Experience with Spark Lister (Turbo Lister replacement)?

[bitsofsiliconvalley]

Has anyone had experience with Spark Lister?

I haven't tried it yet, but the description makes it appear to be the closest thing I have found. to Turbo Lister. It was developed by Bonanza, another selling platform, for use by their own sellers, but they say it also works with eBay. It's free, and you don't have to be a Bonanza seller to use it. It's currently in beta testing.

If you'd also like to take a look, go to bonanza dot com; click Help (upper left corner) and select Visit the Help Center; and use the search box to find "Spark Lister FAQ."

[norman_castle_123]

I tried it.  It seems to think that all eBay users are American. I'm selling in the UK.

You have to enter the price in US dollars, I sell in UK pounds.

It doesn't accept postal code in UK format.

Selecting postal method, only has US carriers. I send by UK mail.

And the interface for adding variations is not well designed. It took quirte a while before I worked out how to use it.

Gonna need a bit of improvement before it's useful.

[bitsofsiliconvalley]

I tried it too. I am American, but my results have been disappointing for a different reason: I can't get it to do anything except display promotional web pages for itself. I'm curious how you got as far as you did.

I've asked Bonanza customer support how to make it work. I'll post again when/if I hear back, or if don't.

[bitsofsiliconvalley]

I'm done evaluating Spark Lister. I didn't get to try the "good parts" because my first objective was to import some sample Turbo Lister items, and I couldn't make it work. I assumed that when Bonanza said Spark Lister imports and imports CSV files, that meant it imports and exports Turbo Lister CSV files. Wrong. It has its very own CSV format, which can't be changed.

I talked to Bonanza customer support about this. They spoke to their engineers, and the word that came back was: "Turbo Lister compatibility would be nice to have, and we would like to add it, but we don't know when it will happen."

So Spark Lister gets an A for effort, and and an F for Turbo Lister compatibility.

I also tried a program called Dewabit, made by a German startup with the same name. I did a lot of messing around with its data entry and editing capabilities. I liked the interface a lot, and it worked well as long as I stayed on the beaten paths. When I tried to do unusual things I encountered rough edges, and weird stuff happened.

Dewabit's import/export feature uses a "CSV profile." You can create, copy, and modify CSV profiles to map any Dewabit field to any CSV field name you want. The program has a predefined profile that's supposed to import and export Turbo Lister files, but it didn't work. It gave me a message saying that the file's format was invalid. Not "Description must be mapped to a CSV field." Not "Unrecognized code in Duration field of record 9." Just "invalid."

I communicated with one of Dewabit's developers. He asked me to send him my input file so he could figure out what was wrong. I did so, but I never heard from him again.

I kept working at it and eventually reverse engineered a CSV profile that let me import almost all of the essential fields, but it wouldn't import item condition. When I imported a record (but not when I entered one manually), item condition was not just empty; it was disabled, so I couldn't enter a value manually.

I wrote to Dewabit again: "Here's what I did, here's what happened, this is a blocker but if you can bust it for me I'm ready to sign up." That was last Sunday, and I still haven't heard anything. So Dewabit gets a D for support, and an F for Turbo Lister compatibility.

I've thought of a couple more things I can try to make it work, but I'm not going to. Non-support is a deal bresker for me. Should I expect much better when I'm paying them $5/month than I get when I'm evaluating for free?

I'm going to try Wonder Lister, and if I can make it work, I'll go with it. It doesn't do everything I want, but at this point I'll settle for good enough.

If you don't need to import Turbo Lister CSV's, you might be happy with Dewabit. As I said, I really liked the design. As for British pounds, I don't think you'll have a problem. Since the developers are German, they don't have the attitude that everyone must be American. In fact, when I first imported data successfully I failed to specify a currency type, and it defaulted to the first thing in its database: Afghan afghanis!

[mrdutch1001]

I have heard about Spark Lister but have no need for it as I still use Turbo Lister.

I will continue to use Turbo Lister as long as it keeps working...

[dollybeauty]

@bitsofsiliconvalley 

Thanks for the critiques. This may save time for other members.

[papermoneyforme]

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@bitsofsiliconvalley wrote:

I'm done evaluating Spark Lister. I didn't get to try the "good parts" because my first objective was to import some sample Turbo Lister items, and I couldn't make it work. I assumed that when Bonanza said Spark Lister imports and imports CSV files, that meant it imports and exports Turbo Lister CSV files. Wrong. It has its very own CSV format, which can't be changed.

I talked to Bonanza customer support about this. They spoke to their engineers, and the word that came back was: "Turbo Lister compatibility would be nice to have, and we would like to add it, but we don't know when it will happen."

So Spark Lister gets an A for effort, and and an F for Turbo Lister compatibility.

I also tried a program called Dewabit, made by a German startup with the same name. I did a lot of messing around with its data entry and editing capabilities. I liked the interface a lot, and it worked well as long as I stayed on the beaten paths. When I tried to do unusual things I encountered rough edges, and weird stuff happened.

Dewabit's import/export feature uses a "CSV profile." You can create, copy, and modify CSV profiles to map any Dewabit field to any CSV field name you want. The program has a predefined profile that's supposed to import and export Turbo Lister files, but it didn't work. It gave me a message saying that the file's format was invalid. Not "Description must be mapped to a CSV field." Not "Unrecognized code in Duration field of record 9." Just "invalid."

I communicated with one of Dewabit's developers. He asked me to send him my input file so he could figure out what was wrong. I did so, but I never heard from him again.

I kept working at it and eventually reverse engineered a CSV profile that let me import almost all of the essential fields, but it wouldn't import item condition. When I imported a record (but not when I entered one manually), item condition was not just empty; it was disabled, so I couldn't enter a value manually.

I wrote to Dewabit again: "Here's what I did, here's what happened, this is a blocker but if you can bust it for me I'm ready to sign up." That was last Sunday, and I still haven't heard anything. So Dewabit gets a D for support, and an F for Turbo Lister compatibility.

I've thought of a couple more things I can try to make it work, but I'm not going to. Non-support is a deal bresker for me. Should I expect much better when I'm paying them $5/month than I get when I'm evaluating for free?

I'm going to try Wonder Lister, and if I can make it work, I'll go with it. It doesn't do everything I want, but at this point I'll settle for good enough.

If you don't need to import Turbo Lister CSV's, you might be happy with Dewabit. As I said, I really liked the design. As for British pounds, I don't think you'll have a problem. Since the developers are German, they don't have the attitude that everyone must be American. In fact, when I first imported data successfully I failed to specify a currency type, and it defaulted to the first thing in its database: Afghan afghanis!

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If you copy the appropriate columns from the Turbo Lister csv into the appropriate columns in Spark Lister csv it should work.

Most csv files are not compatible with other  csv files so copying is a must. You might want to try 1 listing and copy all the needed into over.

I have done it with other programs and once you figure out what is needed, you can copy whole columns over.

[pickermall]

I downloaded Spark Lister, as I sell on Bonanza as well (well... I LIST stuff there but haven't sold anything yet).. I can download all my Bonanza listings onto Spark Lister, but can't figure out how to get my Ebay listings ported over onto Spark...

My thing is that I only list my vinyl records onto Bonanza, whereas on Ebay I have lots of other stuff as well (including the records). So I would like to isolate only my record albums from Ebay using a Turbo Lister style program, rather than import EVERYTHING from Ebay onto Bonanza directly, then removing the other items.

But trying to get my Ebay stuff onto Spark Lister

[angelafaw]

I just wish we could learn if Turbo Lister is going to stay around or not. So indecissive!

[dollybeauty]

@angelafaw 

There is no indecision here.

All tools, eBay's and third party tools, must use the eBay APIs to interact with eBay databases. These APIs will always be updated to reflect eBay's business strategy.

TurboLister is depreciated. This means that Turbo is no longer being updated to reflect these API changes/updates.

Turbo no longer works outside of the US, and possibly Canada.

The only question is when Turbo will fail, not if it will fail.

[readabouthorses]

But if they let it fail now then they will have lied to all of us who use Turbo Lister when they claimed that ALL of the features would be available in Seller Hub. That has not happened and I don't see any way they can make it happen for all of the Turbo Lister users.

I have tons of things to list but I'm not really interested in creating 100 listings in Turbo Lister and then tomorrow the whole thing goes belly up.

They are at least still updating the Data as I got an update this week on Data. Unfortunately I still cannot choose United States as the country in the dropdown list ... it stops at India. LOL

[bitsofsiliconvalley]

It's past time for an update on my original review.

A while after I posted it, Bonanza wrote to tell me that they had solved my Turbo Lister compatibility problem. By then my trial of Wonder Lister was well under way, so I didn't investigate what they had done and how well it works. At a minimum, they deserve a gold start for following up and offering something positive.

I adopted Wonder Lister. I haven't started listing yet because of content issues (nothing concerning the software itself), but I can report that the conversion and entry/editing features work very well. It has a few quirks. Most serious: The rich text editor has bugs which make it impossible to select and type over text. That's a significant irritation, not a showstopper. I never reported it to them so I don't know how well they'll respond.

Support has proved quite responsive and competent, though. They even conducted a shared-computer session with me to solve one problem I had. I'm deeply impressed by that, particularly since I'm subscribing at the lowest ($5/month) level.

One caution: If you import Turbo Lister listings with pictures, Wonder Lister will import the pathnames of the pictures, not the pictures themselves. If you delete your Turbo Lister directories, you'll lose the pictures. That is Turbo Lister's fault, not Wonder Lister's, because Turbo Lister only exports the pathnames. In principle you could copy the pictures to another location and update the pathnames in the listings, but it would require far more effort than it's worth. I'll just keep my Turbo Lister directories until all of the converted listings are either sold or abandoned.

[macman4623]

Currently, I'm downloading SparkLister. My first thought is "why does a front end for a database need to take up 1.5GB?" I'm hoping its not a resource hog and have to close it when I'm not using it (Turbolister is sitting on my taskbar all the time). TurboLister has gotten really slow in the last 6 months and clicking "upload" waiting, and then clicking the next "upload" button takes a full minute or more for just 1 listing. I did get the email that Turbolister is done being supported in July 2020, but not sure if that means it will just "break" or that new features will just be missing and categories and fields won't get updated.

[vintage-car-magazines]

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@bitsofsiliconvalley wrote:

I'm done evaluating Spark Lister. I didn't get to try the "good parts" because my first objective was to import some sample Turbo Lister items, and I couldn't make it work. I assumed that when Bonanza said Spark Lister imports and imports CSV files, that meant it imports and exports Turbo Lister CSV files. Wrong. It has its very own CSV format, which can't be changed.

I talked to Bonanza customer support about this. They spoke to their engineers, and the word that came back was: "Turbo Lister compatibility would be nice to have, and we would like to add it, but we don't know when it will happen."

So Spark Lister gets an A for effort, and and an F for Turbo Lister compatibility.

I also tried a program called Dewabit, made by a German startup with the same name. I did a lot of messing around with its data entry and editing capabilities. I liked the interface a lot, and it worked well as long as I stayed on the beaten paths. When I tried to do unusual things I encountered rough edges, and weird stuff happened.

Dewabit's import/export feature uses a "CSV profile." You can create, copy, and modify CSV profiles to map any Dewabit field to any CSV field name you want. The program has a predefined profile that's supposed to import and export Turbo Lister files, but it didn't work. It gave me a message saying that the file's format was invalid. Not "Description must be mapped to a CSV field." Not "Unrecognized code in Duration field of record 9." Just "invalid."

I communicated with one of Dewabit's developers. He asked me to send him my input file so he could figure out what was wrong. I did so, but I never heard from him again.

I kept working at it and eventually reverse engineered a CSV profile that let me import almost all of the essential fields, but it wouldn't import item condition. When I imported a record (but not when I entered one manually), item condition was not just empty; it was disabled, so I couldn't enter a value manually.

I wrote to Dewabit again: "Here's what I did, here's what happened, this is a blocker but if you can bust it for me I'm ready to sign up." That was last Sunday, and I still haven't heard anything. So Dewabit gets a D for support, and an F for Turbo Lister compatibility.

I've thought of a couple more things I can try to make it work, but I'm not going to. Non-support is a deal bresker for me. Should I expect much better when I'm paying them $5/month than I get when I'm evaluating for free?

I'm going to try Wonder Lister, and if I can make it work, I'll go with it. It doesn't do everything I want, but at this point I'll settle for good enough.

If you don't need to import Turbo Lister CSV's, you might be happy with Dewabit. As I said, I really liked the design. As for British pounds, I don't think you'll have a problem. Since the developers are German, they don't have the attitude that everyone must be American. In fact, when I first imported data successfully I failed to specify a currency type, and it defaulted to the first thing in its database: Afghan afghanis!

---

You might consider trying SixBit too. It can import from TurboLister and eBay as well as from a CSV file. I moved from Turbo Lister to SixBit a few years ago and love it.

You can read more in this review https://ebaylistingtoolreview.weebly.com/

[papermoneyforme]

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@vintage-car-magazines wrote:

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@bitsofsiliconvalley wrote:

I'm done evaluating Spark Lister. I didn't get to try the "good parts" because my first objective was to import some sample Turbo Lister items, and I couldn't make it work. I assumed that when Bonanza said Spark Lister imports and imports CSV files, that meant it imports and exports Turbo Lister CSV files. Wrong. It has its very own CSV format, which can't be changed.

I talked to Bonanza customer support about this. They spoke to their engineers, and the word that came back was: "Turbo Lister compatibility would be nice to have, and we would like to add it, but we don't know when it will happen."

So Spark Lister gets an A for effort, and and an F for Turbo Lister compatibility.

I also tried a program called Dewabit, made by a German startup with the same name. I did a lot of messing around with its data entry and editing capabilities. I liked the interface a lot, and it worked well as long as I stayed on the beaten paths. When I tried to do unusual things I encountered rough edges, and weird stuff happened.

Dewabit's import/export feature uses a "CSV profile." You can create, copy, and modify CSV profiles to map any Dewabit field to any CSV field name you want. The program has a predefined profile that's supposed to import and export Turbo Lister files, but it didn't work. It gave me a message saying that the file's format was invalid. Not "Description must be mapped to a CSV field." Not "Unrecognized code in Duration field of record 9." Just "invalid."

I communicated with one of Dewabit's developers. He asked me to send him my input file so he could figure out what was wrong. I did so, but I never heard from him again.

I kept working at it and eventually reverse engineered a CSV profile that let me import almost all of the essential fields, but it wouldn't import item condition. When I imported a record (but not when I entered one manually), item condition was not just empty; it was disabled, so I couldn't enter a value manually.

I wrote to Dewabit again: "Here's what I did, here's what happened, this is a blocker but if you can bust it for me I'm ready to sign up." That was last Sunday, and I still haven't heard anything. So Dewabit gets a D for support, and an F for Turbo Lister compatibility.

I've thought of a couple more things I can try to make it work, but I'm not going to. Non-support is a deal bresker for me. Should I expect much better when I'm paying them $5/month than I get when I'm evaluating for free?

I'm going to try Wonder Lister, and if I can make it work, I'll go with it. It doesn't do everything I want, but at this point I'll settle for good enough.

If you don't need to import Turbo Lister CSV's, you might be happy with Dewabit. As I said, I really liked the design. As for British pounds, I don't think you'll have a problem. Since the developers are German, they don't have the attitude that everyone must be American. In fact, when I first imported data successfully I failed to specify a currency type, and it defaulted to the first thing in its database: Afghan afghanis!

---

You might consider trying SixBit too. It can import from TurboLister and eBay as well as from a CSV file. I moved from Turbo Lister to SixBit a few years ago and love it.

You can read more in this review https://ebaylistingtoolreview.weebly.com/

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And what does that have to do with Spark Lister