray was tripling the monthly fee for a WP store, and he plans to include Wagglepop’s own dropship items on the Wagglepop site to inflate the number of products being offered there, probably competing with sellers that sell the same items! These changes were to happen in October, but it seems Ray got too greedy, and moved the changes up 5 months.
It also seems Ray/Andrew has determined to do what he can to get the most money out of his sellers quickly, and then attempt to sell the site as he did with Wagglepop 1, claiming that Wagglepop 2 has burned through over $300,000. He’s been really busy lately deleting negative posts from Wagglepop.com from his sellers, and suggests they go to other boards to complain.
Not surprisingly, Wagglepop sellers are pissed, even the kool aid drinking faithful are starting to teeter on their loyalty. Ray/Andrew, naturally, blames stupid sellers that can’t see his vison.
Most of this information (and a few blogs are listed in these links too) can be found on TulipTools.com and PowerSellersUnite.com. Hit the jump for the offical announcement from Ray Romeo.
Wagglepop Announcements
http://www.wagglepop.com/bin/Accessory/announcements
TulipTools Discussion
http://community.tuliptools.com/index.php/topic,3775.17295.html
PowerSellers Unite Discussion
http://powersellersunite.com/about18689.html
{mosimage}More weird stuff for Wagglepop and its owner, Ray Romeo (aka Andrew Pittino)…
Wagglepop.ocm has a page enouraging any visitor (registered on Wagglepop or not) to spam their friends into visiting the site. Here it is…
http://www.wagglepop.com/bin/TellaFriend
Nothing wrong with the page itself, other than the blatant free spamming Ray is asking his sellers to go through, rather than spend time actually trying to sell anything on his site.
Anyway, if you take a look at the source of the page, you’ll see that this text is commented out from view. Text that was originally on the page, and then removed, for what reason, I wonder? It seems like Ray doesn’t want to give anybody any false hope that their email address or other personal information would be safe from third parties. Remember, this text was REMOVED from the original page.
Note: We never sell access to our data to marketers, credit collectors, or others that would send your email we believe you would not want to receive. All data provided to us by users is treated with great care. It is never sold or distributed or provided to any commercial enterprise without your specific permission. Please read our terms of use for more information.
Why would Ray take the time to include that text on the page, and then have his mooks comment it out? You be the judge.
Hit the jump to see the entire HTML TD tag that was removed, if you’re curious. I wouldn’t be surprised if that commented text is removed by the time you read it, so if you see it, take a screen shot like I did.
{mosimage}Andrew Pittino, Ray Romeo’s alter ego, has recently come unglued on a new seller to Wagglepop, pulled in to sell on the site due to recommendations from friends, and eBay’s new price hikes.
Unfortuneately, this seller saw Ray’s real management style.
Hit the jump to read the entire correspondence, but in a short summary, the following things happened.
1) Seller joins the “revolution”, with a hearty thanks and welcome from Wagglepop
2) Seller establishes a store on Wagglepop, and gets a hearty thanks and welcome email.
3) Seller finds out that PayPal is a requirement for a Wagglepop store, and gets frustrated trying to add bank account information in the PayPal setup
4) Seller sends a message to customer support for help and explanation about the PayPal setup.
5) Wagglepop support person “Chris” reitierates that PayPal is a requirement, and tells seller to call PayPal Support with his problem.
6) Seller responds by asking “Chris” to “kindly cancel my membership”, explaining that he doesn’t like PayPal nor its new terms of service.
7) “Chris” responds with “Problem” “You _must_ have a paypal store”, and reminds the seller that he has an outstanding fee, and that he won’t close the store until that fee is settled.
Seller naturally gets upset, and reiterates to Chris that he had all intentions of setting up a store, but that he has had problems setting up a PayPal account, and now refuses to create one, asking again
to have his Wagglepop account closed.
9) “Andrew Pittino” then shows up, commenting on the seller’s “reading comprehension”, AGAIN reiterating that PayPal is a requirement to sell on Wagglepop.com, and reminding the seller of his outstanding fee, and that Ray (I mean Andrew) can charge up to $75.00 a month in collection fees. He then flames out by calling the seller “an idiot eBay is trying to get rid of”, and for some reason, wishes him luck on Bidville. He then makes inferences in the email that he has copied his legal department, that “IP tracking is ON”, and logs the account as “delinquent”.
10) Seller responds by providing “Andrew” the facts of the email exchange, calling his “collections” scare for $9.95 “extortion”, and suggests that “Andrew” brush up on his business law.
Folks, this is what Ray Romeo is all about. You’d think he’d be happy to bend over backwards to the new sellers getting fooled into joining his site, but this is exactly the same thing that happened when the first Wagglepop failed.
Sometime soon, Ray will again start blaming sellers, bidders, competitiors, and imaginary people that send him “turds” in the mail for his failures.
If you have a similar story to this, send it to me via the “Contact Us” link on the right side of the page.
At least the good news for Ray is that recently started listing things in his eBay store again!
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQfgtpZ1QQfrppZ25QQsassZprinted442QQssPageNameZADMEQ3aBQ3aFSELQ3aUSQ3a1124
Click “Read More” to see the email exchange….
Other sites with Wagglepop Info…
Tulip Tools – http://community.tuliptools.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=6tpi6v2bl8t9f6mj59qodri0l0&topic=3775.msg68400#new
Power Sellers Unite – http://www.powersellersunite.com/viewtopic.php?p=150178#150178
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