Another BUG - Cannot answer a Members Question on an auction about postage costs

Hello Ash. Yes, this has been mentioned a couple of times on here. Hopefully Trade Me are going to tweak the algorithm sometime. In the meantime you can try to space out the numbers "$ 1 5 - 2 0" or of course type it out in words.

If you haven't done so it might be worth sending them a direct message showing exactly what you typed as an answer so they can use it as an example to train the system a bit better.

I just tried to answer a question on my auction on the mobile site and got the message 'your message has already been recorded' and then nothing. Came back to the desktop site and answered the question. Oh when are these problems going to get sorted!

Hi Ash, I had exactly the same problem as you did. To overcome that problem, I told the person who asked a question that the TM system wasn't letting me answer the question in the question & answer section, so to look in the main (detailed) part of my listing, and I would put the answer there. This problem seems to have happened only recently, with the new-look, as I could very easily answer postage-questions in the old-look.

Hi Bonnie and Yvonne, Thank you for your replies and advice, I really value and appreciate it. I wish TM would just fix all their bugs rather than users having to find work-arounds and rely on the advice of other members. I think they have given up on "customer service" in general. TM could at least advise users how long they expect it before "the system is trained" or "algorithms tweaked"  so the problems gone. Anyways thank you and best wishes to you both. 

Just be grateful that you can see questions!

I know that you can be notified when somebody asks, but currently, on the new version of the site, just scrolling through the current listings section, it doesn't show you listings that have questions on them like the old site used to.

Ash - There may be a reason for the workarounds as opposed to fixes. Are you familiar with the concept of spaghetti code?

Actually Andrew, just the other day I noticed there is now on the new site items I'm selling page there is a new filter for unanswered questions.

Gary - That's not particularly intuitive.

One of the principles of E Commerce is lowering "friction". "Friction" is any mouse movement, click, extra page, or other step that gets in the way of you going from Point A to Point B.

While this is normally related to getting the customer from the Front Page (Point A) to the Checkout with their credit card in hand (Point B), it can also be interpreted when speaking about functionality at large, to reducing the amount of messing about.

What Trade Me had was not broken. You could scroll and find the listing within a split second sometimes. Adding an extra step isn't helpful.

You can often tell when a "feature" is created by an engineer or coder vs a designer or a User Interface expert.

Andrew, one of Trade Me's claimed reasons for the change is that while it wasn't "broken" it was old, held together with string and plasters, difficult to implement any fixes or changes that did need doing without breaking something else, and not that compatible in feel across all devices. I can sympathise with that. Yes, the old site was fairly reliable but showing it's age. Especially when the number of people viewing it on a desktop seems to decrease every year.

Although I completely agree with you that adding more clicks and scrolls is annoying at best, and sometimes so off-putting people will just go elsewhere.

Hopefully they are taking the concerns on board, and if the new format is easier to implement changes as they claim. These kinds of things will be altered to make it easier going forward.

By the way - It would be nice, annoying as the current system is for Ash, if the system similarly blocked questions that contain phone numbers, and got good at doing so.

Unfortunately this is very difficult to do. 

I just had to reply to a question on one of my listings now to not circumvent rules by giving phone numbers as part of questions. Unfortunately I replied by mistake, when I'd meant to add a comment. Annoyance does this sometimes.

To make it even worse, the guy was just requesting a photograph of something. He could have just easily requested that I upload one and add it to the listing. The people here can be infuriating - And yes, he was an experienced user with four figures' worth of feedback.

He was savvy enough to deliberately misspell numbers in a way to get around the algorithm, but so they would still be recognisable by humans. 

This poses a curly one for those training the algorithm - How to distinguish quantities or amounts like Ash wanted to do from phone numbers, once the algorithm is trained well enough to recognise misspelled numbers.

I'm seeing this kind of question in the future to try and beat the algorithm: 

"Could I come and have a look at these shoes? The amount to post to me would be a circle $21.45 by nighty fine couriers."  

Callum: Thanks for your reply - I'd already referenced this as being the culprit a few comments up.

HI Andrew, no, sorry I am not familiar with the "concept of spaghetti code" Could you kindly explain for myself and others who may read this thread. Kind regards. 

Ash - Callum described it in slightly more detail a couple of comments up ^^^

Kia Ora Ash,

Coding and progressive extensions over time can compromise the software structure. Spaghetti code refers to code which has become too difficult to read or change and therefore has become too difficult to maintain.

Callum's  Comment: https://help.trademe.co.nz/hc/en-us/community/posts/10844607475983/comments/10888903229327

- Cheers.