Posts Tagged ‘buy used boxes’

Buyer Appointment Selection Improvements

Sunday, August 16th, 2009

A while ago I wrote about changes to buyer appointment choice selection.  The basic idea worked well, but the initial implementation handled some situations less than ideally.  We only used the appointment start time to determine if buyer choices provide a sufficient time range when short-notice and are within seller lead time requirements.

With today’s release we started to use the entire range supplied by the buyer to make appointment choices more flexible and lenient. 

In case of lead times, this means that as long as the latest point in the range meets the requirement, the appointment choice will be allowed.  As an example, lets take a buyer who  places an order at 8pm on Tuesday from a seller who has a 1 day lead time.  Previously, buyer’s appointment choices had to start after 8pm on Wednesday.  Now, the buyer can select 1pm +7 hours.  Since the end of the range is 8pm the appointment choice will be accepted.  The seller still gets their lead time, but has the option of accepting an earlier time when possible (which tends to be quite often.)

For short-notice appointments we now compare the latest time of the later appointment with the start time of the earlier appointment to make sure they are 5+ hours apart.  This means that appointments like 10am for 1st Choice and 1pm + 3 hours for 2nd Choice will now be accepted.  Previously, the 2nd Choice in this example would have to start after 3pm.

These changes allow for a wider range of reasonable appointment choices and make order placement easier and more flexible for buyers.

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Cheap Shipping Boxes – Used and New

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Many people think of BoxCycle primarily in the context of moving boxes, but it is also designed to help people sell and find cheap shipping boxes.  For example, you can now find a decent variety of new and used shipping boxes in Los Angeles.  And if shipping boxes you need aren’t available in your area yet you can create Boxes Wanted listings, which are designed to help large sellers find buyers looking for specific boxes.

It is usually harder to find used shipping boxes than moving boxes.  Smaller shipping boxes are easier to get rid of and aren’t worth as much so most people don’t think much about them before recycling them.  Shipping boxes are needed in larger quantities and specific dimensions are usually much more important than for moving boxes. 

For online merchants and warehouses shipping boxes are the flip side of the box problem.  These businesses get their merchandise in bulk in large boxes, but send it out in small quantities using small boxes.  They end up with lots of moving size boxes they can’t use, but find themselves constantly buying new shipping boxes when used boxes would work just as well.

There actually are plenty of sources for unneeded shipping boxes.  Box manufacturers often have misprinted, overrun, and discontinued boxes by the truckload that they literally throw into the recycling bin.  Companies often buy boxes by the thousands for a specific purpose.  If their idea doesn’t pan out they are stuck with lots of boxes they have no use for.  In both of these examples, boxes are thrown out without ever being used!

The problem is that finding such sources is difficult, especially when you need specific size boxes.  Similarly, it is nearly impossible for sellers to find buyers for their boxes.  Although people are always looking to buy and sell finding a match of size and quantity at a specific point in time is difficult and most don’t bother.

Our Boxes Wantedsection was designed to help sellers find buyers.  But we also have sellers regularly list their unneeded shipping boxes.  If you are in the mailing business checking BoxCycle before buying boxes just might save you some money without a lot of work.  You can make it even easier on yourself by getting an automated notification when sellers list specific boxes.

Plus you’ll be doing a big favor for the environment.

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Pictures of Used Boxes Help Buyers and Sellers

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

Having pictures of boxes has been the plan since launch.  People tend to have a hard time visualizing box sizes from types and dimensions alone.  They need a point of reference – how big is the box compared to a person or a common object?  We’ve had mistakes made by both buyers and sellers because of incorrect assumptions about box sizes.

Hopefully, no more.  I am happy to say that the first batch of box pictures is up on BoxCycle and is integrated throughout the site – from listing to buying (click box name to see picture).  All boxes pictured are typical used boxes sold on the site. 

This should help sellers figure out what, say, Moving Box – Small means.  It will also help buyers who aren’t familiar with moving boxes and may think that something like a 12″ shipping box would be large enough for moving (it isn’t).

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New Screencasts Show How to Buy and Sell Boxes

Friday, May 1st, 2009

We’ve added videos to the BoxCycle front page to help potential buyers and sellers understand the service.  Videos go through the purchase and selling process so customers can see how everything works in advance.   These screencasts also address common questions and misunderstandings we’ve seen so far.

You can also find and share these videos through the BoxCycle YouTube channel.  We used the new ScreenToaster service to create them.

To the best of my knowledge, there isn’t anything like BoxCycle out there for either buyers or sellers.  Even outside of the world of used boxes, the model we are using is rare, in part because it is quite time intensive for the business.  However, we get lumped with existing models.  This isn’t surprising or particularly bad, but it does cause confusion. 

I hope that these screencasts, along with other steps we are taking, will help people understand BoxCycle better.

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Posted in Site Updates | 0 Comments