Buying a Wishlist

Am I missing a trick when it comes to buying a wishlist? Do I just not know how to use it properly? Because it drives me mad.

I have a wishlist, I go into Buy and it lists all of the stores that have bricks.
I click the top select box to select all stores because I believe that it will allocate the cheapest store for each lot.
I then work down the list and deselect any stores that are Quote Only - that's just my preference.

After that I'm not sure what's best.
Sometimes I start deselecting stores where I haven't met the minimum order amount, starting with the higher limits.
Sometimes I start deselecting stores that just don't have many lots allocated.

Either way it seems to be trial and error, trying to get the maximum number of lots from the fewest stores to minimise the P&P. So is there a better way to do it?

A few days ago I watched my husband try to buy a wishlist ( created from a part out) on BO and BL. He usually buys sets and hardly ever uses either site. He started off on BL where he used their auto-select button and got what he thought was a reasonable price over about 6 sellers. He then tried BO and firstly when he looked at the buy screen he didn't know what to do because he expected the same auto-select option and he doesn't read instructions. When I explained how I use it he selected all stores and the total cost came up at 50% more than BL, the actual brick cost was way less but the postage was huge because it was split over 50+ stores. I tried to explain what I do next but he couldn't be bothered with that so he went back to BL, where he found out that although the auto-select option says that it will give you an optimal price including shipping, the shipping is estimated by BL and not included in the total price it gives you, you still have to ask for a shipping quote for each store, so he got annoyed with that as well and didn't buy anything. And yes I know that BO isn't responsible for his experience on BL.

It concerns me as a seller that it is hard work and time consuming to use - as a programmer I understand that making it work it all out for us is really complicated.

If there is an easier way to use this screen please, please, please tell me.

Comments

  • 5 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
  • If you take a look at our buying guide https://www.brickowl.com/help/buying-lego-parts it will briefly explain the different purchasing options available.

    On the wishlist buying tool, although there is a select all checkbox, generally this is used for deselecting all stores. As you experienced, selecting all the stores, will result in the system trying to allocate the items to all those stores. You can start by just selecting some of the stores at the top and seeing what gets allocated
  • So @Lawrence, am I wrong in thinking that when I have multiple stores selected it will allocate lots to the cheapest store selected?
  • edited June 2020 Vote Up0Vote Down
    You are correct, it will do that, but the problem is, if you select 50 stores, and it allocates every part to the cheapest of those stores, you end up with 50 different carts, all with the cheapest parts, and a lot of shipping to pay.

    The main difference between the tools, is that the Catalog Cart calculates everything automatically including the shipping prices, but you have very little control, and it is too slow with many items. The wishlist tool is a manual process, where you need to personally look at the prices, and make decisions yourself based on shipping and any other factors.
  • And on BL you're faced with additional fees and other arbitrary costs that many sellers there apply, but which aren't taken into account by the wish list tools there.
  • @Lawrence Thanks and yes, I've seen that, that's what happened with hubby

    @Hoddie You're absolutely right and I wasn't suggesting that BL is better
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