Is Bidstart Finished?

I tried to open my BidStart account today:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /php5-fcgi/index.php on this server.


Apache/2.4.6 (Ubuntu) Server at http://bidstart.com Port 80

Just logged into my account using my iPad...no problems at all.
IOS 9.3.1

Might have been a temporary glitch. I got logged in, but it seems to be running extremely slow.

Better question is :

Will SG survive the way their stock has nose dived

I just received this a few days ago which people may be interested in reading.



Hello Everyone,

As many of you will know bidStart has experienced a number of issues recently. We are acutely aware that this is not the level of service you or your customers expect and we want to apologise for this.


As a gesture of goodwill we have reduced final value fees to 0% for all non-auction items. This will take place with immediate effect and will last through Thursday 28 April at noon.

Irrespective of what you may have read or heard we do not yet have a firm date for the closure of bidStart. We want to assure you once again that nothing will happen regarding bidStart's closure without giving you significant advance notice. We will communicate further on this next month.

We are continuing to develop Marketplace such that it has even better features than bidStart. If you have not used it yet our new Bulk Uploader is now fully deployed, and we are pleased to announce that Auction functionality will be released shortly. When these features are added we will of course let you know.

Sincerely,

Martin Peterlechner

In case some people have not heard, Mark Rosenberg(creator of stampwants and bidStart) has started up a new site which can be viewed at:

https://www.hipstamp.com/

Apparently you are able to move bidStart items, etc directly to this site.

At the present time, only stamps are allowed.

It may be worth looking into as many bidStart sellers have already moved a lot of stuff over and I believe it can be synced but not sure as the site is fairly new.

I have read stories about successful companies that were bought for a lot of money from their owners only to fail and fall under the ownership of new owners. Is this what has happened here?

The general consensus is SG had to reinvent the wheel so they could control everything.

They apparently had a lot of teckies with no auction or sales experience. I think the conversion is now in year 3 and no end in sight. Many staff have left due to the total fiasco.

All SG had to do was keep bidStart as it was and update and maybe make some changes to it.

By doing what they have done, they have destroyed what was. BidStart is having all kinds of issues and SG is going downhill as you can tell from the stock.

That is what happens to any business that gets involved with things they know nothing about and then try to reinvent the wheel.

Mark is now trying to set up a new site similar to what bidStart was