Something Wicked This Way Comes Part 3: "CardLauncher"!

[Sher]

1. I mentioned shipping might be cheaper for self-fulfillment, which is why creators may prefer this, but we encourage using fulfillment centers because inexeperience in fulfilling orders can lead to long delays in fulfillment. All four projects are using fulfillment centers. There was an error that caused shipping to be the same across the board, but that has been fixed now.
2. We are working on possibly amending the shipping prices.
3. I'll let Mike answer this one.
4. Multiple reward option - when you click "contribute to this project" or "choose this reward", you are taken to a page that lists all the rewards. there are check boxes next to each reward, and you can check as many as you like.
5. That "Self Fulfillment" on there is misleading. On the form that the creator fills out, there is a question, "Self fulfillment?" and all of them answered no, which displays the Guaranteed Rewards Delivery logo. If opting for self-fulfillment, then we don't use the logo. (Gambler's is actually doing self-fulfillment, but they are a fulfillment partner and the use of fulfillment partners means "Guaranteed Rewards Delivery," which is why they answered no, to the self-fulfillment question, so the logo will be displayed).
6. We will do that, but for now priority is on major glitches. By this I mean we need to ensure first that the coding is right so pledges can be made and payments are processed properly.

i was charged 55 USD a couple of days ago, to get a brick to me here in australia, and that was first class not priority- so i think what ive seen of the prices so far is really good.

edit- i tell a lie, it was 50usd which converted to 55 aussie dollars

To clarify, the shipping prices I listed were for domestic shipping, not international. I can't guarantee you that international will be the same price, but I don't think a brick will cost $50 to ship.

[SpecialK]

Thanks Sher! Very helpful.

[Gareth]

i was charged 55 USD a couple of days ago, to get a brick to me here in australia, and that was first class not priority- so i think what ive seen of the prices so far is really good.

Sadly with the current USPS costs that is pretty reasonable (and we'll probably only have to wait 3-4 weeks to receive it... ).

I think the 'problem' as it were here, is that many are seeing the cost of postage for the first time. KS hides it from (generally) US-based pledgers, and hence anything more than $0 appears bad in comparison. And for Internationals, we (at least should) only get to see the part above whatever it costs domestically.

Comparing the cost of postage options (USPS product X + bubble wrap) versus shipping company charges is like comparing apples with avocados. These are companies whose business it is posting stuff out. They are employing staff to put decks into bubble wrap, box it up, and hopefully putting on the right label so we end up with the right stuff. Of course, they also have many costs on top of just labour - business premises, insurances, taxes and of course, profit. They're not making a cent on the deck, CL's fee or Paypal/WePay/Amazon fees - just the postage. Does that make the numbers quoted fair? Maybe not, but it's probably a bit simplistic just to compare them with what we could buy some bubble wrap and post it for.

What this really means for Card Launcher though is the death of creators getting their family or friends together for a few days and posting rewards out for the cost of the postage and supplies. (As most aren't allowed to 'Self fulfill'). That is - Guranteed Delivery costs, and it costs us.

[snsdmonkey]

Good stuff here... taking notes. To go in another direction about CL - does anyone else feel the campaign details are a bit sparse? And where are pics of card faces on some of them... or at least higher res ones to get a good look-see.

This campaign especially: https://www.cardlauncher.com/en/project ... n-eh-diana" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I feel like you need guidelines on what must be presented in the campaign details eg. front and back of the tuck, suits and courts.

[snsdmonkey]

After all the trash talking.... I wonder how loudly D$D and Jack$on are laughing right now...

Where's Mike? Usually you can't stop talking...also I wonder how many bridges you burnt for this 'launch'.

[sinjin7]

After all the trash talking.... I wonder how loudly D$D and Jack$on are laughing right now...

Where's Mike? Usually you can't stop talking...also I wonder how many bridges you burnt for this 'launch'.

I know Mike's an easy target right now, but I think these questions are fair. If the launch went off smoothly and was a big hit, I suspect Mike would be very present on these boards pontificating about what a "mover and shaker" he is in the card collecting community and spraining his arm patting himself in the back. Too often, when things go bad, people tend to go into hiding, and I hope this isn't what's going on here.

Sher had done a good job facing the music and trying to answer questions, and I know Mike's excuse is going to be that he was busy up to his eyeballs trying to put out the fires, but that just won't cut it. At the very least, he should make an appearance on this thread to post a short comment (I know, short comments aren't in his nature) updating the people here at UC, who represent his strongest base of supporters.

Mike, the next time you send out an email update, poke your head in here and talk to us directly as well, the UC members deserve at least that and its the right thing to do.

[ecNate]

Good stuff here... taking notes. To go in another direction about CL - does anyone else feel the campaign details are a bit sparse? And where are pics of card faces on some of them... or at least higher res ones to get a good look-see.

This campaign especially: https://www.cardlauncher.com/en/project ... n-eh-diana" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I feel like you need guidelines on what must be presented in the campaign details eg. front and back of the tuck, suits and courts.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/89 ... ing-cards?
One would assume it's similar to the previous KS effort, but you are totally correct that such things should maybe be required. Especially in this case since that may not be true that the deck is unchanged. However, what about those projects that evolve with backer input over time? Requiring it up front would prevent that. Hopefully they will at least offer strong suggestion to include images or be very clear what is being developed and how/when.

[StanKindLee]

There are not enough images (at least large enough to see well) of the decks for me to pledge to any of them just based on what's presented on CL. And if I have to go to KS archives & the like to get the info, forget it.

[YoYoSpin]

Another suggestion for CL campaign guidelines: if a designer is going to claim that the deck is limited, a full definition of what he means should be required...limited to a specific number, limited to only one production run, limited to this campaign's demand, etc.

[nECr0MaNCeD]

Is the site working for anyone? It's nearly 2 hours after noon and not working for me.

[YoYoSpin]

Is the site working for anyone? It's nearly 2 hours after noon and not working for me.

You may have missed Mike's 2nd email from this morning...here it is:

Staged Venexiana Dark at 6PM, rest at 9PM EDT

Mea Culpa, apologies and relaunch plans

Last night was a disaster, we had problems with PayPal, WePay, S&H problems, incorrect campaign setups and router issues on the Internet last night, software vendors had left for the night.

WePay: fixed, routers on the Internet ("BGP errors") fixed, S&H issues fixed, certain issues have to be resolved by the vendor. They are in Salt Lake City, it's only 7:30AM there.

We are moving the launch to 6PM NYC/Eastern, if everything works as it should everything else launches at 9PM. I know that's not optimal, but frankly there is no optimal solution. We have to do this with the vendor in the office. WePay was sporadic all day yesterday, that's fixed. PayPal issues with routing caused processing to fail. Routers are all 100% so that should be working as well.

We honestly tested every single aspect of this for more than 6 weeks, but the comedy of errors caused us to fall on our sword.

See you at 6PM to launch Venexiana Dark, 9PM for the rest.

[SpecialK]

Another thing I am a bit curious about (and really sorry for all these questions!): CardLauncher states this in its FAQ:

All projects creators complete items such as weight and whether special handling is required (think uncut sheets, for example), so you get a real, no hidden charges or fees - precise calculation of the entire shipping and handling charges for your entire rewards seletion(s), including multiple items as well as multiples of items - where allowed. The exact weight is used to compute the shipping portion, added to the fixed handling fee, and you see exactly what it costs to get it to your point of delivery ("home address").

So Sher's comments about looking at the shipping price have me a bit concerned/confused. If CardLauncher is using exact weight, how can you adjust the shipping prices? Is their a built-in mark-up on shipping? Is shipping for certain tiers subsidizing others? Doesn't make sense to me. Seems like if there's wiggle room to adjust shipping costs, that means there are hidden charges...or I am probably just missing something.

More than likely I guess the quoted language is just hyperbole and marketing shtick.

[RandyButterfield]

Good stuff here... taking notes. To go in another direction about CL - does anyone else feel the campaign details are a bit sparse? And where are pics of card faces on some of them... or at least higher res ones to get a good look-see.

This campaign especially: https://www.cardlauncher.com/en/project ... n-eh-diana" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I feel like you need guidelines on what must be presented in the campaign details eg. front and back of the tuck, suits and courts.

Phil's a great guy (creator of the Can-eh-diana Deck), but I have to say - those are some of the worst presentation graphics I've seen in a LONG time. They look like something thrown together in Powerpoint at the last minute. Even the photos of the Tucks need a ton of color corrections.

I think when you're running a crowd-funding campaign, presentation graphics are just as important as the design of the Cards and Tuck. Phil, what happened?!!

thanks, Randy

[th4mo]

Most, if not all, of these issues could have been identified and addressed earlier if Mike & company had actually taken advantage of the deep well of talent and experience here at UC (present company not included, obviously ) that he is so fond of touting around the interwebs.

Instead of going for the sudden reveal, throwing back the curtain all at once, it would have made much more sense to make the whole CL website available (at least to view, if not functional) for review weeks before the official launch.

The people who do this with their KS campaigns benefit tremendously from this. It seems like a no brainer.

But of course that would kill the HYPE!!! of a "big launch"...

[volantangel]

Another thing I am a bit curious about (and really sorry for all these questions!): CardLauncher states this in its FAQ:

All projects creators complete items such as weight and whether special handling is required (think uncut sheets, for example), so you get a real, no hidden charges or fees - precise calculation of the entire shipping and handling charges for your entire rewards seletion(s), including multiple items as well as multiples of items - where allowed. The exact weight is used to compute the shipping portion, added to the fixed handling fee, and you see exactly what it costs to get it to your point of delivery ("home address").

So Sher's comments about looking at the shipping price have me a bit concerned/confused. If CardLauncher is using exact weight, how can you adjust the shipping prices? Is their a built-in mark-up on shipping? Is shipping for certain tiers subsidizing others? Doesn't make sense to me. Seems like if there's wiggle room to adjust shipping costs, that means there are hidden charges...or I am probably just missing something.

More than likely I guess the quoted language is just hyperbole and marketing shtick.

Ok so the thing about shipping is that, we believe that due to a miscommunication with the coder, the wrong excel file with the shipping rates were uploaded into the system, hence the higher than expected shipping costs. We are trying to rectify that at the moment. These rates were NOT set by CL, these rates are directly obtained from the fulfillment partners.

[SpecialK]

Thanks Volt. That makes a lot more sense then that y'all are looking at adjusting shipping prices. The latter seems a bit...nefarious!

[volantangel]

Thanks Volt. That makes a lot more sense then that y'all are looking at adjusting shipping prices. The latter seems a bit...nefarious!

No worries, its all a little overwhelming at the moment Hope i cleared up any misunderstandings !

[Alyooola]

Hello All,

I would like to comment and let you know a few things regarding our campaign. Not being able to log in and upload our campaign until (quite literally) the very last minute yesterday definitely put a strain on how our campaign was initially presented. Generally we take 1-2 weeks uploading our content to KS, and bouncing the campaign back and forth to our project management team to at least *try* to make sure that it is visually appealing and that as much info as possible is displayed. We had about 3 hours yesterday between the time that we were able to actually upload the very basic details of our project and the time that our offices closed. We experienced some sort of "Browser Location Feature" error according to Mike and the programmer that apparently the others did not.

I definitely think that more time should have been allowed to ensure that these first few projects were not rushed and were up to par before the "Big Launch" was announced. Just my *personal* 2 cents.

I totally agree with th4mo here:

Instead of going for the sudden reveal, throwing back the curtain all at once, it would have made much more sense to make the whole CL website available (at least to view, if not functional) for review weeks before the official launch.

This would have helped tremendously.

I am currently working on making our campaign more appealing. However CL for some reason keeps shrinking our graphics down to where the card detail is pretty impossible to view. This would have been something that could have been resolved in a proper initial testing of the application.

[ecNate]

Another suggestion for CL campaign guidelines: if a designer is going to claim that the deck is limited, a full definition of what he means should be required...limited to a specific number, limited to only one production run, limited to this campaign's demand, etc.

Yeah, definitely that is a must, at the very least openly published when the deck goes to print. I was surprised how many KS projects said limited and no mention of how many. The problem with requiring this is that means they 'may' have to restrict the number of backers if it gets really popular and also commits them to print that many if they don't get enough backers. I'm not sure it's fair to force them to list a number at launch, but explaining how they plan to limit it and list an actual print number after would be good.

[chach]

Wait, project managers weren't even able to upload and setup their projects until a few hours before launch? Sorry but that's just absolutely asinine. No wonder they were lacking details and had minimal pictures or poor quality images as pointed out in another thread. Sorry but IMO they should have been given a week at least to lay everything out, upload pics and toy with the layout. Otherwise what the end user is seeing is nothing but a rushed rough draft.

Hope this is t a sign of the future. In any case, we got what, just under 2 hours to go til launch of Venexiana now? Here's hoping everything's been corrected (and that I'm one of the lucky suckers that gets another copy of the award decks).

[SpecialK]

Per latest e-mail, looks like all decks launching at 6pm EST and no PayPal. Really should just suspend this botched launch. Let the creators set stuff up. Test, test, retest, test, retest, and then launch.

[Alyooola]

@Chach I am not sure about the other projects having the same error that we were experiencing yesterday. From what I understand there was a text field titled "Address" where apparently this feature was supposed to detect our location based on our browser and allow us to input our project location address. This feature was not detecting our location so we were manually typing in our address. This caused us to receive an error that would not allow us to save our project. It was not until late afternoon for us yesterday that this was discovered to be what was causing our problem and the programmer turned off the feature all together. Then we were able to save our project.

However, we did not even get the "go-ahead" to upload our project until Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 9:52 PM

[Oswin]

Really disappointed that Paypal is not running, I did not want to go on another platform to pay ... then the solution will make me have to pay outrageous fees abroad .... In short there, bah this new structure "Card Laucher" bah it without me!

[flyers3003]

Per latest e-mail, looks like all decks launching at 6pm EST and no PayPal. Really should just suspend this botched launch. Let the creators set stuff up. Test, test, retest, test, retest, and then launch.

So now we're forced to go with WePay? Mike, spend some more time testing this stuff out, let the project owners work out all of their material and then relaunch. This rushed launch is really starting to look bad.

[tylergo]

I just went to sign up for a WePay account and had no luck. Struggled to find a spot to sign up as a consumer rather than a business and it does not look like I can sign up as I do not have an American address. I am worried that because I have a Canadian credit card I will not be able to purchase...

[chach]

Count me in with the group of I'd prefer to wait a while longer for a a product that will actually work. Before CardLauncher I'd only vaguely heard of WePay and I'd rather use PayPal as I've worked with them 100s of times over the years and only had an issue once.

@Tyler, from what I understand, WePay doesn't have you sign up for an account as a purchaser but rather is just a cash register so to say for CardLauncher. You provide your card info to WePay, they run it and charge you on behalf of CL, without actually creating an account.

PayPal has a similar feature, often if you don't want to login to your paypal account you can select an option that's like "pay with your credit card using paypal". That leads to a 'guest' login type of thing where it charges your card without goon through your paypal account.

[badpete69]

are there any fees to use Wepay for us users?

[Eoghann]

Has anybody used wepay before? Is it like your standard "put credit info to checkout" kinda deal? Or do I need an account like paypal?

[Sher]

Has anybody used wepay before? Is it like your standard "put credit info to checkout" kinda deal? Or do I need an account like paypal?

You can input your credit card without an account. It's a secure way to store your credit card info without having any other parties (even CL admins) know what your credit card info is. There are no fees.

[charlie81dbz]

I have to agree with all the people who are saying the relaunch shouldn't be right away. I think after last night CL has possibly scared away a lot of potential backers. Kickstarter might not be the best when it comes to dealing with scams, but as for everything else, it's number one for a reason. I think not having Amazon Payments or PayPal working is severely going to hurt funding as well. Most people know those names and are comfortable using them, especially on new, unknown and untested website like CL (and for those who've never heard of it, WePay is used by GoFundMe and I've never had any issues using it when I've pledged/donated to projects on that site). As much as I really want some of the launch decks, I don't know that I'll be pledging for them for now.

Also, being unable to alter/cancel your pledge at the end of a project really bothers me. I very rarely have cancelled a pledge and the few times I have I've made sure the projects were well over their goal so I wouldn't cause them any issues with funding. But if something horrible happened like a death in the family for instance, I ABSOLUTELY want to be able to cancel any pledges I have if necessary. This is a big deal to me and I'm betting will bother a lot of other potential backers as well.

One other thing I noticed, Sher said you will be able to select multiple pledges on the checkout screen, but when I actually made it to that screen last night, there were no check boxes, only the little 'circle' type selector next to each option and no way to select more than one. Hopefully that is fixed because being able to get more than one thing was also supposed to be a major difference between CL and ks that looks like it may not be working properly.

Sorry if any of the above has already been covered, it's a big thread to go through now.

charlie