APS Discounts On HipStamp

Has the APS discount rumored last year to be coming to Hipstamp just been abandoned?

There never has been an APS discount... anywhere... even on the old site. There was an upcharge for non-members, which did not carry through to Hipstamp.

So on Hipstamp everyone is paying the same price. APS members did not lose a discount, rather non-members are no longer paying higher prices.

There has never been a discount. Non-members just paid more.

Terminology aside, I remember someone at the APS saying they were looking at finding a way to reinstate the lower prices for APS members. It would be automatic once the APS member IDs were added to the system. Has anyone heard if this idea was officially abandoned?




On the old APS site, if a seller priced an item at $25, APS members would pay $25 plus postage, non-members would pay more. On the new HipStamp APS site, if a seller priced an item at $25, both members and non-members pay $25.50 plus postage.

This

Either there's a comprehension disconnect somewhere, or what the APS is looking to implement at HipStamp is the *higher* price for NON-APS members... but how that is possible without being logged in as a customer with your APS number on file I have no idea. It also leads to the scenario where the price of items on the site or in your cart changes when you authenticate... which is a not insignificant ecommerce complication.

To reiterate, there has NEVER been a discounted APS member price. When you send items to the APS, the base price is what you have on the sales sheet. It is not discounted further unless you as the seller go online and reduce the price of the item. Rather, non-members are upcharged.

okay so I went and looked it up myself on stamps.org

https://stamps.org/news/c/news/cat/...ons-answered

Q. When setting up a new buyer account on HipStamp will I need to use the same email address as provided to APS?

A. Yes, the email address should be the same as the one on file with APS. Using the same email will recognize you as an APS member when the order is received by us and will ensure you are given member discounts when that becomes available (coming soon).


Apparently the "coming soon" has come and gone.

That's bizarre wording...as there has never been an actual across-the-board member discount on Stamp Store items.

I wonder if they mean "promotions" rather than "discounts"? For example, the APS has periodically had free shipping specials or $5 off coupons for APS members over the years.

The APS is conducting a stamp chat w Scott English and Cheryl Ganz 30 Jan. Would seem an appropriate place / time to ask the question.

There is a long and detailed discussion on the Delphi forum on this topic. Scott answered many questions by a person who was/is not a happy camper on this topic. In my own words I would summarize the discussion as the poster feeling that APS had misleading marketing/spin on this topic and Scott taking the position that members were indeed benefiting, and good things would be forthcoming.
Don

Again, whether you call it a discount for APS members or an upcharge for non-members, the fact remains that on the old site, members paid less than non-members, and on the new site both members and non-members pay the upcharge. Like the example from earlier, if the base price on the sales sheet is $25, members and non-members will pay the same upcharged price of $25.50, plus shipping. The APS promised implied that once the site launched and the APS uploaded the member info to HipStamp, that members would start paying the discounted base price instead of the upcharged non-member price. I recall a lot of concerns over HipStamp using the APS member roster for a flood of spam messages so maybe that is what scared them off. Thanks BobInRye for the info on the StampChat.

Edit: But if I do attend the Stamp Chat, I won't blow my question on this issue, although annoying, is not my biggest complaint about the APS/Hip integration -- that would be the inability to search the descriptions of stamps, only the titles. And sellers aren't allowed to put anything in the titles except the country and catalog number and maybe used/unused. Impossible to search for anything more than country and catalog number. Except for covers, those descriptions can be (partially) searched, but not stamps. So the technology is there, just only available for covers. But I digress...

To clarify, Hip supports 80 characters in the title field, but there are no restrictions on what the seller puts in there. It looks like APS has decided to only include country, cat #, condition and type (e.g. set, souvenir sheet) in the title for stamps as part of their process of preparing items to list in their store.

It would be very useful to both sellers & buyers on Hip to A - have searching in description field available, and/or B - remove the current length limit on title, as 80 chars is sometimes not enough to put all pertinent info for buyers.

I'm an active seller on there & have mentioned this to Hip staff before, along with other features that they lack, such as ability to block users. That being said, not many enhancements have been done to Hip functionality in the last few years, so I'm not holding my breath.

~Greg

Meh. We're talking in circles rehashing the same old issues over and over and over.

Since APS moved to Hipstamp, they lost my business. *shrug*

They never really had my business. I had no interest in the old stampstore and I don't care about it now that it's on Hipstamp. I can get the same stamps cheaper from regular Hipstamp dealers, often with free shipping, something that the APS will never offer. Therefore, what's the point of bothering? If they can't beat just your random, run-of-the-mill seller, then my membership is meaningless.

Respectfully, APS membership is needed in order to insure a collection with Hugh Wood Inc. With any other membership, YMMV.

That is not the fault of the APS, the prices of material is set by the greedy APS members who are selling their material. Shame on them for asking for so much, right?