Linns/Amos Idiocy And The Pain Of Subscription Renewal

If I were the guy writing the checks to the developers of that new website, I'd see a certain advantage in scanning fronts only, and dealing with requests for additional scans on a case-by-case basis.

I'm checking out Mystic's supplies and it looks like they probably did a data dump of part numbers from their internal inventory onto the web. Just in the mounts section there are countless listings with a part number with no description of its contents and no picture. For example, if you click on "clear drop-end mounts" and then on the "by type" tab, it pops up a bunch of country-specific mounts. For Germany there are 36 different part numbers listed with no description and no picture. I'm pretty sure these are mounts for some monthly stamp club and they are "kitted" to have the right mounts for a particular shipment. While the information that's on the site might be useful for Mystic, it's useless to a prospective shopper. I'm guessing their bread-and-butter items are probably well pictured and described, but they'll have a lot of cleanup to do on a lot of miscellaneous items like that.

A useful insight, Artful. I often wonder about items with no image and/or/ little description. Cheers,

I'm not sure, Don.

I saw this page https://www.mysticstamp.com/Product...C13-15/USA/# which I assumed is just a generic image of the set.

Kirk

As for Mystic's stamp images, I doubt very much that the picture of the three Zepp stamps is anything more than a standard picture. It's not the stamps you'd be buying especially since the listing gives a buyer four options -- two unused, two used. Since I'd be reluctant to buy any stamps above even $20 if I couldn't see the exact stamps I was buying, I have no idea how this kind of listing will work to generate sales for Mystic. But I have my doubts.

As for Amos/Scott, there's no doubt they are woefully behind the times. This is an old company staffed, I imagine, by mostly older non-technically proficient managers who simply don't understand what they need to do. I've used their website to change subscriptions, and so forth, and found the same problems described by others. Other corporate websites have similar problems, of course, and Amos is in bad company with them. If you've registered once before, but don't remember this fact, some websites will not let you reregister without endless problems. It should be simple for them to send you your old password, etc.I can do that with nearly all other online retailers.

No company will survive if what they offer is difficult to use. What Linn's/Amos/Scott really needs are modern easy-to-use features on their websites, and to do that they need a serous revamping which will cost them money. They need to hire a firm which specializes in technology to do that. Then they need to hire a number of people full-time who are specialists in maintaining their website. This will cost them a good deal of money, and I suspect they don't want to spend it. Too bad, because if they don't they're going to limp along for a few more years until they are no longer profitable and then go out of business.

As for shipping, many online companies and many sellers on ebay charge nothing for shipping. What you pay for the item is what you pay (plus sales tax). I know that the price of the products is, undoubtedly, inflated enough to compensate for this, but it's appealing nevertheless even if only for the sake of simplicity. And we all like to believe that we can get a product online as if we were buying it in a shop -- without paying for it to be delivered. If I were Amos/Scott, all products (perhaps above a certain price) would be shipping for "free". This would end all frustration over shipping charges. And I'd definitely ship for free to any legitimate stamp dealer with a resale license.

Stanley Gibbons does not actually have a conflict of interest. They are very clear in the preface of their catalogs that the listings are a price guide when buying stamps directly from Gibbons.

That statement does not remove the conflict of interest.

I do wish there were an American magazine designed along the lines of Gibbons Monthly that had more of a focus on foreign collecting.

I would definitely be interested in a monthly magazine that focused on worldwide collecting. I do subscribe to Linn's and there are of course some articles about various countries and topics, etc, but the lion's share of the content is (understandably) US focused. I don't collect US at all (used to, though) so there's not always a lot in Linn's that interests me.