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!
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.
