Hi all,

I’ve just bought a PR4 directory on Sitepoint. I will talk about it on another post, but here I want to talk about the system of Sitepoint.

In the old system you used to get an instant alert when someone put a comment or bid. It was very good because most of the time the comment was already in the email, saving you time.

In the new system you get ‘auction digest’ which is very poor. First it is not instant and arrive with some delays. Second you just get a message saying ‘there is new comment and 1 new bid’

but worse of it – you don’t get alerts when it matters. On this auction I discovered 27 minutes before the end that I am not the higher bidder. Why? because the seller didn’t accept the bid. Why sellers need to confirm bids? I don’t know.

In this case I put more bids as some others, and the seller accepted them only hours after the auction ended. So I didn’t know if I won or lost until the day after.

I’ve talked long ago about the problem with each bid extending the auction by another 4 hours. It is so annoying that you can never know when the auction ends. This is not a real auction in my point of view.But in the new system it is even worse – not only it reset the time, it adds 4 hours to the time that was left. So if the auction should ended in 3 hours when a new bid comes, the new end time is 7 hours forward. Gosh.

And last thing – Buy it now , you have to pay the full amount to secure the website. I can see the logic, but most of the time I won’t pay 100% in one payment. I prefer to split it into two so I am sure I am not dealing with a scammer. I wanted to buy it now, but I was put off by the immediate payment request.

All of these and some other odds things make the buying experience not user friendly and you waste a lot of time try to buy one small website.

Shame