A Word on Recent Events
Because it's been such an explosive issue on social media and people can't seem to understand what's at work in regards to FurBuy staff surrounding recent incidents, I figured I might take a few minutes to explain some of the reasons we do the things we do and why. You're free to comment here and give your thoughts if you can keep it civil and polite, if you're just going to pile-in and be an unconstructive hater your comment will be removed.

What even happened?

To cut a long, long story fairly short, a fursuit was posted for sale on FurBuy and within a couple hours the 'owner' of the suit started a social media witch-hunt against the 'seller' for trying to sell an item they owned. Our staff (for the most part) followed our usual protocol in such cases - contact each party and ask for reasonable and definitive proof of possession of the item(s) for sale. This is easily done with a simple photo and for most folks doesn't take more than 30 seconds to a minute - we all have camera phones these days and email apps built into them. There were a number of incongruent things about both the 'owner' account and the 'seller' account that made each look questionable and some strong evidence initially that the two accounts were related. But we didn't feel the evidence was solid enough at the time to follow that line of pursuit, so we carried on with our usual path. The next day the drama had boiled over and also the evidence of the two accounts being connected became strikingly obvious, so we followed that path which is to suspend the accounts for fraud and duplication and also close any auctions associated with the accounts. (To clarify since some people missed the subtlety of the last sentence: The 'owner' and the 'seller' are one and the same person - the 'seller' account was definitively shown to be a sockpuppet of the owner's account.) Which caused a couple particularly beligerrant individuals to attack our staff verbally, for which they were also suspended. Now, as many have seen, the whole mess has descended into social media white-knighting and flamewars, nothing new for furry fans or FurBuy.

Why won't you provide the evidence?

Because it's our policy not to - for a number of reasons. Firstly, it would be a breach of our posted privacy policies to disseminate personally identifying information or information which could be used to identify an individual. We feel it would be a violation of the person's privacy, whether legal or not, so we choose not to divulge that information. Secondly, providing evidence to the public about the information we collect and maintain in our system, especially in regards to our fraud detection and security systems, could compromise those systems by informing bad actors as to how they work and make them easier to skirt or avoid, which is not in the best interest of our users and ongoing operations. Tertiarily, we don't feel it would add anything to the situation - which is also why we haven't publicly attacked the seller to accuse them of what they've done. In our eyes the issue is cut-and-dry and has been resolved - we found a bad actor and they have been removed.

Why would someone even do something like this? What would they have to gain?

We came up with a pretty good-sized list talking about it in our staff chat. At least ten reasons. But we're not going to give them here. Why? Because it's pure speculation and doesn't add anything to the situation. Suffice to say there are plenty of reasons that 6 people could come up with and agree on in half an hour of discussing it. We'd imagine that you all could come up with a few yourselves.

Why has your staff handled this so badly?

tl;dr: we're human, we make mistakes, we're not perfect. Really. Hard to believe, right? We've also never had a situation exactly like this before, so didn't have a protocol in place for how to handle it. Our staff are mostly NOT public relations or customer support backgrounds - our staff are volunteers who pitch in to help keep the site running just like our subscribers do (in fact most of our staff are paying subcribers as well). We do our best but when things get choppy we give what we get. While we'd love to be able to be shiny happy customer service people for you all every moment of every day we're also real people who aren't "getting paid for this shit" and don't have to put up with personal attacks, ad hominem attacks and people being rude and bullying towards our staff. This isn't Burger King, you can't always have it your way. Don't like that attitude? We don't know what to tell you, there are other places you can take your business. We're real fans and people, not a mindless corporate hive. (As an aside, don't like how we do business? Think you can do it better? We'd welcome you to join our staff and fix that; do something useful instead of bitching about it.)

Why is your staff blocking so many people on Twitter and elsewhere?

Simple: no time for haters. Some of them are also guilty of harassment or bullying - don't have time for that either. Some were blocked because they're suspended - email is our official channel of communications when someone is suspended (and official for other uses too) - blocking on social media just helps drive that point home and free up our social media operators to focus on what is actually important to us: genuine people who want help or advice and aren't dicks about it.

(1 Comment |Comment on this)

Major New Feature on FurBuy is Live!
We're incredibly excited to announce the biggest new feature addition to FurBuy in nearly 3 years now. Here's a hint: login to FurBuy to get all the details, you were sent a message about it! ;)

We have added a notification dashboard to the upper-right corner of all pages on our site which will inform you of new posts, comments, interactions and other messages for up to 30 days since your last login. You will, of course, need to login to actually get the details of those notifications.

Watching other users also now has its first useful effect: when anyone in your Watchlist posts a new auction or classified ad you will receive a notification so you can go take a look! So make sure you add all your favorite sellers so you can be the first to know when they've posted something new.

We're also thrilled to announce that we're negotiating with an amazing illustrator and web designer for a complete and professional redesign of the FurBuy website to bring it up to modern standards and make it a much bigger pleasure to use.

We have a great new admin team and a number of talented individuals who are now contributing to the effort of moving the site forward, many thanks to everyone for their hard work and dedication!

Current Mood: excited

(Comment on this)

New FurBuy Category!
Hey users! We have a new category for you to list things in! Fursuits: Props & Accessories!
This category is for listings of fursuit props and other fursuit accessories which do not fit cleanly into other categories. Some examples of fursuit props would include fursuit-sized clothing and footwear, fursuit-sized plush toys, fursuit-sized cosplay and other accessories meant to be worn or used with a fursuit.

Questions? Suggestions? Let me know!

(Comment on this)

Hello, I'm Sparks!
Hello everyone :)
I am Sparks, the community manager for FurBuy, as well as a furry artist. I just recently joined LiveJournal and wanted to introduce myself to all of you :)
I make fursuit props, art, ears, tails, ect. I also make fursuits (sorta) I will admit that I REALLY need to work on my foam carving abilities lol.
Please contact me if you have any questions or concerns about FurBuy. I'm also down to just chat if you want. XD
Also If you have any questions for/about me I'll answer those too :)

(Comment on this)

Admin Email?
Hi there, is there an admin email that works for furbuy? I've recently gotten an email gently chastising me for not leaving feedback on something. The issue is, I can't leave feedback for a transaction that never took place. I won the auction, but the seller had sold the item offsite and so by the auction's end, no longer had the item for sale. I tried to explain this in a return email, but the email returned to me saying the address I tried to send it to wasn't in use anymore, which is funny because it just emailed me.

Current Mood: blah

(3 Comments |Comment on this)

New Categories
Just a quick announcement that we've added some new categories to the system in order to help break things up where things were getting crowded, and based on user feedback and needs.

We've split the Partial Fursuits category into Partials (Head + Paws) and Singles (Heads, Tails, Paws) in order to better separate the two notions. Partials will be for a combination of head plus at least paws if not more pieces like clothing and tail and the like. Singles will be for either individual items like a tail or paws or any combination of multiple suit items which does not include a head. So got a head with paws? Post that in Partials. Got paws and a tail? That will go into Singles. Got ears (headband) and a tail? That will also go into Singles.

Additionally we've split Clothing/Jewelry into General and Mature audience categories as some sellers have asked to have a specific Mature category for their clothing, jewelry and other apparel-related items.

As always, if you have any questions or feedback please let us know! We love to hear from you guys. =)

(Comment on this)

Name Changes Now Available!

A lot of folks have asked for name changes over the years, and we always wanted to provide that service, however time and effort and finding a clean way to do that had eluded us. Well no more! We can now change FurBuy usernames on request, however there is some administrative work involved so we will not be doing them completely for free or without restriction as name changes can be easily abused. We will perform name changes once per year for paid members of the site included as a service in their membership fee of US$18 while their membership is active - for all other users and for additional name changes for paid members, we will charge a one-time fee of $5 per name change. This is to help compensate for the time our admins spend reviewing the existing accounts, verifying that the change can happen and going into the system to do them. In order to prevent abuse of the name-change system, we will only permit each account one name change every 90 days. If you're interested in getting a name change, send e-mail to furbuy.com@gmail.com and include your current username and the username you'd like to change it to. One of our staff will instruct you how to proceed from there and if the name you'd like is available.

(Comment on this)

A Guide to YCH Auctions on FurBuy
Lately we've noticed in communications with some folks both new and old that there's an opinion that FurBuy does not permit YCH or that FurBuy is not a good venue for YCH auctions. On the contrary, we welcome YCH style auctions and would be happy to help you make them work within our system! We're writing this quick guide to help show how to approach YCH style auctions on FurBuy and alleviate the concerns that many folks have raised about how to handle YCH on FurBuy.

Single Character YCH

With single character YCH auctions, there's no need to do anything special - just create an auction in the Artwork : Commissions category as normal and feel free to add any ladder levels in the Auction Description (if you want ladder options). When pricing a single-character YCH please remember the spirit of YCH auctions are to offer a discounted price for a piece where you've already established the pose/concept that you as the artist want to do because it interests you and is easier to complete - this is important because that's the primary allure for bidders!

Multi-Character YCH - Fixed Positions

If you have a multiple character YCH with fixed positions (usually lettered or numbered in the concept art/WIP) where you want to auction each slot off, we advise creating a separate auction for each slot. When creating each auction, be sure to clearly label in the auction Title which slot that particular auction is for, and in the Description include any details regarding restrictions on gender, build or sexual interactions (if necessary) for that particular slot. If you'd like to link all of the auctions together, then after you've created them all you can go back in and Edit the descriptions to add links between them all for bidder convenience - or simply direct them to your Seller Page to see them all. Another great tip when doing multiple auctions for the same or similar pieces: create a template for your auctions in a text editor of your preference, then save it to your local disk, copy and paste the template for each description being careful to tweak the specifics for each different slot - this will save you a lot of time and potential frustration!

Multi-Character YCH - Unassigned Positions

In the case that you, the artist, will assign the positions at your leisure and every bidder has an equal chance of being placed anywhere in the scene at your discretion, you can make use of the Dutch Auction feature on FurBuy to make everything very simple! If you have 5 slots in your YCH then simply assign a Quantity value of 5 when creating your auction - bidders will bid against a pool and the top 5 bidders at the end of the auction will all pay the same price when it ends. Please note that this is ONLY to be used when all of the slots are equal - some artists create very large YCHs where some positions are smaller or more distant in the scene than others, so in this special case you may need to do a Dutch Auction for each level of significance of random slot in your YCH scene.

We hope that this brief article has helped you strategize how you can leverage FurBuy to meet your YCH auction needs! Please feel free to share this article, and if you have any questions or comments please feel free to comment or contact us directly at furbuy.com@gmail.com

(Comment on this)

Scheduled Downtime September 29th through October 1st
We will have a scheduled downtime starting at approximately 6pm on Sunday, September 29th lasting until approximately Noon on Tuesday, October 1st. This roughly 42 hour downtime will be necessary as we transfer our server machines and other rack gear from Seattle, Washington to San Jose, California and get them setup in their new home. Please also note that since our IP addresses will be changing, it may take an additional 24 to 72 hours for your ISP's DNS records to update to the new location of our servers.

Why the move? Our current colo host is raising their prices in addition to having a limited amount of space and bandwidth available for us to upgrade. Further, we have been hitting our bandwidth cap regularly and we're launching more new services soon, so we need a heavier pipeline and to add more servers. We have also teamed-up with a few other furry server projects and will be sharing our new full rack with them in order to help reduce overall costs while increasing our speed and stability. Additionally, we are in the process of moving our business from Washington to California and it would be nice to have our equipment closer to 'home'.

What happens with auctions during this time? Auctions will continue to run as normal. Any auctions closing during the downtime or within the 24 hours AFTER the downtime will have their time extended by 72 hours automatically. If you DO NOT want your auctions extended, please ensure that you do not have any auctions closing during this period. In general, we would strongly advise against running any auctions during or around the scheduled downtime period as some bidders may need extra time to get their local DNS cache updated after the servers come back online.

Questions or feedback? Please comment!

(Comment on this)

Aztec Princess (Anthro Jaguar Nude Pin-Up) Original Art For Sale

1 Day Only Left!



Click Here To View Auction
Thank you for looking!

(Comment on this)

Husky partial fursuit up for auction!

This adorable husky really needs to be adopted! x3
It has been placed up for auction here: http://www.furbuy.com/seller/Nova.html (Along with shipping/price/sizing info)

Partial includes the head, arm sleeves, hand paws, and tail.
Click here to see more photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/punkninjavii/

FurBuy Classifieds and Forums Beta is now open!
Well, we promised to get this Beta moved to open testing by Feb 25th, and while we barely missed that target in the PST time zone, our friends in Alaska and Hawaii are still on-time. ;D The new Beta segments for Classifieds and Forums are now live! You can get to them respectively here:

http://www.furbuy.com/classifieds/

http://www.furbuy.com/forums/

Please go take a gander, give them a whirl, and give us your feedback! Please note this is considered a LIVE site, we do not intend to wipe this data after Beta, so please keep it civil and on-topic!

(Comment on this)

Feedback Update
     Just a fair warning here, we're making a change on the site effective immediately regarding the failure to leave feedback for an auction. Auctions are archived 180 days after close, regardless of how they were closed. When an auction is archived, if any involved parties have not left feedback yet, then a feedback entry will be added by the system which states "User failed to provide feedback" and this entry will appear in your User Profile page.
     We're adding this system in order to help foster a responsible community and promote leaving actual feedback on other users. Feedback and Ratings are a critical part of the site and community checks and balances and with new security improvements coming they are going to become even more vital to the smooth function of the site. It takes only a few seconds to leave a feedback (and will be even easier after the site refresh), so there's little reason not to do it.
     As always, questions and comments are welcome!

(4 Comments |Comment on this)

A very dumb question about a suspended account
Gosh, I feel really awkward having to ask this, but I wasn't sure what else to do. My Furbuy account, amymist got suspended (I'm not sure why) but I've still got an auction up. I'd like to take it down, but I'm not sure how, because I have to log in to make any changes to it. I'd feel simply awful if someone bid on it without me being able to get back to them. I understand if nothing can be done, but I'm really hoping someone can help me. Sorry for being a bother!

(4 Comments |Comment on this)

New Segment/Design Beta Status
     Just wanted to leave a quick note about where things stand with the upcoming Beta of the new site design and segment (completely new feature set). In a nutshell, development has been going slower than planned - not due to slow development but due to "feature creep". We've decided to roll more and more new features and polish into this system before bringing it to Open Beta. Which is a good thing! The downside is that we need more time in order to implement it all.

     We're already conducting internal beta testing and working on determining which of the feedback will be integrated prior to the Open Beta (public) opening of the new portion of the site. If you're interested in helping us do this private Beta testing and providing your feedback to help us improve the look, feel and functionality please contact jurann via one of the instant messenger methods in his user profile here (or his profile on FA).

     Our current timeline looks like we will attempt to move the Internal Beta into Open Beta status for the public to try out and bang on sometime in the range of Feb 20-25 - so keep an eye out here and/or on our Twitter or FurAffinity page for that information!

(Comment on this)

FurBuy News - Further Confusion 2013!
     FurBuy will be at FC2013 in just over a week! We will be having a large upright ad banner near the dealer's room with artwork by the lovely and talented Lizebra to show off some of the things you can buy and sell on FurBuy. We will also be hosting a FurBuy Meet 'n Greet social hour on Sunday night at the convention at 8:30pm in the Blossom Hill I room. Sadly a few of our staff were unable to make it but at least a couple of us will be there so come down and say hi or feel free to join the discussion about online auctions. This is also a great time to come talk to us about any features you'd like to see or just broach general questions or comments on your mind.

     We will also be announcing a new site design and major new segment being released on FurBuy at FC2013! Our new design and features are built on a newer and more modern web framework and include a number of excellent HTML5 capabilities. If this new segment launch is successful and well-liked by users, we plan to convert the existing site to this new architecture and bring the awesome new features over to the auction segment. We think you'll like what we've got planned. =)

     Also, announcing our newest member of the FurBuy team! Kaboukie is our new web designer and all-around HTML5 guru. She is heading-up the site redesign, bringing it into the 21st century, including creating a new logo and look/feel for the site and branding.

Remember to Follow us on Twitter @furbuy

P.S. Here's a teaser preview of our banner for FC2013... Want to see the rest? Look for the banner at FC! ;)

(2 Comments |Comment on this)

Category Restructuring
     As part of the ever-changing nature of our site and to help accommodate a major new feature we plan to bring you in time for our Meet & Greet at Further Confusion 2013, we've started a restructure of the categories on FurBuy. These are effective immediately, and more new categories will be coming when we roll-out the big new feature that's currently in the works!

     What's Changed? The old top-level Commissions category has been tucked under Artwork : Commissions now so that artwork commissions have their very own place to live. This made sense since that category had been used almost exclusively for artwork commissions while other types of commissions were being placed (inadequately) in other categories. We've updated the main page listing section to reflect these changes and fit better in most browsers.

     What's New? Mainly that we've expanded the Fursuits category. There are now sub-categories under Fursuits that include Full Suits (GA/MA), Partial Suits (Any Content), Materials/Scraps (Any Content) and now a Fursuit Commissions (GA/MA) category. Please use the Commissions category for any unmade or unfinished fursuits and the others for finished suits and components only, please. Another minor change is that the Misc category got it's own catch-all Commissions bucket for any commissions that are NOT artwork- or fursuit-related.

     How Does This Change Effect my Current Auctions? Current auctions remain in the categories they were in before. This means that many auctions are now in categories that no longer exist for selecting when creating a new auction, and that's fine! They will still be in the top-level listings. If your auction does not yet have any bids on it, you can use Auction Control to update the category to one of the new ones any time if you like. All new auctions listed on FurBuy will use the new categories and hierarchy.

     As always, your questions, comments, feedback and feature requests are extremely useful and important to us. Many users have requested these changes over the last year or so, and after consulting with some experts we've made these changes to accommodate our buyers and sellers. So thanks again for the input, and we hope to hear from you all whenever you have feedback for us!

(Comment on this)

New Bidding Updates
I'm happy to announce today that we've rolled out a couple nifty improvements to the bidding system on FurBuy.

     The first is a new Bid Update system which allows a bidder that is already the current high bidder on an auction to update their bid level and proxy level rather than having to compete against themselves by bidding again. To access this option, simply attempt to place a new bid on an auction you are already the current high bidder on - the system will catch it and provide you the update form.
     Note that any Proxy Level you set in this form will still compete against the Reserve Price on an auction, if any! That means if you adjust your Proxy Level upwards and it meets or exceeds the Reserve Price, then the system will force your Current Bid price up to meet the Reserve Price immediately.
     Also note that updating your bid levels will not have any effect on the Bid Time Extension system - updates are considered updates, only a new bid (from a competing bidder) will extend the closing time of an auction if it has a Bid Time Extension set.

     The second update is to the Bidding History page - we've given it some love! In the best interest of full transparency and providing buyers and sellers with information to help explain why things are the way they are, all users can now see all bids on an auction in the Bid History page. This now includes bids retracted by sellers, bids mutually consented for retraction between the bidder and seller, and bids removed by admins. It also includes the new Updated Bids from the feature above, but only when the Bid Price actually changed (in order to prevent users from viewing when/if a user has updated their proxy level). In addition, we are now showing the Type of bid (user, proxy, directbuy, dutch, blind, etc.) and the status of the bid (Live, Removed by Admin, Removed by Seller, Pleaded, Updated, etc.) with a handy color-coding.

     In both cases, we've improved the layout and messaging a little to help better explain things and provide useful links and advice.

So what do you think?
     Please give the updated parts of the site a try when you have the chance or opportunity and let us know what you think! If you have any questions, comments, concerns or feedback about that or any other aspects of the system we also want to hear from you. Please leave a comment on this journal or Contact Us anytime!

Thanks again for using FurBuy!

(Comment on this)

Adding Pictures to an auction
When auction has already been posted and there are no pictures. How do i go back to add photos?
Edit: Using my smart phone for internet. Posted an auction on furbuy. Im pretty sure I added an image but it doesnt show up. How do i add images and a thumbnail to an already live auction?

(1 Comment |Comment on this)

Question about annual sales cap
Is the total based on number of auctions closed but regardless of whether or not they closed with a successful bid? I am currently pretty close to hitting the annual cap but have in total made only about 4 or 5 sales from the site, which I don't think amount to that number.

(1 Comment |Comment on this)