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In lugnet.market.theory, Walter Walters wrote:
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I think it’s a great idea. This feature could be combined with the Bricklink
wishlist. One problem I have with the wishlist is having several LEGO
projects going simultaneously. My wishlist contains certain pieces that I
want right now and other pieces that I want for future projects. Rather
than lumping them all together, it would be useful to have “sub”-wishlists or
at least assign a priority to the purchase list. This would make tacking
“extra” (the less important) pieces onto the main order much easier. In
other words, the proposed program could have sub-wishlists that could be
included (with a priority value) or excluded during the minimization
calculation.
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I think Shaun’s list of desired functionality is way too much to ask for
(largely because shipping costs are going to be very tricky to calculate, since
some of them are based on actual cost, and others are calculated based on
quantity/weight of parts). Any S&H calculator would have to guesstimate your
final cost, and international shipping would just make it that much more
difficult.
This idea could be a way to get most of what he’s looking for, though. Three
basic functions would need to be added to the current system, from what I can
see, to make it significantly easier to place multi-lot orders:
1. The ability to restrict listings by country. It doesn’t help to get you
every part in one order from half-way around the world when you could have split
it into two orders from across town.
2. The ability to assign priority levels to the standard wish list. It would be
too much extra work to have to load portions of your wish list into a personal
shopper feature every single time you need to use it, or if you had to delete
90% of your wishlist just to pare it down to the pieces you need right
away...and then have to load everything else back up.
3. The ability to just click a button and have it spit up a possible ordering
option based on the preferences you’d already entered.
Bonus features could include:
A. The ability to consider minimum order costs when determining the most
cost-effective set of orders. If you always require the minimum orders to be
met, maybe you’d end up with a single $20 order when you could have had two $4
orders with $5 minimums (the $10 savings should more than cover the additional
shipping costs of a second order). If you don’t enforce them at all, maybe
you’d miss your single $20 order and instead get ten $1 orders with $2 minimums,
which wouldn’t save you anything up front, and would stick you with 9x the S&H
costs. Being able to choose whether to enforce or ignore the minimum order
costs when determining the best set would be nice, as long as it will notate how
much more you need to order from each store before you can place those orders.
Or maybe if you could set a per-store “max exceed” level (i.e. if you set it at
$1, it can present you with a $4 order at a store with a $5 minimum, but it
can’t place a $3.75 order because the minimum exceeds it by $1.25 instead of $1
or less), that’d be better, because it would allow you to adjust it to your
personal comfort level.
B. The ability to ask it to ignore Used parts on a case-by-case basis (this
shouldn’t be too difficult, since this determination is already built into the
Wanted List feature). Maybe there’s something that you need badly enough that
you’re willing to take Used parts, but maybe you’d much rather buy New parts for
everything else. If it can’t be set to ignore Used parts, it’ll almost never
spit up New results because Used parts are usually going to be priced cheaper
(assuming each store has some of both).
C. The ability to set a limit on the total number of orders. I find that when
I’m placing a batch of orders, I usually like to keep it down to a max of 3-4,
if possible (though much of that is because I don’t want to keep searching
through dozens of stores by hand). Without being able to accurately calculate
every shipping cost, this is a way of giving the user some level of control over
that aspect.
D. The ability to selectively exclude stores or individual parts. Maybe you get
a return that includes Used parts that are listed in a condition that you’d
rather not buy, or you’d simply rather not buy parts from a certain store
because of bad feedback or because they smoke. Whatever the reason, if you can
have it return the results, tell it “try again but exclude these stores for
now”, and get a new batch that makes you happier, it’d be really nice. This
would need to be cumulative to work more than once (otherwise you’d never be
able to exclude anything from the second batch), so there’d need to be a way to
clear out the exclusion list.
E. The ability to continue shopping from those stores before placing any orders,
just in case you want to check for possible lower priority pieces, or items not
listed in your Wanted List first.
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