iSale
First off I must say this was the most difficult company I have ever dealt with as a User Group Ambassador. They flatly and vehemently refused an extended demo. My average response time from sales or tech support was about five days. I can’t imagine what I’d do if I actually had to rely on this program for an auction. The company is based in Germany (in spite of having a US phone number) and I faced many language barriers in my questions. The answers didn’t match my questions and it took about three weeks to ask why the demo of the program wasn’t working.
I eventually gave up,installed it on my laptop, and was able to test the program. From reports on eBay, the registration process for the program is a nightmare and the program is not transferable from computer to computer and my questions about this to tech support were never answered.
ISale has consistently won design awards as for quality programming and implementation of Tiger’s functions.The interface is extremely intuitive and user friendly. It allows you to easily upload your pictures to your .mac account or to use eBay’s listing service. No eBay experience is required to use the program.
iSale considers itself part of the iLife suite. It integrates with iPhoto and shares many of the common interface elements. To add a auction,you simply click the Plus icon in the auctions column. Adding pictures to your auction is a breeze! You don’t need to know anything about webhosting. You can pick a photo from your iPhoto library, drag an existing picture into your auction, or even hold it in front of your iSight camera and take a picture. In addition, if you have a .Mac account, iSale will put your pictures onto your iDisk saving you money from eBay’s picture hosting service.
iSale’s preview function is excellent and the preview you get is a identical representation of what your auction would look like. This is great for new users to check that they didn’t make a mistake or forget anything. However, the preview doesn’t show you the fact iSale includes its icon on every auction. A paid user should not have to deal with a vendor’s ad in their auction, and I thought it was sneaky not to include it in the auction preview.
Managing draft auctions, current auctions, and completed auctions uses the familiar iLife interface and smart folders. You have an auction “Library” and then individual play lists—some created by iSale, and others you can custom create. For example, iSale automatically sorts which posted auctions resulted in sold and unsold items.
When the auction is complete, iSale allows you to enter information to track the auction and the buyer. You can indicate whether the buyer has paid, whether the item is shipping, and whether feedback was left. I was disappointed there wasn’t enough in the post auction features. Windows eBay programs generally let you leave feedback from within the program. Sellers generally leave the same feedback for everyone and iSale should have done the extra effort and added that in.
While there isn’t a backup function, you can export an auction. Considering how well rounded the program is, I would expect them to include an easy backup function.
I wouldn’t recommend this program if you are relying on eBay as more than an occasional hobby. The slick interface slowed me down and there wasn’t an easy way to backup individual auctions.
ISale is a good purchase for someone who wants to test the waters in making ebay into a hobby Starting eBayer’s should simply use eBay’s free website to post items. Once you start posting enough items that you get bored of typing the same information over and over again,that’s the time to move to iSale. ISale is great for the non-technical end user (as some books might call a “Dummy”), because it handles all the behind the scenes aspect of posting an auction.
If you can type a letter in Appleworks, you have all the skills necessary to use iSale. And if you need any support…just say “nein”to this pro- gram (that’s German for no).
Pros: Very user friendly, no eBay skills required, handles almost every aspect of an eBay sale. Great for most eBay hobbyists.
Cons: Very user unfriendly support. Not for someone who posts just a few items a year or for someone who posts a few items a day.
4 out of 5 dog cows
