Great, so people that expressed definite interest in the first thread are getting shut out of participating.
I must say this was handled rather poorly.
When the person handling the group break (Nick) says something is going to be done, people are taking them at their word (especially since he has supposedly done this sort of thing several times before), and depending on them following through on what they have said they would do. Not everybody can afford to keep the forum up all day.
Quote:
Originally Posted by autocentral
Just a couple of updates!
-Leon will also be sending an email blast once the official thread is posted
Thanks,
Nick
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Once the sign up thread was posted, Nick, it was your responsibility to make sure that the e-mail you told us would go out...goes out. Some of us work overnights and sleep during the day. Some of us have jobs where we cannot keep Net 54 up all day. And yet other people are unable to keep the forum up all day for different reasons. I made a point of clearly stating on the first discussion that I spend much of the day sleeping because of my disability. The prescription drugs I take every day knock me out, but if I knew when to be here, I would not miss the signup. I keep my phone right next to my bed, and whenever I receive a notification from the forum, I have a very loud ring tone that goes off. My phone was setup to receive this email that never came. Imagine my surprise when I came home from a doctor's appointment to see that the thread had not only gone up, but all the slots were filled.
We were also told there would be a thread explaining in detail how this was going to work. In every other group break I have ever participated in, including the few I have run myself, information was provided, including an exact time when the sign up sheet would be posted. People knew well in advance what was expected of them, and when they needed to be on the forum to sign up. It's like fantasy baseball or football. You want to participate? Fine. Here is how many people we need in our league. Here is the date when we must have the league filled. Here is the exact date and time of the draft. Never before have I seen a group break where it was said "well, when it happens depends on something else, in this case, when the set gets in. It might be tomorrow". Those cards weren't perishable items. You knew you'd have them in within the next few days. What should have happened is this. Once the cards were received, a post should have been made stating "the group break signup sheet will be posted at this time on this day". You should have given people a definitive time when the sign up was going to start. Randomly throwing it up at 9:30 in the morning rewarded those who happened to be online at the time, and completely excluded anybody else who wasn't looking for the thread.
Lastly, in a group break where there are only 250 slots to start with, why are you allowing people to sign up for more than one slot to begin with? The first thread about the possibility of a group break being done has 7,000 views. Did you really think you were going to have a hard time selling 250 slots at $13 or $14 each when there were going to be graded Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, and Al Kaline rookies as part of the draw, not to mention two Ted Williams, and a plethora of other really nice cards? You have people here dropping thousands of dollars on rare 100 year old cards every day. If you didn't fill all 250 slots, then you could have opened it up to people buying more slots on a first come, first serve basis. You see, that's something that should have been included in the thread explaining how everything was going to be handled. But that never happened, either.
If there is a next time, please ...pretty please with sugar on top, don't tell people that something is going to happen if you can't guarantee it will. Don't tell people an email will be going out to tell them "hey, you have to sign up now", because when it doesn't happen, a whole lot of people who were really excited about participating (and who stated as such in the initial discussion) get left out. And make sure that the date and time of when the sign up sheet will be available is posted well in advance. Delaying the break an extra day or two to make sure your bases were covered wouldn't have harmed anything. nobody would have been mad if you'd taken more time. Because what we ended up with is something that feels very thrown together at the last minute, and a lot of people are being very disappointed.