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Albert

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Posts posted by Albert

  2. Posted

    I logged in as the user and went through the 30+ PMs they sent and warned each person he sent a message to.  I then disabled their messenger and permanently banned the account.  Thanks for the heads up, hopefully nobody sent money to this scammer.  I also censored the phone number above.

     

     ..Al

    • Like 6

  5. Posted

    I have been receiving packages in the US from international destinations for over 20 years and I have never had to pay customs on anything that's come via USPS (which is 99.9% of it).  Last year with DHL I've had to pay some customs administrative fees for two packages coming in from Europe, but that's it.  I even had an entire pallet of game controllers (those Thrust+ foot pedals) shipped from Germany years ago and didn't have to pay any incoming customs on that.

     

     ..Al

    • Like 1

  6. Posted

    2 hours ago, CapitanClassic said:

    Maybe we need to adopt the Shareware software distribution model for Atari 2600 roms. From my understanding, the software developers only get about a $5 royalty for each game that they sell through the AtariAge store. I would guess that Al makes at least $5 himself for each game sold, with the majority of the cost going towards production of the boxes, manuals, and melody boards. (Al needs to be compensated for assembly time)

    I am going to setup digital homebrew purchases in the AtariAge Store.  Once I get over the hump of getting a huge number of pre-orders shipped (which I am actively working on), I will be moving the store to new software that will better support this.  Have already spoken to several homebrew authors about it, and once I have the software in place, will open it to everyone.  And I've been researching store software for a while and have been playing around both with SaaS solutions and self-hosted solutions (on a development server). 

     

    In addition to this, also going to use the Downloads section of the forum (currently not public) to allow anyone who has created homebrews, regardless of whether they are sold in the store or not, to upload their games and make them available for free and/or purchase.  Including systems for which we're not even selling games for (Intellivision, Vectrex, etc.)  AtariAge homebrews will also be here for completeness' sake, but in the store they will be tied directly to the physical games so you can either purchase the digital version (which will likely include a PDF manual), the physical version, or both.

     

     ..Al

     

    • Like 10
    • Thanks 4

  7. Posted

    The forum uses Elasticsearch for all search-related tasks.  This includes doing regular searches, but also things like All Activity and displaying content you've posted in your profile.  Looks like it was struggling yesterday, resulting in a long delay when submitting a post, so I told the forum to rebuild the search indices.  Unfortunately, Elasticsearch crashed overnight, which results in any such search results returning nothing. 

     

    I just cleared all the data in Elasticsearch and the forum is rebuilding the search indices again.  If it continues to have problems, I will dig into it further.  Elasticsearch is a bit of a resource hog (server RAM, disk space and CPU resources), and it has caused issues in the past.  Although until yesterday, it had been churning along nicely for some time.

     

     ..Al

    • Like 3
    • Thanks 1

  9. Posted

    2 hours ago, juansolo said:

    My worry is the huge order I placed last year with AA (via @marauder666 we already combine our orders to share the already extortionate import fees)... I'm checking with Cleggy now that it's over $188 (it should be to be fair, I'm fairly certain it clears it by a lot).  EDIT: *wipes brow* we've doubled it pretty much, it's that long ago I'd forgotten what was on it.

    Orders placed before January 1st are fine, regardless of the amount. 
     

      ..Al

    • Like 1

  13. Posted

    1 minute ago, slx said:

    On the minus side, we might be enticed to always hit the 135 GBP minimum when ordering....

    Yeah, I'm likely to modify the store to allow sales to destinations in the UK as long as the minimum order is £135 (which is nearly $190 USD).  At least as a short-term measure.  I'd need to attach a packing slip to the outside of the package, and you'd get charged any VAT and administrative fees when the package enters the UK (similar to how it was before).

     

     ..Al

  14. Posted

    45 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

    Have you thought about outsourcing some production to someone in the EU?

    No, I want to maintain control over production to make sure everything is consistent.  If I work with a distributor in the UK and/or EU, I would ship them finished games.  However, I would ship boxes flattened, to reduce shipping volume (since boxed games take a lot of space) as well as help prevent boxes from getting damaged. The boxed games could then be assembled at the destination.

     

     ..Al

    • Like 1

  15. Posted

    Just now, JaggingUK said:

    Hi Albert, over here in the UK every two weeks most sellers get a £1 selling fee offer so any item we sell does not get a 10% fee attached but a £1 max fee for selling but I guess that's probably not the same for business sellers. The £1 selling fee is great for getting rid of more expensive items that have been cluttering up the house or garage... Does etsy charge 10% as well for selling or are there fees cheaper?... At least you still have ebay and etsy to sell on to UK and Europe (once Europe changes in June/July)

    Yeah, I've never seen any discounts on final value fees, pretty much ever.  eBay also has listing fees, but you can list many items before incurring that fee (I think I can list hundreds of items before I have to worry about that).  Etsy's listing fee is 20 cents, and if you sell an item you pay 5% of the sale price (plus shipping).  So more reasonable than eBay on that front.

     

    I really hope I have a solution before July 1st when these changes take effect for the EU!  I still need to research that to learn what I will be forced to do to continue selling to EU customers.

     

     ..Al

  16. Posted

    4 minutes ago, JaggingUK said:

    No it's now more the fact that they are making us pay VAT up front so the old 'gift' thing or customs not checking them is no longer the case as we as buyers are being made to pay the VAT up front on any purchase from USA - then all that money is stored up (by the likes of paypal) and then sent to HMRC so now when you buy anything at all from the likes of ebay you get charged the price, the postage, plus customs fees/vat all at once. So take for example (just looking now) a Jaguar game on ebay in USA at $150 - postage is $29 - import fees - $42 charged when you buy it... or a cheaper game at $50 - postage is $23 - import fee - $19 and all to be paid up front when you buy and added to the cost of your purchase which add a big chunk of money to any purchase from USA to UK.

    Yep, this is correct and is what eBay and Etsy are doing, as well as any other similar "marketplace" websites.  I'm glad they are doing this, as it provides an easy avenue for sellers such as myself to continue to offer some games to UK customers, at least until I have a solution for the AtariAge Store. 

     

     ..Al

    • Like 1

  17. Posted

    Oh, regarding eBay and Etsy.  As they are "marketplace" businesses, they are responsible for collecting and remitting the UK VAT.  So I can continue to sell on those services without issue, and I will continue to add games to those platforms over time.  So that's certainly an alternative, but there are some limitations, such as not being able to offer pre-order games.  And eBay has a 10% final value fee on video games, which I compensate for by charging more for games on eBay versus the AtariAge Store. 

     

     ..Al

    • Like 6

  18. Posted

    I will eventually have a solution for this, as I don't intend on abandoning those in the UK or Europe.  For the UK, this means I need to register for VAT, collect VAT on orders of £135 or less, include VAT information on the receipt, and remit VAT periodically to HMRC.  You also have to maintain records for a number of years, and if you make any mistakes you can be heavily fined.  It's potentially a lot of work and many small businesses are going to be hit hard by it.  I know similar rules are going into effect on July 1st for the EU, but not sure if they are as onerous as the UK requirements and if the rules will vary at all based on destination country in the EU. 

     

    Another solution is setting up a distributor in the UK, which is something else I am exploring.  But that would be a lot of work up front, as I'd need to build and ship a good deal of inventory to the UK first. 

     

    I could potentially just require sales to the UK of > £135 (right now about $188 USD), which are handled by customs the same way they were before.  However, the current store software I'm using has no way to setup a minimum purchase threshold of this nature to just a single country.  I could possibly modify the store software to enforce a minimum order value to the UK, but I may not even be able to do that easily until I move the store to new software (which is something I am working on, but it's going to be months before I can finish that).

     

     ..Al

    • Like 5

  19. Posted

    I had a customer contact me today stating their Edladdin Super CV Arcade Controller does not work with the Retron 77.  I was wondering if anyone else here has one of those controllers and a Retron 77 and could test it with some joystick games? 

     

    Thanks,

     

     ..Al

  22. Posted

    1 minute ago, jefffulton said:

    @Albert I'm going to need a game me Drive for this. When do you think they will be available?

    I'll continue to receive waves of Jaguar GameDrives as we work through the long waiting list.  Not sure how long it will take to churn through the list.  Should have the next batch within a month.

     

     ..Al

    • Like 1

  23. Posted

    1 minute ago, Atari Jaguar Fanatic said:

    Hey Albert - Does it look like you will be shipping Brawn and Brains, Last Strike, reBOOTed, and Xenon 2: Megablast before the end of February.  Thanks.

    The printer fixed the issue with the Jaguar manuals, but I'm waiting on a FIFTH round of proofs for some other manuals (this is a rather large order for everything--boxes, manuals, labels).  I will have those next week and if they look good (I assume they will), the order will go into production and I'll have the manuals about ten days after that.  Same thing is happening with the labels, waiting for a designer to fix some labels for me (again, dealing with black, which is my bane when it comes to printing) and once I get those to the printer (a different company), they will run more proofs, ship them overnight to me, and assuming they all look good, that order will also go into production.

     

    In the meantime, I am building and testing hundreds of games to get them ready to label as soon as those arrive.  And I will be furiously shipping these pre-orders once I have everything in hand! 

     

    I really appreciate everyone's patience, this has been a pretty trying experience for me!  But I'm a stickler for quality when it comes to these printed materials (especially when a ton of money is being spent on them), so I want to make sure everything looks great!

     

     ..Al

    • Like 8
    • Thanks 2

  24. Posted

    3 minutes ago, rcajun90 said:

    Thank you!  I think I found a 7800 I can afford but no power supply.  How hard is it to find these (the Colecovision I had it was expensive and hard to find) and are they expensive?

    Well, Atari in their wisdom put a proprietary power connector on the 7800.  You can find used 7800 power supplies on eBay, but they certainly aren't as common as 2060 power supplies.  The website AtariGuide.com created new 7800 power supplies years ago, and I bought a bunch of them (since I use many Atari 7800 systems at shows and wanted some backups), but those are no longer available, and the site is now offline as well. 

     

    Best Electronics has also produced a 7800 power supply (which they claim is better than the original), which you can find here:

     

    https://www.best-electronics-ca.com/New Best 7800 Power supply.htm

     

    I assume they still have them available, for $21.00 each which isn't bad at all.

     

     ..Al

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