Help, can anyone advise? (auction site script)

She has: 4 posts

Joined: Sep 2006

Hi everyone,

Ok ive just had a website built for me. if it was done from scratch i would have had to wait 6 months and pay many thousands of pounds for it. my web developers shown me a example of a website they had which they would use the script to build mine, it would be alot cheaper and alot faster.The team working for me on the site knew exactly how i intended to run the business. anyway the site seemed perfect and i told them how id like mine to look. it did look perfect. the site was handed over to me a few days ago. and i put in my own prices etc. all i was missing was my terms which is in legal hands at presence, i decided to run a test run asif i was a user and to my horror the end of sale fee which was meant to cme from the winning bidder to me (as commission) was set to be going to the seller- nightmare. there was no other option or place for me to place this fee so as to recieve it direct from the buyer. hope this makes sence i contacted my web guys to say this was a majour issue. they said its set in the script to always charge the seller (but my site is intended to be free to sell on which they knew and id be charging 1% to winner) and the end of auction fee is set to be accuired from the winner but to be paid to the seller .NOT ME! Leaving a massive gate way to con men who have nothin real to sell. ok my question is this simple/ is there anyway the script can be changed to charge the winner and not the person selling? also for this payment to come to me not the seller as our site fees?? i was due to launch yest and was ahead of schedule now i feel let down at the last leg. i would apreciate anyones opinion, advice help. but please dont mention my spelling lol

Lisa xx

Busy's picture

He has: 6,151 posts

Joined: May 2001

I saw the link in another thread and looked at your site (which is also in your profile), it's a php probid auction script. Option wise there doesn't look like much on the website (theirs), so probably would need the code changing.
You can see the prices on the link above, if you were charged much more than that for the site then these guys should do the changes for you, but looks like a default skin so not much may of been done to it.

Do you charge a fee to the buyers before they can buy? (you should, cuts down the bad apples), if so you can take the fees out of that, wouldn't be that hard as it would be a sucess fee taken from buyer instead of seller.
I've never used this auction script but know of a few that do, and the feedback hasn't been the best, lots of little bugs. Ideally you need a programmer to help you run the site as no doubt you will be wanting changes later on as well.

Or reconsider the payment structure, really it's a bad idea to not charge the seller. Another way you could do it, which might even be able to as a default option on this script is have it free to list an item and no success fees but charge the seller for the 'extras', things like extra images, bold listing, highlighted, featured, gallery ... This way the seller must credit their account with say minimum $10 (or pounds) and can't sell more if the balance is under .01c this way the fraudsters and con men loose out if you are able to catch and remove their listings and you arent out of pocket. If you allow anyone to buy/sell without the credit you will find people cheating the system, which is very easy to do.

Don't worry about ya spelling - bad spelers of the world untie Wink

They have: 24 posts

Joined: Sep 2006

If there is not an option in the script already to do it you can probably have a programer make the change for you for a small fee.

She has: 4 posts

Joined: Sep 2006

ok just want to say big thank you to busy and auctoecart. im looking into all this, would like to ask one last thing from everyone, does anyone know the php probid script (eg the coding etc whom feels they can successfully change this area in the script for me) if so please do not hesitate to get in talks with me.
i shall let you know how it goes.
Thank you everyone, lisa xx

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