Earlier this week, we introduced part one of our new saved shipping address feature.  Today, we’re taking that a step further by exposing them in auctions after a bidder has won an item.  Now, once you’ve won an item, you’ll be able to select a saved address to share with the seller:

On the seller’s side, they’ll see something like the following:

For items where no shipping is involved (gift codes, local pickups, etc), the buyer can just select the ‘No shipping required’ option.  In either case, once submitted, the buyer will see a confirmation that their information has been sent:

In the meantime, the seller has received an e-mail with the shipping information, and soon enough the item should be on its way!

Now comes the important stuff…

From now until June 1st, 2011, the use of this shipping field is optional for both buyers and sellers.  Buyers can continue to use the messages to communicate their addresses, or they can opt to use their saved addresses, saving time and avoiding typos.  Sellers should simply follow whichever method the buyer has used, and ship to those addresses.

From June 1st, 2011 and on, while messages can still be used for general communication between buyer and seller, they should not be used for sharing shipping information.  The saved shipping address field will become the only means through which a buyer should share his or her address with the seller. In the event of a dispute, if we discover that a buyer or seller has not used the proper method for sharing shipping information, it is unlikely that the dispute will be resolved in their favor.

Saved shipping addresses were designed to achieve a few things: 1) Save buyers time by storing addresses they reuse over and over, 2) Checking these addresses for spelling mistakes and other errors, and 3) Providing sellers with the comfort in knowing that buyer provided address have been approved by Listia.  We hope that over time we achieve all of these goals, resulting in a more positive Listia experience for everyone! =)

On June 1st, we’ll be rolling out a new feature, Shipping Addresses.  In a nutshell, these are saved addresses that buyers enter once and reuse to tell sellers where they’d like their items shipped.  So instead of pasting (or re-typing) your address in a message every time you win an item, you’ll simply choose one of your pre-entered addresses, eliminating typos and saving time!  An additional benefit is that we standardize abbreviations, correct misspellings, and add in ZIP codes, all of which should help minimize shipping errors (example below).

Before June 1st, however, we’d like to first roll out the shipping address management page, located at http://www.listia.com/account/addresses.  Over the next week, feel free to dive-in and save your shipping address so that you’re ready to go come June!

You can also navigate to the shipping address page from your My Listia page as well:

Thanks!

photo credit stephoto

Last night ABC aired the 2011 Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas, and it was a great night for the music industry. Top artists like Katy Perry, Kanye West, Taylor Swift, and Rihanna were among those who attended but the night’s top honors went to both Eminem and Justin Bieber, who both received six awards.

Eminem, a rapper who’s been in the limelight for quite some time took home: Top Artist, Top Male Artist, Top Rap Artist, Top Billboard 200 Album, Top Rap Album, and Top Rap Song.

Justin Bieber also took home many awards including: Top New Artist, Top Social Artist, Top Streaming Artist, Top Digital Media Artist, Top Pop Album, and Top Streaming Song (Video).

See the full list of winners HERE.

Justin has already accomplished so much in his young career. He’s released top-charting albums, published an autobiography, has a movie made about his life (like in this auction), and even featuring his own line of nail polish! (like the one you see here). What can’t this young star do?

I wouldn’t say I have “Bieber Fever”, but I do appreciate hard working young talent and some of his songs are catchy to my ears. Are there any die-hard Bieber Listians out there? Share your thoughts or your admiration for Justin (or from last night’s Billboard Music Awards) by leaving a comment.

Until next week,

ListiaRosie

When I was a kid, I was an avid collector of all sorts of nifty things: In elementary school, I prided myself in having the best sticker collection in my class (even carried around my sticker book during recess), then along came Beanie Babies like the one I found here. In junior high and high school, I collected stationary and my mom even got me into collecting new quarters that were issued for each state. By the time I entered college, I took a break from all of my childhood collections and invested in school supplies and textbooks.

It’s a shame to know the things I used to love and cherish so dearly are now sitting at home collecting dust. Do you also have that same problem? That’s why it’s so nice to have a place like Listia where I can give away the things I no longer need to the next happy owner.  There are lots of other Collectibles on Listia right now and some of these things bring back great childhood memories.  Remember Teddy Ruxpin, My Little Pony, Smurfs & Transformers?

Regardless of what you’re currently collecting or have collected before, tell me your story about your collectibles, past and present. Maybe this will spark some interest in new collectible items or encourage others to do some Spring cleaning.

Until next week,

ListiaRosie

Hi everyone!  In our quest to improve the shipping and handling rules on Lisita, we’ve made a few changes to our rules and site.  First, you will notice that our rules page now contains a short list of items which have a “maximum shipping” charge associated with them, effective Monday, May 23rd.  For these items, you must either provide free shipping, exact shipping, or flat rate shipping under the listed amounts.  The only case where you can charge more is if it will actually cost you more than that amount to ship (ie, if you are selling 10 books).

Additionally, to make shipping options more noticable, we are now highlighting them on the auction pages.  This will help bidders immediately see which auctions to bid on and which to avoid.  We’re so happy that a huge part of our community is providing free shipping, and we encourage everyone to follow their lead… you’ll be rewarded when its your turn to win something!  

Thanks again for everyone’s continued input!  This is a small but important step in the right direction, and we have much more in store for you in the near future!

Our latest version of our iPhone app, Version 1.2, is now available to download on the Apple app store. We’ve heard what our community wanted and created an “add to watch list” button in the app. Other improvements and updates include:

• Bug fixes
• Ability to load more pages to view comments
• Uploading up to 5 photos and faster uploading time
• Fixed login issue

If you had problems logging in with our older version, Version 1.2 fixes these issues and you’re now able to use the app on-the-go with ease. Don’t forget to rate our app and leave a comment!

We’re continuously improving our mobile app and website. Stay tuned for more features and updates!

Hi everyone!  We just added a cool new feature to help users show off their reputation from other social networks such as Facebook or Twitter.  This is especially helpful if you haven’t been able to build up your Listia reputation yet, and you want other people to bid with confidence on your listings.  In addition, it helps bidders identify real users and weed out the fake and throwaway accounts.  There’s still a lot more to come as we continue to improve the way we deal with verification and reputation, but we think this is a big step in the right direction.

Starting today, if you have connected with Facebook or Twitter, your public profile links from those social networks will show up on your auction listings and on your profile page.  Other users will be able to easily click and check out your public profiles on Facebook and Twitter.  Of course, you can also opt-out of showing these links by visiting the “Privacy & Sharing Settings” link on your “My Listia” Page.  Remember, you can control the amount of information displayed on these public pages by changing your settings at Facebook.com or Twitter.com directly.

Hope everyone finds this useful… and stay tuned for more new features!

We have a couple site changes we’d like to announce today!  We always love to hear what our users have to say so keep those suggestions coming.

First, we’ve changed the way comments are hidden.  Now you can permanently hide comments on your own auction and other users won’t be able to click “show comment” to see what was written.  The place to do this is in the same location as before, but the results are slightly different.  Hopefully auction owners enjoying having more control over the comments on their auctions.

Second, we’ve added a way to perform routine maintenance on the site and give our users notification ahead of time.  When we have scheduled maintenance you will see a warning message on the top right of the site that says “Scheduled Maintenance” and you can click this to see details including start and end times.  Auctions that end during and 1 hour past this down time will end 1 hour after the end of the scheduled down time.  For instance if down time is scheduled for tonight from 9PM to 10PM, auctions ending from 9PM to 11PM will all end at 11PM.

Lastly, we’ve changed the way the search function works when you select your region.  Previously, you could select “US” or “Worldwide” where “US” would show all auctions with a specified location in the US and “Worldwide” would show every auction available.  These options would not take into account any of the shipping options associated with the auctions.  We’ve changed these options to “US” and “Outside US” where each will show auctions that are available in the specified region (shipping to that region or local pick up in that region).  For instance if you have selected “US” you will only see auctions that ship to or are available for local pick up in the US and likewise for “Outside US”.  We’ll be adding more ways to drill down to specific regions in the near future.

Stay tuned for more updates!