To ease this transition, we delayed the upgrade until BoxCycle was at a stable point and the community and infrastructure around the new Ruby and Rails versions matured. It was still a time consuming and sometimes frustrating endeavor, but the transition is now complete. Along with Ruby and Rails we also upgraded our year old installations of Passenger and Nginx.

What Does This Mean To Users?

Given the extent of the transition, it’s possible that you’ll run into an occasional issue as we work through problems that sneaked through our testing. But by and large things should work and look very similar.

So what are the benefits to you?

Speed: Many of the changes to these latest components were done to improve speed. Ruby 1.9.3 is significantly faster than 1.8.7. Rails 3.2.3 is in some respects faster than 2.3.14 we were using and offers an infrastructure that enables future optimizations. And the upgrade allowed us to clean up a few inefficient parts of BoxCycle. Overall, we expect BoxCycle to be a bit snappier after this upgrade.

Product Development: Being up to date makes it much easier and faster for us to fix problems and add features. In part, this is because new versions improve the development process. And in part, it is because external components we depend on now, or will want to use in the future, increasingly require Rails 3 and Ruby 1.9. This upgrade was necessary to keep BoxCycle moving forward.

Why The Quick Jump?

We originally expected to just move to Rail 3.0.12 and stay with Ruby 1.8.7, planning to perform additional updates after the dust settled. And internally, we actually did upgrade to 3.0.12, then to 3.1.4, then to 3.2.3, and then finally upgraded Ruby to 1.9.3. However, at each step we ran into difficult issues that the next upgrade helped to resolve. And after doing much of the work to get to the next version working it made more sense to stick with it and optimize resources spent on testing by consolidating the upgrades.

Each listing now includes some, or all, of the following details:

• Total number of orders received by the seller
• Number and percentage of orders completed successfully
• Average response time in hours
• Average response time in daytime and open hours
• Time since last activity

All metrics are generated from actual performance. We do not currently use buyer feedback for scoring.

Order Success Rate

Order success rate is shown like this: 83.3% (10/12). The number in parenthesis indicates the number of successful and total transactions that is used for calculating the percentage. Actual numbers are hidden for sellers with more than 15 successful transactions; the metric will then appear like this: 90.4% (15+).

It isn’t possible to cover all the complexities in this post, but two points are worth mentioning:

1) At this time, we consider all orders completed successfully as successful even if there were seller caused issues. The data we’ve seen so far indicates that this rarely misrepresents real-world performance, but it simplifies scoring and creates an incentive for sellers to resolve issues to buyer satisfaction.

2) Orders that are unsuccessful because of the buyer count as successful if the seller replied and isn’t at fault. When the buyer cancels the order prior to seller’s reply, the scoring system will try to properly assign blame based on order specifics.

Average Order Response Time

Response time is counted in hours from order approval until action by the seller (e.g. confirmation, adjustment request, or cancellation.) To give buyers a better idea of likely response time in their specific situation, and to properly represent sellers who reply only during specific hours, we show 3 response time averages like this: 11.1/8.2/1.3 hrs.

The first number is the actual number of hours. For example, an order placed at 1am on Saturday and confirmed at 8am on Monday will count as 55 hours. The second number is the daytime hours; it excludes hours between 11pm and 6am. The example above will count as 36 hours. The final number only counts seller open hours. The example above will count as 0 hours if the seller is open M-F 8am-5pm.

Time Since Last Activity

This metric shows how long it’s been since last activity by the seller. Almost any action by the seller counts as activity (logging in, responding to an order, updating inventory, etc.)

Although we’ve seen very responsive and accurate listings after years of inactivity and unresponsive/inaccurate ones after just a few days, listing freshness is an important quality indicator. Fresh listings are more likely to be accurate and to reply quickly. And buyers are more likely to be uncomfortable with listings that haven’t been updated in a while.

Ultimately, this metric is most useful when the seller has little or no order history. Sellers in this situation can improve the appeal of their listing by logging in occasionally and updating their inventory. However, a large number of orders, or a few recent successful orders, are usually a much better indicator of likely seller performance than time since last activity.

To avoid the need for quality sellers to spend their time worrying about appearance of listing freshness, this metric is automatically hidden in situations when order history makes it unimportant.

We frequently get requests to settle transactions in cash at meeting. Some buyers don’t have credit cards, some feel uncomfortable submitting payment details when they haven’t seen the goods, some are just used to paying at physical meeting.

Collecting payment at order time is a crucial component to one of they key problems we are trying to solve: getting people to show up and complete transactions as promised. We want to minimize seller time involvement which means less questions, and above all, less no-shows and adjustments. By collecting payment information we can filter less serious buyers and can enforce policies buyers agree to when ordering, which include fees for cancellations or significant lateness.

But the added friction also results in less orders. Cash on Pickup allows sellers to make the opposite trade-off if they choose.

How to Sign Up

We are beta-testing this feature. It is currently available only for sellers who expressed interest in offering Cash on Pickup in their seller survey. To turn it on:

• Go to your Account Profile tab
• Click on Show All in the Preferences section
• Check the Accept Cash on Pickup checkbox and Update Your Account

How It Works

After enabling Cash on Pickup:

• Your listing will indicate that you accept cash payments
• The buyer will have an option to select Cash on Pickup and not provide payment information. Buyer order process is otherwise largely the same.
• When you confirm a Cash on Pickup order you will need to pay BoxCycle fees by credit card, PayPal, or from your account balance and then collect full payment from the buyer at pickup. The order process is otherwise largely the same.

Things to Keep In Mind

• Sellers must have a credit card or PayPal account to confirm Cash on Pickup orders. Payment will be authorized at confirmation and charged after successful appointment.
• Sellers must confirm Cash on Pickup orders through their BoxCycle account (no email, phone, etc.)
• Sellers should expect a higher level of cancellations, adjustment requests, no-shows, lateness, etc. Sellers should know how to use Anonymous Connect to reach buyers near appointment time.
• BoxCycle will not pay fees to sellers for cancellation, lateness, etc. and will have limited ability to resolve issues. Sellers should still report order issues to get their order fees back and help us track unreliable or abusive buyers.
• Cash on Pickup is in addition to, not a replacement for, existing payment options.
• Buyers must still prepay for Delivery orders.
• Buyers are expected to pay the price agreed to during ordering in cash. Sellers are not obligated to accept checks, credit cards, etc., or to offer additional discounts, at meeting.
• Buyers still need to order online. This takes care of scheduling, requires agreement to conditions, and allows for some abuse tracking.
• Sellers are still expected to report order adjustments that occur at appointment time.

We look forward to your feedback.

For example, if you are looking for moving boxes, but are only interested in buying if you can get Wardrobes at the same time you can now select a Wardrobe box type from the Require drop-down and search. Only sellers who have Wardrobes as one of the boxes in their listing will be shown in search results.

This feature is especially useful when searching for gaylord boxes, specific size shipping boxes, and other box types that tend to be available at a small percentage of the sellers and are hence difficult to search for by browsing.

A few things to note:

• An entire listing is shown, as long as it includes the box type you require
• You cannot yet search for a specific box size, but you can use box types to restrict by length.
• You may want to try a few searches since some boxes can be listed under multiple possible types (e.g. Gaylord Box, Box – 38-48″).
• To search beyond 100 miles please contact us.
• Many listings in the Wanted section do not include a box type so you may end up hiding listings you’d like to see.

Buyers already receive an email (and sms if they provide a mobile number) when their order is confirmed and can track order status online. Now buyers without sms will receive a phone call when their order is confirmed if the confirmation occurs close to appointment time. This makes sure that if email is delayed, or if the buyer doesn’t check it, they will still be aware of their updated order status.

Buyer Appointment Reminders

Buyers now also receive another sms or phone call shortly before their appointment to serve as a reminder. To keep messaging to a minimum this reminder is only sent if order confirmation didn’t occur too recently.

Improved Scheduling

Our core focus is saving time and minimizing frustration for customers. We put a lot of thought in to make sure not only that buyers and sellers get the communication they need, but that they don’t get more communication than is required and that it occurs at times that make sense.

Our calls to sellers always took calling hours into account. Now text messages do as well. And of course new calls to buyers. If an event occurs at unreasonable hours, we’ll delay the notification until hours are more reasonable so you don’t get a call or a text message at 3am. But if time to appointment is short and the situation demands it, we’ll process the call or sms later or earlier in the day. We take into account a lot of information to make the best guess of a contact time that will minimize frustration while retaining usefulness.

Test is a standard measure of box strength. It also hints at how heavy the box is. It is measured using either Bursting Test (# Test) or Edge Crush Test (ECT).

Maximum Weight Capacity indicates the maximum weight a box is designed to hold in pounds. This value is most useful for buyers of larger boxes and bulk cargo boxes. To minimize clutter we don’t currently show this attributes for other box types.

Both attributes can be found on the round Box Certification Seal present on most boxes.

In the process we’ve started to codify how we deal with buyer order cancellations and added a new section to help sellers with taxes.

Cancellations

Our cancellation policy hasn’t changed, we are simply trying to add structure to some of the decisions that were already being made. Our hope is to ultimately add enough structure to allow us to properly handle most of the cancellations through the website, both automatically and by buyer request. Currently most cancellations are handled manually.

We require buyers to commit to their purchase, but do not want to punish them for sellers who are slow to respond. We also do not want to disadvantage buyers who pick appointments further in the future. With variable seller hours and lead times, a straight time cut-off to respond isn’t reasonable. This update is the first step in codifying how long a buyer needs to wait before they can cancel with no penalties.

Taxes

Tax rules haven’t changed either (since we don’t control them.) The new tax section and Sales Report hopefully provide sellers with enough information to help them get started.

Today, we are expanding access to Seller Wanted Listings to buyers who aren’t also selling boxes. Our focus is on buyers who are looking for larger quantities and/or have a regular need for boxes, but all types of buyers are supported.

Buyers who create (or already have) a regular Wanted Listing / Notification Request, with specific box information, will see an invitation on their listing page to convert to a Seller Wanted Listing. A seller account is still required to have a Seller Wanted Listing, but the conversion process automatically copies buyer details from the Notification Request to make this step easier. After the conversion, the buyer can optionally update buy prices or setup their pickup rules.

Since custom buy prices and buyer-only listings accommodate transactions that weren’t originally possible, buyer commission is now calculated from either quantity or value instead of just quantity: see the latest buyer fee details.

We are excited about enabling and expanding this new way to reuse cardboard boxes.

Custom Prices

We’ve now removed one of the limitations of the first release – lack of ability to set custom buy prices. With today’s update, buyers can specify prices they are willing to pay for boxes they are requesting. Automatic pricing is still available; simply leave the price blank and we’ll set the buy price to 10% of the suggested retail price.

Notification of Matching Retail Listings

If you have a Seller Wanted Listing, it’s now easy to be notified when new boxes matching your wanted listing are created on the retail side of BoxCycle: just check the Notify Me checkbox on your Seller Wanted Listing. Retail listings are regular listing created by sellers through the Sell Boxes section of BoxCycle.

This is perfect if there are situation when you’d want to buy boxes you are requesting at retail prices. This feature doesn’t create any commitments. You’ll get an email when a new seller lists something that matches what you are requesting. You can then either purchase the newly listed boxes or ignore the notification.

You can find details on the BoxCycle Buying and Selling Used Boxes with Wanted Listings Help Page.

Selling

Most people who contact us about selling boxes just want to drop them off somewhere or, if possible, get them picked up. They are generally more concerned with convenience than with profit. Seller Wanted Listings fill their need. Sellers can see matching buyers in their area, schedule an appointment, and submit their request online. No account is required.

Buying

Seller Wanted Listings enable Wholesale Purchases through BoxCycle. While prices on BoxCycle are generally very competitive for retail purchases, they are usually too high to enable buying for resale through the site. Seller Wanted Listings enable resale buying. They also allow sellers to get boxes they need for themselves very cheaply. It isn’t unusual for businesses to constantly want to get rid of certain box sizes while always needing other sizes.

Limitations

These may be removed in future revisions based on feedback, but for this first release:

• Buyers cannot set a minimum order. However, small orders aren’t likely since sellers pay a fee to place an order.
• Prices are set at approximately 10% of list price and cannot be adjusted.
• Retail Delivery and Wanted Pickup cannot be separated. If you offer Delivery for your Retail Listing, you will also be offering Pickup for your Wanted Listing under the same terms.
• Unflattened boxes must be accepted, though buyers can pay up to 50% less for them.
• Expiration Date, Auto-Confirm, and Lead-Time settings are shared between Retail and Wanted listings.

Process and Fees

Sellers pay a $10 commission on successful sales with their payment details collected during order placement. Although it’s unusual to give payment details when selling, this is essential for us to be able to get a high level of commitment from sellers and enforce fees for unreliable behavior, much like we do with Retail Orders. This fee also has the effect of encouraging larger transactions.

Ordering process and management is very similar to Retail Orders with buyer and seller roles reversed. Buyers will hopefully only see a minimally higher time involvement for these orders. The main differences are that buyers pay sellers directly at meeting in cash and both parties have more freedom to resolve issues at meeting without our involvement.

Buyers do not not pay fees for Wanted Orders of 200 boxes or less unless they charge for Pickup. In that case we’ll collect Pickup charges from the seller at order time (to make sure the buyer gets paid for pickup if the seller flakes) and charge a 5% commission on the collected amount.

If the order is over 200 boxes, BoxCycle charges the buyer a $5 commission for each block of 100 boxes after the first 200 with a $30 maximum. This fee is collected during order confirmation.

Conclusion

Although there is some overlap, Seller Wanted Listings and our Retail Seller Listings are focused on different kinds of transactions. Seller Wanted Listings are optimized around connecting buyers who continuously need boxes for resale or use with, often one-time, retail sellers. In contrast, our Retail Seller Listings are optimized around connecting sellers with a continuous supply of boxes with, often one-time, retail buyers.

We look forward to your feedback to help us improve this feature over the coming months.