Premium Accounts

Feeback on our premium release has overwhelmingly been that the plans are too expensive and that users like the idea in principle but would only sign up if they were at a lower price point.

I have thought about this a lot in the last days, and have decided in favor of reducing the cost of the premium plan. It starts now at 3.99 / month for a yearly purchase, up to 4.99 for a single-month purchase. I have increased the premium membership of all users who already purchased it or redeemed seller verification to reflect the new prices. If instead of the extra time you would instead like a partial refund, please send me a quick message using the support button and I'll issue it immediately. Thank you for your support!

https://deckbox.org/premium

Many of you have also asked about a donation button, but I am still firmly against donations as a viable funding solution. If you would like to contribute something, purchasing a month or more of the premium service has the same effect as a donation, and you get additional features and my support on top of that :)


Support

Still on the topic of feedback, it seems many of you feel ignored when posting on the Site Feedback forum and receiving no response, and I completely understand the feeling, but composing replies to all posts is time-wise not possible.

I also have a very hard time keeping track and correlating tasks from my todo list with things posted in multiple threads on the forum. On top of that, I receive a lot of email at support@deckbox.org, which is also not too efficient. Sometimes it gets lost in spam and other times I forget what I already answered on the forum, what by email, etc, and I waste a lot of time trying to correlate them, not accomplishing very much.

Because of this, I have implemented a new more streamlined support system. You can find the Support & Feedback link and button on top of the forum, and also in the help section of the website. This will reach us directly and can be better kept track of, and managed. You will see the responses and message threads on your dashboard menu afterwards.

I promise to personally answer premium users within one working day.

For the free accounts I will try my best to keep on top of the support requests depending on how much time I have left. This might mean that you will receive a templated response when I have no time left and the requests are piling up. But I will read everything, that you can be sure of.

I will also answer to issues related to marketplace orders or critical trade disputes within a working day, regardless if the user is premium or not.

The Site Feedback forum will remain a way for users to discuss with each other about features past and future, what they like and do not about the website. I will try to periodically come to the forum and catch up on discussions as much as I can, but I cannot promise to respond.

I will keep posting announcements such as the one you are reading now, and feature idea previews and plans. These previews will be the main way for users to influence the evolution of deckbox.


Trade Disputes

Speaking of feature previews, during the next days I want to clean up the trade dispute / BTR system. It has been lagging behind, people losing cards are not being taken care of, and this is my fault and unacceptable.

I will be creating a better system for submitting a dispute directly from a trade page, with an integration discussion system between the trade paticipants administrators and possible community volunteers that wish to get involved and help solving the disputes.

The following are my current plans and ideas for implementation. Many of these have been suggested by you guys, some discussed with AsymptomaticPyrexia and other moderators who have been involved in the Trade Dispute / BTR system and seem to be what users would like and be better served by, creating a fairer trade environment:

Disputes involving loss of cards

- disputes that involve loss of money or cards are top priority
- users reported as inactive and of causing loss of cards will automatically receive an email when the dispute is opened, and they will be automatically suspended until they respond
- they will receive another automatic email 6 days after if inactive, with an ultimatum
- they will be marked scammers publicly after 7 days of stealing cards and not responding, and they will receive a final email announcing them of the fact
- upon their response, I (and approved site volunteers if they have time) will get involved in the conversation and try to mediate a solution.

Others

- disputes on card condition will have slightly lower priority, but will be treated as well, as we have until now.

- negative feedback is felt as being too rarely given on the site, and many users are reluctant to open a case for it so they just let it go. This decreases the importance of feedback, and just splits everyone in 3 categories: scammers, suspended users, and all the rest. This makes the feedback system much less effective than it should be.
- for the above reason, I propose to allow users to leave negative feedback without the need of a dispute / report.
- a dispute can be opened though in case one feels he has received undeserved negative. We will moderate these and allow it or nullify it.
- all disputes will be private and only seen by users, administrators and site volunteers if they wish to help. BTRs being public seems to have the bad effect that some people have their names needlessly dragged into public scandals, even if they did not deserve it.

- trade pages will allow a second "private feedback" to be left after a trade. this will only be seen by the moderators and site admins, and will help with decision making in disputes. people will easier leave hidden feedbacks when they are not public and do not have to deal with possible retaliations and scandals.

- users submitting disputes out of spite, or just to "try their hand" at tricking us to remove negatives will be suspended

- administrators and staff will also be able to much much easier see all the dispute history of users. The more disputes a user is part of relative to the number of their successful trades, the more exclamation marks the administrators will see next to their name. This leads to warnings and finally to permanent suspension from trading.

- users addresses will be checked to see if people do not make new accounts to escape previous suspensions. these users will be permanently banned completely, from all sides of the website.



All in all, I am trying to streamline the whole process to be able to more promptly and efficiently handle the disputes.

Thank you for reading. As always, looking forward to your thoughts on these planned changes.

I am glad you listen to your community.
Let's hope you heard us developers as well and go a way in which we can support you.

A thing though:

12 months €3.99 / month (total $47.88)

There is something messed up.

Fixed, thank you.

I really like the lower price point, I'm considering getting Premium much more now (especially with an app coming). I also like the overhaul of the Trade Dispute system. Similar to the "private feedback" idea, could something be implemented where people we've traded with before are "marked" in a way only we can see. For example, if we've traded with a user before, I'm given some indication that we've done so linked to whatever feedback we left them last time? I'd imagine most people like trading with people they've had good trading experiences with before. I'm sure this is a minor thing in the grand scheme of things, but I thought it could be handy.

All the same, I really appreciate all your hard work and consideration in making this site better!

Like I said in the other thread, I'd be happy to help clarify some of the rules (including explaining their motivations) and help with dispute resolution if wanted. A lot of these rules changes will have to come with new, clearly-defined policies, eg. what constitutes an "undeserved" negative? There have been several messy disputes recently that have emerged because the rules were insufficient to offer remedies beforehand and the admins had to "make something up" and this creates a lot of unhappiness (and when you do make something up, codify it so you can deal with that case going forward!) While there will always be unforeseeable contingencies, a lot of this could have been seen/addressed beforehand.

And I know this is very debatable, but I think the feedback system should be more-specific. Users should just be prompted to grade their partners on a few dimensions (fast delivery? cards came as expected?) using a yes/no scale and then optionally add comments (and maybe they should give an overall score, or perhaps the overall score should be a function of the individual yes/no answers.) I think you'll see a lot more honest feedback given if the feedback is structured so that users have to evaluate the major areas where trades can go seriously wrong.

The new pricing is great, Sebi. I'll be redeeming my seller fee for a subscription after my free trial, and then I have no doubt I will renew for real once that runs out.

For now, I'm most excited about the built deck feature, since I physically build only a tiny fraction of the decks I keep here. Also, the scratchpad will be great, since I used to use sideboards for that, and they always showed up as being part of the deck. I love that the built deck logo is a lego brick, by the way!

One request, if possible. When I select multiple cards, I would love to have a "move all to scratchpad" option. Especially because almost every sideboard I have is really just a scratchpad.

One question (I don't plan to run into this, but I might as well ask): If I use things like the scratchpad, what would happen if my membership lapses? Would all the cards in the scratchpad disappear, or just be locked? I don't want to put in a bunch of work, then lose it because I forgot to renew on time.

Anyway, thanks for all the great work! I'll be happy to support deckbox with a membership.

That's a really nice feeling, having my input counted. This is much more affordable, thanks so much!

These all sound like positive changes. Thanks for the update. :)

I believe allowing users the option of leaving negative feedback, with the ability to challenge that feedback, is a positive change.

I hope the lower pricing works well for enlisting more premium users.

Attempting to sign up for the Premium, for some reason it isn't allowing me to select my address. It's listed, I select it but it's still showing blank and won't accept the Purchase. Noticed that there was an "unsafe script" which I told to run, reloaded the page, but still same occurrence.

Running with 7 day free trial for now.

Chrome Version 39.0.2171.95 m

Yeah the trade review system is much too binary. I'd love to be able to give several of my recent traders 4/5 stars for communication speed, card grading or packaging quality. All things they could do with a kick up the arse over, but not anywhere near enough to start turning the tide against them as traders.

Time to WRECK THIS POSO TRAIN, I dislike all changes!

jk, great job Sebi! I love that you take the community into consideration and I am happy to be a seller here on deckbox. Keep up the great work, can't wait to see what we have in store in the coming years! Happy Holidays

Cheers,
Byron

tehsnarf wrote:Attempting to sign up for the Premium, for some reason it isn't allowing me to select my address. It's listed, I select it but it's still showing blank and won't accept the Purchase.

I'm also seeing this and it's blocking me (and everyone else?) purchasing premium...

tehsnarf wrote:Attempting to sign up for the Premium, for some reason it isn't allowing me to select my address. It's listed, I select it but it's still showing blank and won't accept the Purchase. Noticed that there was an "unsafe script" which I told to run, reloaded the page, but still same occurrence.

Running with 7 day free trial for now.

Chrome Version 39.0.2171.95 m

Same issue here. Address selection won't stick, clicking "Purchase" link resets radial button to 12 months option and clears the billing address menu and does nothing else. Tried in Firefox 34.0.5 and Chrome 39.0.2171.95 m

tehsnarf wrote:Attempting to sign up for the Premium, for some reason it isn't allowing me to select my address. It's listed, I select it but it's still showing blank and won't accept the Purchase.

Well that's an unfortunate area to have bugs in, :).

Fixed now.

9700377 wrote:Like I said in the other thread, I'd be happy to help clarify some of the rules (including explaining their motivations)

Sure, let me know what your suggested changes are to the current rules & guidelines, would love to clarify things.

madoli wrote:One request, if possible. When I select multiple cards, I would love to have a "move all to scratchpad" option. Especially because almost every sideboard I have is really just a scratchpad.

Yep, will put an option in the "Card Actions" dropdown on top of the listing, so you can select all in one section and move them.

One question (I don't plan to run into this, but I might as well ask): If I use things like the scratchpad, what would happen if my membership lapses? Would all the cards in the scratchpad disappear, or just be locked? I don't want to put in a bunch of work, then lose it because I forgot to renew on time.

They are just not visible if you are basic. Whenever you reactivate, they will be visible again :)

Thanks for lowering the price and fixing the sign up bug so quickly. I'm now premium! :D

Thanks for the quick response, Sebi. One more thing - the built decks count on my inventory assumes that I am willing to move a card from deck to deck. I'm not willing ;) What I really want to see is the total from my built decks - that way, I can easily tell that I have 5 EDH decks using strip mine, but only 4 copies (for example). That's the kind of information I want from the built decks feature.

I would be interested to know whether others feel the same way before you made that the default - perhaps it could be an option. I can certainly imagine that legacy players might move their wasteland playset from deck to deck, but I suspect many casual (especially edh) players want to build with the cards they have, and use limitations to inspire creativity.

Anyway, select count(count) instead of select max(count) is what I'd like to see for built decks. For ALL decks, the existing method is great. Thanks!!!!

Hi Sebi,

Thank you for listening to the community's feedback! I love the idea of allowing more granular and private feedback about users.

One possible premium "Deck Building" feature that I would be willing to pay for. After larger constructed events, like Worlds, GPs, or large SCG events, perhaps you could import the top 16 (or 8, or 32) decklists from the event to Deckbox.org. Then you could have a premium "Deck Building" feature where a user selects the event and Deckbox.org compares the decklists from the event with the user's Inventory and returns several metrics. These metrics could say things like of all these decklists you have 100% of the cards for these 2 decks. Or you have 75% of the cards for deck Y, and it would cost you $250 to complete the deck, needing these 4 cards. You could allow them to add the decklist to their Deckbox.org account and/or add those needed cards to their Wantlist. You could compare the decklists with the user's Inventory or Wantlist in all sorts of ways and return many metrics that would be a neat premium feature. Just something to consider.

cheers, paul

I got used to the ad on the main profile page telling me what cards were available for sale from my lists... This appears to have been replaced with a generic ad that my adblock is blocking. This means I may now actually have to start using the 'interesting cards from sellers' stream, but I noticed that that stream doesn't list the edition or the condition icons of the 'interesting cards'. Can we get that added?

I'm sorry, but $47.88 a year is still too much for me. There are entire services that you can get nothing or heavily limited features from that cost around that much. It seems like everyone else is happy you went down from $7, but $4 is still pretty bad when Reddit Gold is also $4 a month but only $30 total if you get a full year. Reddit also doesn't feel like a freemium site for all that Gold exists - if you don't have Reddit Gold, you only see ads and small unobtrusive nods to its existence as you use the site. The features aren't literally right there but locked behind a paywall - that's the kind of dirty play usually seen in mobile games, not on my favorite and most useful MTG utility site.

I've been recommending Deckbox to literally everyone all the time - a good portion of recent posts on the Magic subreddit about organizing cards will have a post from me about how awesome this service is - but the little lightbulb icon which looks incredibly similar to the folder icon just makes my eyes go nuts. This icon change is really the only thing that would make me stop using and recommending Deckbox altogether, and it would be an easy fix to either swap the default so that it isn't 'idea' (I don't really understand why 'idea' would be the default other than to force people to buy premium for that single feature - really, a finished deck should be the default with the ability to mark as idea being the premium feature), or to go back to the old icon. Please fix this as it's really difficult for me to tell the difference between the two icons now.

I want to make sure to say how much I appreciate all your hard work though, sebi. If the icon issue gets fixed I totally intend to continue using and recommending Deckbox despite not being able to afford Premium - I just can't use it as-is.

crystallized wrote: I want to make sure to say how much I appreciate all your hard work though, sebi. If the icon issue gets fixed I totally intend to continue using and recommending Deckbox despite not being able to afford Premium - I just can't use it as-is.

You will stop using it because of a small icon? That seems a little silly.

pumpkinsword wrote:

crystallized wrote: I want to make sure to say how much I appreciate all your hard work though, sebi. If the icon issue gets fixed I totally intend to continue using and recommending Deckbox despite not being able to afford Premium - I just can't use it as-is.

You will stop using it because of a small icon? That seems a little silly.

Yup, I will stop using something that gives me a headache and is difficult to use. I've changed IRC and instance message clients and chosen to stop using social media sites due to layout and color changes that made them more difficult to use. It has nothing to do with any sort of principle - it has to do with accessibility.

j2ug wrote:
i love that you are doing this. however i would like to make a small suggestion as you implement this. This has been suggested in some of the forums and i think it is a great idea. Would you make the feedback private until both parties have submitted it. I currrently have a trade where i am not willing to submit feedback for fear of the user giving me bad feedback in retaliation. this user sent me the wrong card twice and then shrugged it off saying "the prices will stabilize in a few months". this is not acceptible to me but i didnt want to raise a big fuss about it except by leaving negative feedback.

Keep up the good work!

I think this is a good idea. When you give neutral feedback first the person you are trading with may sometimes not give positive in retaliation.

First of all a BIG THANK YOU! for posting this. This is the type of upfront communication we are all wanting!

sebi wrote: Others

- disputes on card condition will have slightly lower priority, but will be treated as well, as we have until now.

- negative feedback is felt as being too rarely given on the site, and many users are reluctant to open a case for it so they just let it go. This decreases the importance of feedback, and just splits everyone in 3 categories: scammers, suspended users, and all the rest. This makes the feedback system much less effective than it should be.
- for the above reason, I propose to allow users to leave negative feedback without the need of a dispute / report.
- a dispute can be opened though in case one feels he has received undeserved negative. We will moderate these and allow it or nullify it.
- all disputes will be private and only seen by users, administrators and site volunteers if they wish to help. BTRs being public seems to have the bad effect that some people have their names needlessly dragged into public scandals, even if they did not deserve it.

- trade pages will allow a second "private feedback" to be left after a trade. this will only be seen by the moderators and site admins, and will help with decision making in disputes. people will easier leave hidden feedbacks when they are not public and do not have to deal with possible retaliations and scandals.

second thing: i love that you are doing this. however i would like to make a small suggestion as you implement this. This has been suggested in some of the forums and i think it is a great idea. Would you make the feedback private until both parties have submitted it. I currrently have a trade where i am not willing to submit feedback for fear of the user giving me bad feedback in retaliation. this user sent me the wrong card twice and then shrugged it off saying "the prices will stabilize in a few months". this is not acceptible to me but i didnt want to raise a big fuss about it except by leaving negative feedback.

Keep up the good work!

pumpkinsword wrote:

j2ug wrote:
i love that you are doing this. however i would like to make a small suggestion as you implement this. This has been suggested in some of the forums and i think it is a great idea. Would you make the feedback private until both parties have submitted it. I currrently have a trade where i am not willing to submit feedback for fear of the user giving me bad feedback in retaliation. this user sent me the wrong card twice and then shrugged it off saying "the prices will stabilize in a few months". this is not acceptible to me but i didnt want to raise a big fuss about it except by leaving negative feedback.

Keep up the good work!

I think this is a good idea. When you give neutral feedback first the person you are trading with may sometimes not give positive in retaliation.

Further to this, I suggest that a default positive score be automatically entered after some time (maybe one month after trade completion - as long as there is no outstanding BTR) to break standoffs.

This will also allow people to build their user score when their trade partners are negligent in leaving feedback. This is especially important since there are no feedback reminders (see https://deckbox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=23811).

sebi wrote:

9700377 wrote:Like I said in the other thread, I'd be happy to help clarify some of the rules (including explaining their motivations)

Sure, let me know what your suggested changes are to the current rules & guidelines, would love to clarify things.

Okay. To start, I made some suggested edits to the Trading Rules document and uploaded it here.

Major changes:

- Including a section (1.3) on taking advantage of price anomalies like the Polukranos dude did. The language is fairly strong ("major" anomalies only) because I don't want people to become concerned that treating a shockland like it's $7 when TCGmid says it's $8 will get them banned or whatever.

- Added a section (4.5) outlining that new rules may be implemented as necessary.

- Added a section (4.6) outlining that these rules may be overridden if a user has a suspicious trading history (eg. tons of packages go missing when sent to him, etc.)

- Edited section 2.2 to make it clear that showing a tracked package arrived at the destination is sufficient for a trader to have covered his side of a trade (if a delivery dispute exists.) In light of that one guy who was recently arguing that the "proof of delivery" requirement meant that tracking isn't enough.

If you like these edits you can use them in whole or in part. The next thing I'd look at if you like this stuff is the guidelines for filing a trade dispute in the stickied thread, outlining some stuff about how to handle the dispute resolution process that would be good to mention beforehand (don't act like the other party is a scammer in a he-said she-said case, don't imply that because you have X karma that the mods should favor you, etc.) but probably aren't worth putting in the trade rules page.

A lot of the motivation here is just thinking of the cases that have arisen in recent months that weren't really clearly covered by the rules and lead to new decisions, but... these decisions were never written back into the rules, which at best opens the possibility for more messy cases and at worst makes the process seem arbitrary. I think it's just important to keep the rules updated to reflect the BTR decisions that are being made.

Killer feature that I would be likely to pony up money for: Graphs of card prices, ability to filter cards based on price change in past 1, 7 or 30 days.

9700377 wrote: Okay. To start, I made some suggested edits to the Trading Rules document and uploaded it here.

This is great, thank you! All points are great.

One thing I would do, in order to keep the size of the document small so that people read it, is move the 4.5 and 4.6 in the general website Terms & Conditions, and reduce them to just a mention with a link, such as:

4.5. In the case that a novel type of dispute arises that cannot be clearly resolved by these rules, it is possible that a new rule will be formulated and made binding. <link to terms and conditions>

4.6. Dispute resolution depends on the user's prior history of trades and disputes. Repeat offenders will have an increasingly higher chance of negative resolution. <link here to extended clarification>

(or something similar)