Bricklink/BrickOwl - Discussion, questions, & answers

[LegoMan1212]

I don't feel like spamming my store, but was wondering if anyone wouldn't mind just looking at things to see if I missed anything obvious and any thoughts.  I would PM you the store name.  Please PM if interested.  Thanks in advance

[Phil B]

Received the following message on BrickOwl (from previously zero-feedback buyer):

Quote

Thank you for the Lego elves Azaris magic bakery set - however I was disappointed to have to pay a £16.98 customs charge in order for the parcel to be delivered as I would have expected this to be included in the £18.67 postage charge.

I await your response.

 

 

On BrickLink, I have a "You are responsible for import duties, if applicable" in my Store terms. I cannot seem to find something like that on BrickOwl, or a place where I can enter this text. BO Help only seems to focus on the selling side (I was checking if they have a generic Help entry talking about import duties). Does anyone know where this is spelled out (or where I can add custom text to spell this out) in BrickOwl?

Edited April 20, 2017 by Phil B

[Pebble&Park]

Received the following message on BrickOwl (from previously zero-feedback buyer):

Thank you for the Lego elves Azaris magic bakery set - however I was disappointed to have to pay a £16.98 customs charge in order for the parcel to be delivered as I would have expected this to be included in the £18.67 postage charge.
I await your response.

    On BrickLink, I have a "You are responsible for import duties, if applicable" in my Store terms. I cannot seem to find something like that on BrickOwl, or a place where I can enter this text. BO Help only seems to focus on the selling side (I was checking if they have a generic Help entry talking about import duties). Does anyone know where this is spelled out (or where I can add custom text to spell this out) in BrickOwl?

I'm not on BO, but they honestly thought you could mail it to the UK for a couple of bucks?

[Kenxxx]

Sorry for the noob questions: I am in the early stages of planning my first MOC.  I can see there will be dozens (maybe hundreds?) of unique part numbers I will need to complete it.  2 or 3 or this, 30 or 100 of that, and so on...  Where do I start?  First... is there a blog article / web page anyone might recommend that noob BL users should read?  Can I create a list of all I need, and input it somewhere to find 3 (or 10) BL sellers who can supply it all?  ... or do I just have to search sellers item by item, and end up placing orders through 50 or more different sellers?

[ISO8T0]

"Wanted list" is your friend.

https://www.bricklink.com/help.asp?helpID=176 Scroll all the way down.

 

 

 

Edited April 20, 2017 by pstebbing

[TigerEyez]

4 hours ago, Phil B said:

Received the following message on BrickOwl (from previously zero-feedback buyer):

 

 

On BrickLink, I have a "You are responsible for import duties, if applicable" in my Store terms. I cannot seem to find something like that on BrickOwl, or a place where I can enter this text. BO Help only seems to focus on the selling side (I was checking if they have a generic Help entry talking about import duties). Does anyone know where this is spelled out (or where I can add custom text to spell this out) in BrickOwl?

I love how new buyers on BL/BO think that USPS/UPS/FedEx ship things out of the goodness of their own hearts and not for profit.  I get responses like shipping is 40% of the cost of this $20 set, well new buyer shipping costs aren't based on product cost. 

Would you have even been allowed to pay the duties (tee-hee) if you had wanted?

Dear buyer, just because you don't understand how the world works, it's not @Phil B's fault.

[Phil B]

1 minute ago, Kenxxx said:

Sorry for the noob questions: I am in the early stages of planning my first MOC.  I can see there will be dozens (maybe hundreds?) of unique part numbers I will need to complete it.  2 or 3 or this, 30 or 100 of that, and so on...  Where do I start?  First... is there a blog article / web page anyone might recommend that noob BL users should read?  Can I create a list of all I need, and input it somewhere to find 3 (or 10) BL sellers who can supply it all?  ... or do I just have to search sellers item by item, and end up placing orders through 50 or more different sellers?

Couple of tips:

1. Use Brickstock to create a list of everything you need

2. Upload this list as a Wanted List in BL (and in BO if you like)

3. Use the Buy feature on your wanted list to see who has what in stock

4. Then auto-match as much as possible. BO includes shipping costs in the calculation, and has a slightly better/more intuitive interface, though BL has come a long way.

5. Finally, tweak and fine-tune. BO automatically adjusts quantities as you add more sellers to give you the best price across all selected sellers. For BL you would need to check each store's shipping terms to determine shipping costs and balance out accordingly. BL does have the benefit that they give you an idea of how much the cost deviates from the 6 month average - which helps in making informed decisions.

Final tip: Brickstock puts a "Max price" tag in the exported data - you might want to remove all those tags as it could limit the sellers you get (or you use the CTRL-A G functionality in Brickstock to populate this field with the maximum current price, that should work too.

[TigerEyez]

4 minutes ago, Kenxxx said:

Sorry for the noob questions: I am in the early stages of planning my first MOC.  I can see there will be dozens (maybe hundreds?) of unique part numbers I will need to complete it.  2 or 3 or this, 30 or 100 of that, and so on...  Where do I start?  First... is there a blog article / web page anyone might recommend that noob BL users should read?  Can I create a list of all I need, and input it somewhere to find 3 (or 10) BL sellers who can supply it all?  ... or do I just have to search sellers item by item, and end up placing orders through 50 or more different sellers?

Once you make up your wanted list, BL will give you the option to sort the store results by cheapest cost for parts (would be the most vendors, but best price for each part, tons of shipping cost though. Or you can sort by fewest number of stores which should minimize shipping cost, but may have you paying above average part costs.

[Alpinemaps]

Added BrickOwl to the subject line (finally).

[lego rules]

9 minutes ago, TigerEyez said:

BL will give you the option to sort the store results by cheapest cost for parts (would be the most vendors, but best price for each part, tons of shipping cost though.

I don't see that option in BL.

[Phil B]

5 minutes ago, lego rules said:

I don't see that option in BL.

After you click on "Auto Finder" (Wanted List -> Buy All -> Auto Finder) you get this popup:

Default is "By Fewest Stores" but @TigerEyez talked about the "By Best Value" option.

[lego rules]

11 minutes ago, Phil B said:

After you click on "Auto Finder" (Wanted List -> Buy All -> Auto Finder) you get this popup:

Thanks, I had not ever tried that option.  When I have a lot of parts I just import into Brickficiency and use that to find the best solution.

[thoroakenfelder]

42 minutes ago, TigerEyez said:

I love how new buyers on BL/BO think that USPS/UPS/FedEx ship things out of the goodness of their own hearts and not for profit.  I get responses like shipping is 40% of the cost of this $20 set, well new buyer shipping costs aren't based on product cost. 

Would you have even been allowed to pay the duties (tee-hee) if you had wanted?

Dear buyer, just because you don't understand how the world works, it's not @Phil B's fault.

US buyers have no way to pay for import fees, duties, VAT etc. I'm not sure that we have any way to even anticipate these fees.

[Phil B]

2 minutes ago, thoroakenfelder said:

US buyers have no way to pay for import fees, duties, VAT etc. I'm not sure that we have any way to even anticipate these fees.

That's almost verbatim what I sent in as response.

Edited April 20, 2017 by Phil B

[TigerEyez]

1 hour ago, Phil B said:

After you click on "Auto Finder" (Wanted List -> Buy All -> Auto Finder) you get this popup:

Default is "By Fewest Stores" but @TigerEyez talked about the "By Best Value" option.

What he said ☝️

[thoroakenfelder]

1 hour ago, Phil B said:

That's almost verbatim what I sent in as response.

I had a few of these on Ebay before I made it part of my standard listing disclaimer.

[Phil B]

6 minutes ago, thoroakenfelder said:

I had a few of these on Ebay before I made it part of my standard listing disclaimer.

I have it too - my question was: where do you put this info in BO? Does anyone know? @eracine?

Edited April 20, 2017 by Phil B

[donbee]

Added BrickOwl to the subject line (finally).

Now this thread is going to reek of BO.
We should just have thread entitled:
"Got BO problems? Better call PhilB"

[Phil B]

2 minutes ago, donbee said:

Now this thread is going to reek of BO.
We should just have thread entitled:
"Got BO problems? Better call PhilB"

With the 85F+ temperatures we've been enjoying in Ohio for the last week, everything reeks of BO

[SageFly]

I just launched my BrickOwl store yesterday and have a couple questions about shipping and payments since it's handled differently than Bricklink.

• How do you set up Priority Mail Flat Rate box costs? It looks like most of the stores have them setup by weight still, but that allows buyers to select a smaller box than the potential set size.
• Is there a way to add packaging weight for all shipment rates (ie, I have first class mail as a flat $3.50 up to 8oz final shipping weight). Do I just account for packaging weight in that and reduce the 8oz to something like 7.3oz?

Is there a way to use Bricksync to work backwards from standard setup and update Bricklink when items are sold from BrickOwl? Coding and runtime commands are not one of my strengths and it took me 30 minutes to figure out how to run the .exe on a Mac last night...

[Phil B]

44 minutes ago, SageFly said:

I just launched my BrickOwl store yesterday and have a couple questions about shipping and payments since it's handled differently than Bricklink.

• How do you set up Priority Mail Flat Rate box costs? It looks like most of the stores have them setup by weight still, but that allows buyers to select a smaller box than the potential set size.
• Is there a way to add packaging weight for all shipment rates (ie, I have first class mail as a flat $3.50 up to 8oz final shipping weight). Do I just account for packaging weight in that and reduce the 8oz to something like 7.3oz?

Is there a way to use Bricksync to work backwards from standard setup and update Bricklink when items are sold from BrickOwl? Coding and runtime commands are not one of my strengths and it took me 30 minutes to figure out how to run the .exe on a Mac last night...

Bricksync syncs both ways. However, the BL inventory is where you make non-sale changes.

Edited April 21, 2017 by Phil B

[TANV]

Question to BrickLink store owners:  Customer places an order. Rejects final invoice due to excessive shipping. You cancel order.  What sort of feedback do you leave? Negative? Neutral? Or none?

I'm leaning towards just being Neutral since the buyer was a first-timer it seemed but still, rather annoying.

[Phil B]

Question to BrickLink store owners:  Customer places an order. Rejects final invoice due to excessive shipping. You cancel order.  What sort of feedback do you leave? Negative? Neutral? Or none?
I'm leaning towards just being Neutral since the buyer was a first-timer it seemed but still, rather annoying.

I've left None in cases like this before ...

[lego rules]

1 minute ago, Phil B said:

I've left None in cases like this before ...

Same.  I don't want to provoke a negative coming my way.

[TigerEyez]

1 minute ago, Phil B said:

I've left None in cases like this before ...

+1?

 

I leave negative for non-paying buyers though, the ones who just never respond after you invoice.