Technical difficulties

Hello all,


The last 3-4 weeks have been fulled used by our technical team to fix bugs on the site. There were dozens of them, so it was time to look into all of these.

Unfortunately, fixing them has also generated some problems on the site (Lister, API, Image processing, etc). These are edge effects...

This is not a normal and acceptable situation for us. We are well aware of these problems and do our utmost to fix everything, always as soon as possible.

Please, continue to report any technical problem to our support.

We apologize for inconvenience and thank you for your patience.


Best regards,

Sebastien Delcampe

Thank you for this communication.

However, as you yourself say, this has been ongoing for 3 to 4 weeks. Could it be possible in the future, to make an announcement sooner, please? That way we know what the problem is and there would be a lot less discontent amongst members.

Marianne

Hello Marianne,


There have not been that many problems during 3-4 weeks. Only some, then we fix and other come... and we always think all will be fixed in the following few hours, so we do not communicate (we concentrate on fixing).


Sebastien

Die Informationen sind nicht mehr verfügbar, da das Konto dieses Benutzers gelöscht wird (DSGVO-Grundverordnung).

Die Informationen sind nicht mehr verfügbar, da das Konto dieses Benutzers gelöscht wird (DSGVO-Grundverordnung).

Hello Sebastien,

Thanks for the explanation. I agree with the other posts here. I got so irritated with limited or no site access, picture upload errors, crashes during listing etc that I emailed D recently asking what was going on.

So, a nice word of warning would have been very useful.....to cover the possibility that the problems might still be ongoing.

Nice site though.......

The recent problems have lasted over 18 hours ... I think it is a 'professional' necessity to communicate that the site is having some problems and that they are being worked on. The only alternative for site users is to report the problems which surely must overwhelm your Support team and potentially distract them from working on the fault(s).

I would have thought that a dedicated 'technical window' within the Community Menu might be an answer. Since some of the faults seem to be of a recurring nature you might even be able to reuse the 'language announcements' again and again.

Alan Catherall
[Hoatzinstamps]

Die Informationen sind nicht mehr verfügbar, da das Konto dieses Benutzers gelöscht wird (DSGVO-Grundverordnung).

A couple of suggestions on how to communicate, based on how other venues & associated sites do so:

1. A banner or icon (flashing) at top of the page advising of any technical problem, with a link to more detailed information. If there's some scheduled downtime within the next 24 hrs for a major upgrade etc that can be communicated through such means too.

2. A number of sites have a link to a twitter feed that advises in real time the onset of the problem, what's affected, estimated downtime, when service is restored etc. The twitter feed is linked in to the site's home page so users see they can link to the twitter feed when the site is unavailable.

I could give examples of sites that do this but I respect Mr. Delcampe's preferences not to have such sites named here. I would just add that in a competitive environment, these kinds of differences between sites and services feed into the decision making of users about their choices on which sites to use and why.

Hoping for a positive response to improve communications.

cheers, Brent

Hello Sebastien,

The truth of the matter is, that there have been a number of issues. Communication/information is the key to keeping your members happy.

I've read your response on the French forum, where you state that it's a problem to give the information in all the different languages, and that you've only given the current info in French and English and that you prefer to concentrate on fixing any problems.

Surely not your entire team are "techies" and many of them speak various languages. Also you have a bank of moderators to fall back on. I am sure there are many of them who would be able to put a simple message on the forum in the various languages.

All it needs is a very simple message along the lines of: We have some technical issues which may effect xxxx over the coming hours. Very easy to translate into all the necessary languages, where xxxx is the only variable. It shouldn't be that difficult to have on file a list of xxxx in various languages, albeit uploading images/searching/browsing/listing new items/lister/sending invoices, etc etc.
This message could either be posted on the homepage or on the various forums. I am sure it would be more time and cost effective and efficient then receiving 100's of email from disgruntled members asking why they can't do xxxx.

Hello,

As said, I completely agree, but it is never as easy as it seems... Each day we do several steps, and we still have lot to do

Kind regards, Sebastien

It appears that FINALLY today when the site was down for hours, the site administrators used their twitter feed as the landing page for the site's home page to get out the news the site was down in multiple languages and to provide an estimated time for when the site was expected to be back on-line.

Better late than never. At least we knew not to waste time waiting.

50 new listings I planned to put up here today went to other sites. It's a choice I've increasingly made over the past year for a number of reasons.

My web host posts messages about their servers and activities that they are undergoing.

All they need here is a running list of items that takes almost no time to post.

For instance, how about another thread here - "Current delcampe Status" or something like that? All your fixers and moderators need only go to one place. There are enough people that it can be translated easily enough.

The mechanism is in place. As an IT person, this is critical for operations and as a knowledgebase of previous fixes.

There really should not be any reason why a delcampe employee could not inform us of anything that would interfere with business.

That is good business practice.

Tracy

Hello,

1 month on from this thread, there are still problems on the site which make selling very difficult and sometimes such a hassle that I have to close the computer in frustration. Seb, there are NO problems on any of the other sites I use so it has to be your end!

The main problems are:

No site response (even at off peak times)
Slowness in loading a listing. Since D changed the system, it is even slower.
Site crashes during listing (not quite so frequent recently)
Today.....the e-wallet does not operate so not possible to send invoices or print delivery notes.

I have been selling stamps on auction sites for over 10 years and decided earlier this year to concentrate on Delcampe only. So I started listing many more items (10,000+ still to go). The sales results so far have been reasonably encouraging & August sales to date are about 200% of previous levels

However, everything takes so long to list, & with all the other recurring technical problems, I wonder if my decision to concentrate on Delcampe was wrong. Comments?

Best wishes to you & your staff....Mike