QUESTION: When searching for information about the recent changes to Seller Engine, I came across your site. I’m interested in Amazon’s Buyer’s Waiting feature. I found to my chagrin (besides the fact that their price increased) that this is no longer supported in Seller Engine Plus.
I wrote to Seller Engine to ask why, and got the following cryptic response from Jack Keegan:
“We are currently looking into this. Can you give me more information about buyer waiting, including a few ASIN’s to look for the information? According to the research we have done, Amazon has not offered this service since 2004, so we are trying to figure out how to add it.
Thanks, Jack Keegan”
“Buyers Waiting” was phased out by Amazon in 2004???? But wait, I just sold a book via that method last week. Hmmmm …
I have the trial version of Seller Engine 3.5 and it’s still working but they will not allow new subscriptions to the earlier version. Is the whole service going to be terminated forcing the subscribers to buy SE Plus (or else…) ???
ANSWER: I’ve been using Seller Engine for about four years. I was one of the original buyers. I’d been a full time bookseller on Amazon for perhaps a year when it came on the market, it was the only software available then. I’m still using my original version, but the Seller Engine people say they’re no longer supporting it. So the next time Amazon changes a feature, our original copies of Seller Engine will go up in smoke, I guess.
What does the double-talk you heard from Jack Keller at Seller Engine mean? It just means they decided they want a lot more money from their customers, and if you have a license for their original product — well, you’re just out of luck.
I don’t have a lot of hard-and-fast rules. But one rule I do have: When I’ve gotten the shaft from someone, I stop doing business with them.
As far as I know, Seller Engine never supported Buyers Waiting. So whenever I checked a price on Amazon Marketplace using Seller Engine — and no copies were listed on Amazon — I’d check the price through Amazon’s Web interface, just to ensure I wasn’t lowballing a scarce book by accident.
The response you received from Jack Keegan proves how out of touch the Seller Engine folks are. You can see Amazon’s Buyer’s Waiting list right here. Obviously, there aren’t any real booksellers involved in Seller Engine anymore, or Jack Keegan could have provided a real answer for your question.
Before they reneged on their promises to their original customers for lifetime service, I was one of Seller Engine’s best customers. I paid full retail for their product, I recommended them in my book “The Home-Based Bookstore,” and I recommended them on this Web site four or five times.
But I no longer recommend Seller Engine. I think it’s critically important for booksellers to be able to trust the service companies their entrust their business with. Obviously, Seller Engine has proven themselves completely unreliable in that regard.
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In Seller Engine version 3.5 the Buyer Waiting Price is displayed as a column along with all of the other New/Used/Collectible prices. So that’s why I was eager to obtain this program. But the new version apparently cannot do this, seems like a very illogical feature to eliminate, and Jack Keegan’s responses leave a lot to be desired.
So I cancelled the subscription. It seems like, as you said, they somehow bungled the transition to the new version and the new management has no clue what is really going on.
I apologize for the misunderstanding about the buyer waiting field no longer being available. Our initial research was incorrect, but we have resolved this and have added this field to the latest build of SE Plus that came out today so people will once again be able to use this functionality
We have also added a FillZ export report that will be in the correct format for importing into FillZ.
If you have any questions, please email me at support@sellerengine.com
Thanks,
Jack Keegan
SellerEngine Software