We’ve had requests to sell these for a while, but it’s taken a bit of time since they are more difficult to add than regular box types.

BoxCycle now has a new box type category called Sheets & Pads which includes a full array of sizes of Corrugated Sheets.

The most significant change has been to upgrade to newer, much faster servers running newer, more performant versions of our software stack. The second most significant source of improvement was upgrading from Ruby 2.0, which we’ve being using for the past year, to the much faster Ruby 2.2.3.

Along with these upgrades, we’ve made a number of other optimizations. Some examples are reduction in the use of third party scripts on the client side and improved server-side performance of our supporting sites, such our Live Chat service, which can slow down regular page loads. Another example is better handling of non-desirable traffic, such as performance sucking brute force hacking bots designed to probe for PHP vulnerabilities. Since we know we don’t serve PHP, we can simply disregard these requests without bothering our app server.

We hope you enjoy the new faster experience. If you experience any problems please let us know.

On the technical end, google maps has been updated to version 3 and our infrastructure has been upgraded from Rails 3.2.21 to Rails 4.2.4 which allowed us to increase caching, remove old cruft, and improve speed, reliability, and maintainability.

A lot of changes were required for this release; please let us know of any problems you run into.

But we’ve changed our default minimum order to $10. Most sellers stick with defaults and many find very small orders an unpleasant surprise. Furthermore, small orders cause issues with appointment fees and incentives since amounts exceed the order amount. This encourages no-shows, adjustments, and cancellations by buyers, less care by sellers, and more special handling on orders that are already unprofitable for us and the seller. A $10 order is still small, but is hopefully large enough to encourage better service from sellers and keep buyers accountable for showing up as promised.

Sellers who don’t mind spending time on smaller orders can simply override the default, as can sellers who’d like to require even larger orders.

The new default minimum order amount is also dynamic. When the default is used, the minimum order will decrease automatically when total remaining inventory drops below $10. It will become the total amount of seller inventory (down to the nearest whole dollar) as long as it’s at least $2. This should help sellers with small amount of inventory by eliminating the need to think about the minimum order.

This change applies automatically to all existing sellers who did not specify a minimum order manually.

Cash on Pickup allows buyers to pay for their order at their pickup appointment. Sellers should review the tradeoffs and caveats in our original Cash on Pickup post to decide if this feature is for them.

Sellers must have PayPal, a credit card, or a sufficient balance in their account to be able to confirm a Cash on Pickup order. The recently introduced Keep Min Payout Balance feature can be very helpful in minimizing the inconvenience.

To begin accepting Cash on Pickup:

• 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

For additional information about this feature please see our previous post.

Today’s release adds a Keep Minimum Payout Balance option. If you select it, automated payouts will leave a balance of $25 in your account instead of paying the entire amount. This means that an automated payment will not occur until you are owed at least $50 and that $25 will remain after payment. For example, when you are owed $60, $35 will be paid automatically and $25 will remain in your account.

Why Should I Enable This?

If you don’t receive boxes continuously, this option helps to avoid having to pay a fee to receive your final payment since it’s likely to be under $25. With at least $25 in your account you can a request a manual payout without incurring fees.

This feature is also helpful if you offer Cash on Pickup since we can collect our fees from the balance instead of asking you to submit a PayPal or Credit Card payment when you confirm the order.

How Do I Enable This?

Go to the Preferences section in the Profile tab of your account. Click Show All. Then check the Keep Min Payout Balance checkbox and save.

Delivery Appointment Windows

Each seller can set their preferred delivery window to between 0 and 3 hours. The default is 0 for exact appointments (within 15 minutes of selected time). This option can be set in Profile->Delivery.

Keep in mind that delivery window requirements may affect orders by discouraging buyers and/or reducing their scheduling flexibility. You should weigh benefits to yourself against these costs and select the smallest window you need to offer timely delivery service. Exact appointments, if you are able to accommodate them, can be a competitive advantage.

All delivery orders will offer you at least two appointment windows within your hours with at least one of them being 24+ hours in the future. You’ll have an option of shrinking, but not increasing, the final delivery window when you confirm the order if you happen to have more certainty on that transaction. For example, if you require a 2 hour delivery window you’ll be able to confirm an appointment for any window between 0 and 2 hours.

Improved Anonymous Connect

Anonymous Connect will function through the entire appointment range.

To help keep buyers and sellers connected in more complicated appointment scenarios we’ve also enhanced the service to automatically extend the period during which contact is allowed when there was recent communication. As long as there was communication in the past 30 minutes, buyers and sellers are now be able to reach each other through the service regardless of the original appointment time.

• Extra Small Moving Box – From $0.75 to $0.50
• Small Moving Box – From $1.00 to $0.75
• Box 14-17″ – From $0.60 to $0.50
• Box 18-23″ – From $0.90 to $0.75

This change does not force sellers to reduce their profit.  This change reduces our commission on these box types since our commission is a percentage of the default price.

New listings of these box types will default to lower prices and lower profit.  Sellers can continue to charge whatever they like using our Custom Profit and Custom Price features.

Existing Listings

There is no seller profit impact on existing listings.  Inventory with custom prices has been updated to a lower buyer price to reflect our lower commission.  Inventory with automatic pricing has been converted to custom prices.  In both cases, buyer price has been reduced while seller profit remains the same; no seller action is required.  However, we encourage sellers who previously used automatic pricing to review their listings and consider switching back to make sure their listing stays competitive with new sellers who are likely to use the lower default prices.

Please note that disabled inventory that uses automatic pricing has not be updated (unless part of a kit) and will use new defaults if re-enabled.

• Commercial/Bulk Multi-Type Option
• Expanded Maximum Search Radius

Commercial/Bulk Option

This new Restrict option shows listings likely to be of interest to commercial customers. This currently includes listings that have:

• Any items with Quantity of 400 or more (100 for Wanted Listings)
• Any items in Bulk Cargo Boxes & Crates, Pallets, or File Boxes categories
• Any Box Packs or Box Pallets
• Any Regular Boxes with length of 33″ or more

The exact criteria may evolve over time; the goal is to enable searching for commercial items in one step.

Expanded Maximum Search Radius

It’s not unusual for commercial customers to be willing to travel far to buy/sell boxes. This is due to higher volumes, costlier boxes, multiple locations, and developed delivery infrastructure.

To aid in finding boxes over larger areas, we’ve increased the maximum search radius from 100 miles to 1000 miles when searching is Restricted to one of the commercial box types described above.

The Within choices will update automatically when you select one of the commercial Restrict options.

Potential buyers can now choose from several options between 5 miles and 2000 miles for how far they are willing to travel to get their wanted boxes.

Until now, we simply used 25 miles. While this is a reasonable default for most situations involving moving boxes, it doesn’t work well for large buyers who may have multiple locations, their own distribution network, etc. and are often interested in boxes hundreds, sometimes thousands, of miles away from the location in their Wanted Listing.

Potential buyers will now be notified of all new matching listings within the distance range they specify.

In addition, Wanted Listings with extended ranges are now shown in searches that cover their area of interest, even if the actual location is outside the search radius. These results appear at the bottom of the page, are designated differently from in-area listings, and do not show up on the map (this is similar to how we show sellers who deliver to the search area, but aren’t located in it.)