Vacationforpennies need BETA TESTERS. Real item GIVEAWAY!

**IceDragon** · 09-02-2010, 12:01 AM

Ok now I am getting really peeved. Betaterstergizmo and betatester110 went through quite a bit of bids ealier tonight and now are still bidding on the ipad? What gives?

**NewComer** · 09-02-2010, 12:07 AM

Well this is going to be a very long post and I will try to give everyone an answer that posted. There were a total of 137 people bidding tonight and this script was put to the test big time.

First off- The option to purchase the small bid package was removed about an hour into the beta testing. One particular person purchased 20 bid packs and another person 9 bid packs giving them a HUGE unfair competitive advantage in the bidding. We were thinking that a person would only purchase 1 small package possibly which is why we eliminated all the bigger pacakges. We refunded ALL bid pack packages and try to make the playing field level for all the Beta testers who were putting in their time for free.

Second - This script is PennyAuctionSoft script and as we found out tonight the timers and the backend are full of bugs. In a word the script performed not just BAD, but worse than BAD!
Often 2-3 seconds would but deleted from the clock instead of one second.
Several people were unable to bid with 5 seconds left on the timer as well.
The list goes on. In short, the entire timer code has to be rewritten from scratch since the script could not handle heavy usage. The timers at times were all over the place. Other times them seemed to perform perfectly.
But overall they were quite unstable.

Third - Three people who won auctions continued to bid on other auctions despite the rules stating otherwise. In the backend of the script you can DISABLE users and that is what we did when they continued to bid. GUESS WHAT? The disable button did not work and and in fact after pressing it on one person they were actually still bidding with a NEGATIVE 23 bids in their account. Therefore our tech went into the CPanel and deleted the person from the DATABASE totally. It was the only way to stop the bidding of these individuals.

Fourth - Everyone who received a notice that they won is going to receive their item with one exception. That is the auction for the SWIMMING WITH THE DOLPHINS tickets where the auction suddenly ended with 5 minutes left and there were 3 winners. In this case we are going to send all 3 winners free ipods. All items will be shipped PRIORITY MAIL so everyone hopefully will have their items by Saturday.

Fifth - We deleted on guy from Singapore after he signed in using 2 computers and did not have the word BETATESTER in his name on the other account.

I will still be on line for another 30 minutes so if anyone else has questions. It will be my pleasure to answer them

Thanks everyone for helping us tonight. We have found a lot of problems with the script that we have not even listed here. It was so bad that we are thinking about spending a LOT of money to have the entire thing rewritten from scratch.

**Money2Burn** · 09-02-2010, 12:09 AM

Originally Posted by IceDragon

Ok now I am getting really peeved. Betaterstergizmo and betatester110 went through quite a bit of bids ealier tonight and now are still bidding on the ipad? What gives?

I'm probably just crazy, but I could have sworn that I read something somewhere about 'don't be surprised if you see some of the [site management] bidding along during the testing'. I can't recall for the life of me where or what that was referring to, and can't find any reference to it now. I didn't think anything about it, because the way that I see it, is that if its a Beta test, they have the right to test their own software as well - but it might be an explanation for what we are seeing now.

**IceDragon** · 09-02-2010, 12:12 AM

[QUOTE=NewComer;80123]Well this is going to be a very long post and I will try to give everyone an answer that posted. There were a total of 137 people bidding tonight and this script was put to the test big time.

First off- The option to purchase the small bid package was removed about an hour into the beta testing. One particular person purchased 20 bid packs and another person 9 bid packs giving them a HUGE unfair competitive advantage in the bidding. We were thinking that a person would only purchase 1 small package possibly which is why we eliminated all the bigger pacakges. We refunded ALL bid pack packages and try to make the playing field level for all the Beta testers who were putting in their time for free.

First I would like to thank you for coming on to respond. Unfortunatly as you stated about bids being reset is untrue. If you look at the screenshot i posted from the cruise auction betatesterdebra infact used 80 bids. How is this possible if bids were reset in the beginning? Second if you count the bid counts in a few auctions you will notice that more than 50 bids were used by some testers. I understand the issues with bugs and script errors but please also take in consideration we watch things with a fine tooth comb.

**IceDragon** · 09-02-2010, 12:14 AM

Second - This script is PennyAuctionSoft script and as we found out tonight the timers and the backend are full of bugs. In a word the script performed not just BAD, but worse than BAD!
Often 2-3 seconds would but deleted from the clock instead of one second.
Several people were unable to bid with 5 seconds left on the timer as well.
The list goes on. In short, the entire timer code has to be rewritten from scratch since the script could not handle heavy usage. The timers at times were all over the place. Other times them seemed to perform perfectly.
But overall they were quite unstable.

It may not be the timer that has issues. Are you on a dedicated server running atleast a xeon on higher dual core with no less than 2 gigs of ram? If not you might want to start there. I have tested and helped code many scripts and found the server had more of a problem than the script.

**IceDragon** · 09-02-2010, 12:17 AM

Originally Posted by Money2Burn

I'm probably just crazy, but I could have sworn that I read something somewhere about 'don't be surprised if you see some of the [site management] bidding along during the testing'. I can't recall for the life of me where or what that was referring to, and can't find any reference to it now. I didn't think anything about it, because the way that I see it, is that if its a Beta test, they have the right to test their own software as well - but it might be an explanation for what we are seeing now.

Good call M2B

That explanation would justify a few users. I would not blame them for doing that as well. Testing new scripts at full capacity is never a pretty site and can be very good or really bad.

**IceDragon** · 09-02-2010, 12:27 AM

I received a nice explanation from Jonathon concerning the debra issues. I do believe they had multiple script issues and have offered some advice to them. If needed I would gladly betatest again. I hope they can get the bugs worked out and things restored as they do have a nice setup and I would look forward to bidding there again if the issues are resolved.

**NewComer** · 09-02-2010, 12:32 AM

BetaTester Debra NEVER purchased a bid package. After we had to manually go to the frontend cPanel to disable users since they were bidding after they won an auction our tech told us that he made an adjustment and the disable button should now work in the backend. An hour later we noticed that betatester debra seem to be on a long time and in fact disabled her in the backend. But the problem multiplied and after we hit the disable button betatester debra was able to continue to bid and her account in the backend read -74 bids which means she had used well over 120 bids already before we got a grip on the situation.

On your other note LETSPLAY signed in and had the system give him automatically 5 bids for registering. The 5 bids were spent before we could even react to it.

**IceDragon** · 09-02-2010, 12:34 AM

Originally Posted by NewComer

BetaTester Debra NEVER purchased a bid package. After we had to manually go to the frontend cPanel to disable users since they were bidding after they won an auction our tech told us that he made an adjustment and the disable button should now work in the backend. An hour later we noticed that betatester debra seem to be on a long time and in fact disabled her in the backend. But the problem multiplied and after we hit the disable button betatester debra was able to continue to bid and her account in the backend read -74 bids which means she had used well over 120 bids already before we got a grip on the situation.

On your other note LETSPLAY signed in and had the system give him automatically 5 bids for registering. The 5 bids were spent before we could even react to it.

If you run into that problem again, in the admin panel under ip you can ban them so that they can not do anything on the server. Just a thought for future reference. You will tend to find people will notice exploits and run with them.

**NewComer** · 09-03-2010, 06:53 PM

The following is the list of beta testers that won on September 1, 2010 – Pursuant to our rules for this contest we may ask you for testimonials that we can publish on our website after you have verified you have received your items. We have only included names, city, and states about the winners and kept confidential their home phone number and street addresses. Winners may feel free to post their personal contact information, such as their email addresses or phone numbers, on the blog section of our website, so that other members can verify what we have posted below if they wish to. We recognize that not all Beta testers came from PAW but do believe at least 2-4 winners did come from PAW. All Beta testers received a total of 55 bids to use.

Beta testing results

Apple iPod Touch – Winner – betatester01
Samsung Unlocked wi-fi cell phone – Winner – BetaTesterLuig
Apple iPad 16GIG – Winner - Beta Tester 200
Swim with Dolphin Tickets. Official winner was – betatesterleefj

** Please note that this auction ended early due to a glich in the system and we were going to award both the two listed runner ups and the winner free ipods. However after research, the two runner ups both won other auctions so therefore we will only provide the listed auction winner a prize for this auction.***
iPod nano 8GIG – Winner – BetaTester119
$25 Visa Gift Card – Winner – betatestervalea –
**Ironically betatestervalea won this auction with just 1 bid but then proceeded to buy a lot of bid packages and we had to cancel her and refund her bid purchases. Since she won this auction using her free bids we honored it and sent her the Visa card.**
Coach Poppy handbag – Winner – Malinda
I-Mobile Car MP3 Player – Winner – betatestermadame
I-Web Tablet computer – Winner – BETA TESTER PRO

** The runner up in this auction set an autobidder and then clicked over himself and suddenly the auction ended with one second left. The readout shows 3 winners with BETA TESTER PRO on top and beta tester d occupying both the second and third position, all at $5.83.
BETA TESTER PRO was sent out the tablet computer and we have now made a decision to send beta tester d a tablet computer as well but it had to be ordered and has not yet shipped. This was the most serious bug in the auction since all bids should cause the amount to go up by one penny which clearly didn't happened when you examine the readout.**
3 day Bermuda Cruise – Winner – betatester debra
** The winner of the auction had well used up all her free bids and was still allowed to bid another 74 bids by our system. Therefore she should never won this auction and we have disallowed the win of the cruise and consider the auction null and void. However, we sent betatester debra and the runner up betateter1515 free prizes of the I-mobile car mp3 units,we also had listed in another auction, with emails explaining why we did what we did. Interestingly both the winner and runner up are from Orlando, Florida**
$25 Visa card.- Winner – BETATESTERcoffee –
Able Planet's Headphones – BetatesterGAGA –
** This user was sent there winning item but removed from the system after they continued to bid on other items after winning this one as our rules only allowed 1 win per beta tester.
Canon PowerShot Camera – Winner – Betatester666 -
** This user was removed after they continued to bid on other items after they already have won an auction. This is the ONLY WINNER we have not sent out their auction item to.
We have sent multiple emails to them to confirm their shipping address and they also have not paid the $10 for shipping. We will send out a few more emails and even a first class mail letter to them to try to resolve this problem. If we do no t hear back from them in the next 10 days the camera will be awarded to the runner up betatesterLuvBIN.

**IceDragon** · 09-03-2010, 07:26 PM

Newcomer

I applaud your efforts on doing the right thing on the iweb tablet auction. This is a good step in showing good customer relations. We look forward to your sites grand opening and hopely having all the bugs worked out.

**chocmartini** · 09-03-2010, 09:47 PM

Hi I have to say that there customer service is on top of things I told them about the cashier problem when trying to pay for an item won and they have been contacting me thru email to try and solve that problem they also said they shipped I asked for a tracking number and was given one within 5 min. So with that said looking forward to a good long future with this site. Ill up date when item is recieved (ipod touch)

**NewComer** · 09-03-2010, 10:02 PM

Please read the new thread we have started regarding our next beta test on the 16th.

**NewComer** · 09-10-2010, 04:38 PM

We are a little disappointed that only 2 people have complied with our request for a 10 or 15 second You Tube testimonial after you have won and received your items. It was in our Terms and Conditions that winners would assist us after they received their items in good working order. Only 1 person is waiting for a replacement and is excused from this request.
If you were a winner in our 9/1/ Beta test please take out the time to do a on line video on You Tube with saying something very short.All you have to so is press the Quick capture button on You Tube to do this.
If you do not have a webcam on your laptop and cannot do a 15 second video at least mail us a one or two line quote with your picture. While we cannot punish people for failing to provide us with a testimonial, we certainly can refuse to give them the opportunity to be a preferred customer in the future. As it stands all Beta testers are on our preferred list which means they will receive free bids via email from time to time, be invited for future testing, and also be invited to participate in special events. Please take out a minute of your time today and send us the link to your YouTube testimonial to customer service using the contact link on our site. Thanks

**coolguy451** · 09-10-2010, 08:32 PM

Originally Posted by NewComer

We are a little disappointed that only 2 people have complied with our request for a 10 or 15 second You Tube testimonial after you have won and received your items. It was in our Terms and Conditions that winners would assist us after they received their items in good working order. Only 1 person is waiting for a replacement and is excused from this request.
If you were a winner in our 9/1/ Beta test please take out the time to do a on line video on You Tube with saying something very short.All you have to so is press the Quick capture button on You Tube to do this.
If you do not have a webcam on your laptop and cannot do a 15 second video at least mail us a one or two line quote with your picture. While we cannot punish people for failing to provide us with a testimonial, we certainly can refuse to give them the opportunity to be a preferred customer in the future. As it stands all Beta testers are on our preferred list which means they will receive free bids via email from time to time, be invited for future testing, and also be invited to participate in special events. Please take out a minute of your time today and send us the link to your YouTube testimonial to customer service using the contact link on our site. Thanks

I don't know about anyone else but this is a silly policy and is a real turn off for me. I have no desire to have my picture or video posted on any site so they can bring in more customers. I buy bids on a site to try and get a good deal...not plaster myself on the internet as a PA user. Some people like uploading themselves for a sites benefit (good for them--or maybe they just like free bids) but no customer should be pressured (or passively threatened) into doing something they don't want to when it really doesn't benefit them at all (and in fact it can be argued that it actually hurts that customer because it can lead to drastic increases in competition for that user).

**NewComer** · 09-10-2010, 09:49 PM

Coolguy451.

You have absolutely no business posting an opinion on this thread. You have no idea what you are talking about. You "buying bids on a good site" has nothing to do with this thread. We ran a beta test and didn't charge anyone for bids and gave away free ipods, cameras, etc. No one paid a dime and everyone received their items. The only condition we set in our terms and conditions is that winners would give us a testimonial to use so we could get some positive PR from it. We asked for nothing else. No one is being "pressured" and everyone who won free merchandise without ever having to buy a single bid already "benefited".

Like I said, you have no idea what you are talking about. Please stay out of our thread. You were not one of our Beta testers.

**coolguy451** · 09-10-2010, 10:06 PM

I can post my opinion where I please, this is an open forum. You had a funny way of communicating with your beta testers and I chose to comment on it and I stand behind that. Are you trying to say you wrote a whole other T and C for your testers but you don't plan to apply those same "rules" when you finally open your doors? You have a funny way of communicating. If you meant for only beta testers to see that message then send them an email and not post your ridiculous threats of non-participation in future promotions on a public forum.

**NewComer** · 09-10-2010, 10:30 PM

Grow up is all I can say to you.

We didn't threaten anyone, nor would we. That is not how you run a business. Our entire terms and conditions for beta testing was only 2 or 3 lines long. Our only requirement was that people give us a testimonial if they won, nothing more. Obviously the terms and conditions for the website itself is going to be extensive and totally non-applicable to this thread. While PAW is an open Forum , this thread was made for people who participated in our 9/1 Beta test. We obviously do expect people to live by our simple request since we rewarded those winners with items worth quite a bit of money.
We are certainly not going to reward PREFERRED status to people who do not comply with the terms and conditions we set forth in our beta test. However that is far different than threatening someone. I recommend that you pick up a dictionary and learn the definition of words that you are attempting to articulate. Clearly your communication skills need some polishing. I am not going to reply to anymore of your ridiculous posts. Feel free to go ahead and have the "last word" in this thread. I am sure it is important to for you to do. I can truly care less about how much "bashing" you feel the need to do. In fact, I feel I like I am lowering myself to your level by even posting this reply. Enough said.

**coolguy451** · 09-10-2010, 10:43 PM

Originally Posted by NewComer

Grow up is all I can say to you.

We didn't threaten anyone, nor would we. That is not how you run a business. Our entire terms and conditions for beta testing was only 2 or 3 lines long. Our only requirement was that people give us a testimonial if they won, nothing more. Obviously the terms and conditions for the website itself is going to be extensive and totally non-applicable to this thread. While PAW is an open Forum , this thread was made for people who participated in our 9/1 Beta test. We obviously do expect people to live by our simple request since we rewarded those winners with items worth quite a bit of money.
We are certainly not going to reward PREFERRED status to people who do not comply with the terms and conditions we set forth in our beta test. However that is far different than threatening someone. I recommend that you pick up a dictionary and learn the definition of words that you are attempting to articulate. Clearly your communication skills need some polishing. I am not going to reply to anymore of your ridiculous posts. Feel free to go ahead and have the "last word" in this thread. I am sure it is important to for you to do. I can truly care less about how much "bashing" you feel the need to do. In fact, I feel I like I am lowering myself to your level by even posting this reply. Enough said.

You are funny...thanks for trying to "school" me. It doesn't matter why you posted it in this thread, you could have handled it through an email. Instead you chose to use a public forum to try and "persuade" (maybe you like that word better) people to send you links so you are not disappointed by their lack of submissions. You may think you are witty, but your passive aggressive tone shines through and speaks volumes about you and how you conduct business. Again the agreement you made with beta testers and how their lack of compliance makes you feel doesn't belong in this forum. Maybe you should take your own advice and learn how to properly communicate with your customers.

**NewComer** · 09-10-2010, 10:59 PM

We want to publicly thank betatestervalea who replied to our email requesting a testimonial with " I am a mom and have no idea how to make a video" but then took the time out to have her daughter show her how and just submitted one. We certainly didn't expect it after you informed us of the above and your last email telling us you got it figured out really surprised us! We really do I appreciate the effort you made for us! Thanks again!