Because my mouse use has been limited, I’m woefully behind on my blog reading. While catching up on my TameBay, I saw things things that I wanted to quickly comment about.

  • eBay Instant Sale for lazy casual sellers– I spoke briefly about this in my last quickie post but I wanted to revisit it. The TameBay article talks about this new service from a very different angle. For Chris, this service is a form of eBay for the lazy who are willing to get less for an item rather than go through the trouble of listing it properly on eBay. I have to admit, I didn’t see this side of it and I am sure there are lazy and or confused people who will use it for that.
    But I don’t think that is the point of the service. eBay is pushing the green angle and, while I know things are different depending on where you are, it is very hard where I live to recycle electronics. Most local places make you pay them to recycle things like computer parts and cell phones. To me, this was a really great alternative to having to pay an technology recycling program to take the stuff I don’t want. Instead eBay will take it and not only won’t they charge me.. they’ll give me money for it! If it’s stuff I was going to throw out money, any money is better than nothing. In reading the release from eBay, I really think that is more how the service was intended on their end. But, if you are stupid enough to give them an in demand item through their recycling program, then I have no remorse for you getting less than what you could for selling it.
    The biggest question this raises for me is… who’s actually selling those “bought back” items? Is there some 3rd party seller in the mix or is eBay itself dipping its toes into the selling game? I’m very interested in the answer.
  • WePay chills PayPal dev con – I mentioned this on Twitter but I wanted to highlight it here as well. As a publicity stunt, WePay dropped off a large chunk of ice in front of the PayPal dev con with a message about PayPal freezing accounts. As the ice melted, people grabbed for the cash and bloggers and reporters grabbed for the story. As a marketing stunt, it was brilliant as I’ve suddenly heard of WePay and I’d never heard of them before. But while it scored them some brand recognition, I’ve told this story several times off-line and every time I say, “Some small payment company did this ice block stunt…” because the name is just too forgettable when its not right in front of me. On top of that, for all the posts I read about this story, I never bothered even once to check out WePay’s website. Did you?
  • eBay get the Christmas decorations out – I actually did a post about this on Facebook and it started a little debate. I know many people think it’s too soon. My take? I appreciate the fact that they at least waited for November 1st. Christmas stuff before Halloween is just unacceptable in my mind but once we cross the line into November, I don’t love it but I can deal. As a retailer, I understand how important and Christmas creep is and as a normal human I have a new take on it lately. The holiday season always flies by so fast I’m usually there on January 2nd saying, “Wait a minute! I didn’t get to do all the Christmas-y stuff I wanted to do, it can’t be over yet!” As long as they keep it after Halloween, since the holiday season goes by so darn fast anyway, I think I might be OK with their timing on this one. 

Well, that’s three mini-blog posts up above… Share your thoughts on these things below.