What is Checkout.org redux (preview)
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We’ve had this domain in our toolbox from the start of Mediocre Labs in 2013, so some of you may be familiar with it in the wild.
Back then it was a short series of pop-up 1-item offers that we let other partners attach to.
Moving forward, we’re expanding that utility to include features for publishers and other media with audiences:
checkout.org expansion set for customer preview
-- Multiple item & event driven storefront merchandising
-- Private storefront branding
-- Membership program with free shipping and loyalty share
to publishers
-- Branded merchandise sourcing with licensing royalties to
publishers
-- Inventory, warehousing & transportation support
-- Branded customer service by email
-- Marketing support via email outreach on new offers
-- Offers with exclusive value superior to Amazon/Walmart
-- Members-only support community forums
Immediately, a small change you’ll notice is that the MorningSave.com site is now “Powered by Checkout.org”; indeed, the offerings you see there represent some of those we’ll make available to future Checkout.org storefronts. The site MorningSave itself is a transitional step for brands partnering with our checkout platform initiative while contemplating their own sites. Further features and actual partner sites will be rolled out in the coming months.
In some contexts, you’ll see us refer to Checkout.org as an anti-retail disrupter, a native commerce platform, or even a manufacturer portal. Our strategy anticipates all three of these future positions while acknowledging transitional realities. We believe in a future where there is no need for middleman retailer geography on the internet.
The creation of the Checkout.org platform also represents a split from our own core retail functions (d’oh!) where we try to excuse our retail footprint by being weirdo, snarky jerks while hosting open communities for folks to yell at us or point out competitor offerings. Somehow that’s still fun for us. We accept that someday these retail functions should cease as redundant and, in that direction, the majority of them will be branded with Mediocre themed names like our Meh.com retail-apathy flagship. Standby for continued exploration in this direction.
In the next few days we’ll be launching a new stackable Membership program that will tie our past and future plans together. Those that remained VMP members post 3/1 will be automatic members of the fullest Membership program while retaining other VMP rights as promised.
Thanks for reading through this preview of our plan on Checkout.org and the separation of Mediocre core-retail. It’ll make more sense shortly but let me know if you have any questions for now.
- 27 comments, 55 replies
- Comment
I just hope that “the fullest Membership program” includes tropical getaways and penthouse access.
@KDemo Don’t forget the use of the company jet.
@Barney And other free
handoutsprizes.@KDemo And pina coladas.
@KDemo off-brand champagne room
@KDemo @barney And socks.
@Bingo Bingo!
Socks!
@Bingo @El_Oel in women’s sizes too
Yay for multi-tiered membership plans- automatic members of the fullest Membership program ! (Kinda excited there).
On a more serious note, this means Checkout.org will have a dedicated customer support staff separate from Meh.com’s?
Maybe as an extension, Mediocre/Checkout.org can finally regain their Korean audience, and curbstomp Wal?
@awk Thanks, that’s much clearer.
So, I guess it’s finally time for me to weigh in here… I’m the former woot screaming, flying monkey man. Hey snapster! I’ve been following you guys since the good old days… I hope I can work with you again in some capacity.
I think the key to all this discussion of membership, site visits, purchases, and Buzz, is finding insane cool products and new bent social trends to offer the targeted audiences.
This is where is will volunteer my services to you. I would like to be your point man, identifying ideas and off the wall items that will cause the followers to melt down your servers.
At this point, I will start reaching back out to some of my old friends that are now part of Mediocre with some of my off the wall suggestions.
If you want to contact me directly, just ask St. John for my email.
@RussDelnevo Tagging @snapster on your behalf so he sees your message.
So many words. Too many for my tired brain.
I may be misreading, but to me it sounds like Checkout.org will be somewhat kind of like Shopify, but a much better overall solution on a larger scale. Not exactly, but similar in the sense that it will offer people who don’t have a website/checkout a portal in which they can sell their stuff.
The branding aspect of it is really cool. Will companies have the option of using a custom domain for their storefront? I would think that would be a necessity. With the “Powered by Checkout.org” message on MorningSave, I would guess that is how it will be on other store fronts, to promote awareness of the services available.
Sounds like not only can they (checkout.org) offer you a place to sell your stuff, they will also be able to house it, and ship it on your behalf as well if desired.
Is this service going to be open to anybody with a product to sell, or are only “good fit” type sales supported.
Will it be searchable? Will I, as a user, be able to look for any bluetooth speaker docks for sale, regardless of who is selling them?
I’ve been watching a lot of Shark Tank lately, and this seems like a really good short term solution for a start up company.
I am dying to hear the news!!!
@snapster this made me look at morningsave.com again, and I noticed this
On the main page, logged in with a non-VMP account just to make sure, and it’s still there.
cc: @shawn @dave
@Ignorant thanks yes still some cleanup needed there - that entire panel is being replaced very soon.
I caught the “powered by Checkout.org” message on MorningSave a week or two ago and I figured that was done to hopefully deflect people who’d otherwise used the previous message (which had a link to this site) to find their way to this forum and post stuff that should’ve instead gone to the support forum. Anyway, glad to see that y’all still have big plans.
OK this is long… I am too tired to be concise/short. Besides it takes a lot of edits to cut down wordy to concise and it is faster to write “long” than “short” (grin).
@snapster Just thinking out loud here from a social network perspective…and my focus here is just the community aspect of what you are doing… not to mention this may be worth what you paid for it - nothing.
You had commented somewhere about it took just 4 people posting or doing something or other, I forget what and am too lazy to look, for x thing to happen. From the social network analysis (SNA) point of view likely at least some of those 4 were critical in someone’s network for the contagion to happen, not to mention they were the connecting link between the 2 communities, reasonably embedded in the non-meh one (being in that position has both + and - effects).
Part of the current meh community, if one were to map it using a social network analysis tool (using uicnet or other similar) I think you’d find a core of users not all of whom interact with each other but interact with users with high centrality, and then those who are more peripheral… all a common sense no brainer here. How you use that information, of course makes all the difference. Documented in change efforts, etc. etc. etc.
To create a new, strong network, you are starting by trying to move the VMP’s, however that is going to leave out some of those with high centrality - a strategic mistake from the SNA point of view with respect to re-creating network interactions, recreating culture…
The other issue is disruption of networks. If, for example, some of those you moved, dropped out of meh.com interactions, if they are pretty central, then this can have a pretty negative effect on that (meh.com) configuration and thus the communication. I am looking at this from a structural point of view (who is connected to whom) rather than what is communicated through the pipes (eg “ties” using SNA language) that are connecting the people (eg “nodes”). Research has documented that similarly configured networks tend to have similar communication patterns.
From the SNA point of view the culture that has been created (on meh) will be affected, not necessarily for the good (that would partly depend on who (which central nodes) drops out (of meh) and transfers pretty much to the other network, or does not, or if they remain active in both. People without a lot of time on their hands (or lack of desire) aren’t going to stay on both (especially if the nodes they are directly connected to aren’t staying on both or are only on one - they will tend to follow their closest connections, few will be first movers with respect to re-establishing network ties on a new network).
This, of course, is partly what happens when companies merge, there are a large amount of layoffs at a company, etc. - disruptions of established networks tend to, at least for a while, make it harder for people to get things done because the configuration of the network structure (who is connected to whom and how may degrees away, etc.) is disrupted. One outcome is that culture changes because of this (of course culture is affected by numerous other things too). You seem focused on trying to keep the culture in this “move” (for a lack of a better word).
All of this speaks to culture creation and maintenance. And why it is going to be harder to keep two different active forms going when you are starting the second one by pulling the “startup group” from an existing network they are embedded in, some of them pretty deeply. There isn’t incentive to “defect” and for some no incentive to be in both. Selling your nodes with the greatest centrality and those who have the “strength of weak ties” (eg link groups) will be key with respect to what happens. While frequency of posting will get you some of this, what is also important is who is connected to whom and how.
It would be interesting to do a network analysis of interactions on threads (structural approach) - who posts to whom, who initiates threads and who is then involved in that thread, who reads but does not post (if you track that, that is), who stars but posts or doesn’t post, who only replies to specific people/posts rather than initiate interactions… That would give you your core. It is all of that core I’d open the door for if you are trying to transplant the network culture.
VMP status is being used as the metric but that speaks to a different variable that may or may not be correlated strongly with your forum behavior “network” members. It seems to me it might make sense to give all past and present VMP’s a several month free membership as well if you are trying to “recruit” those whom are “active” meh “members”. While that is not going to duplicate the social network (buying vs posting) and may or may not correlate very well with it (a testable question), it will likely serve as the “cheapest” proxy (which may or may not be very good) you currently have for that.
If you want answers to the network questions, I can likely recruit some credible SNA faculty who would feel like they have died and gone to heaven to have data access to go play - for free (if free to them and it would be free to you) - to answer your questions as long as you allowed them to answer some of their own questions (keeping the company identity private with respect to publishing results along with anything you feel is proprietary that you don’t want published). Research, after all, is just a license to be nosy in an organized, publicly acceptable way (or so I tell my students anyway). LOL In all seriousness though I am on some forums in that community, have done SNA myself (including one that was nominated for an award) and took a course from two of the pioneers in that field (it would be them I would contact with respect to recruiting a couple of folks to work as a group to do this who would be a good fit with respect to interests).If you want to discuss this further email me not at my user name here, rather use the email address in my account.
Anyway, as I said before, I am just thinking out loud and what I am saying here may not even be relevant since you haven’t released much information about where you are headed with all of this and my focus on network disruption and culture may not be something you consider an issue. And I haven’t proof read well… Hopefully this will post as this forum is slower than dead dirt at the moment.
@Kidsandliz
That was pretty interesting. You wanna give us a “dummies tutorial”?
@Kidsandliz this is very observant mechabical breakdown. There are two differences here:
A key component yet to be described for you to work in is how forceably limited these foreign communities will be in scope. We’re interested in lean-forward value drive audience who will contribute in a forum and reality is this represents like 7% of any given audience (there’s some cool research on that from the early aughts). Then they have to jump through more hoops so they are filtered down below 1% of a checkout storefronts audience. The way I’d describe it is that these little nodes are more like little outposts. When membership is rebuilt and ready to be launched it will be more clear. Hopefully later this week.
Also, an interesting aspect of the Meh community is that it represents some of the more lean-forward most interconnected social groups distilled from millions of Woot shoppers. Many are very connected but largely ignore the forums themselves. It’s seldom considered that it would take a starting funnel of millions of shoppers elsewhere to end up with an equivalently strong culture.
I am not worried about our outposts immediately diluting our/your very strong culture. Over time, I do worry that we can remain welcoming to a growing community, though. I think this is harder than we’d like to think it is. It would be a good problem to have.
@snapster
Another long ramble…that may or may not be relevant…
Puzzles with missing information - always fun. I await the new “clue” (grin).
Not sure what exactly what you mean by “lean-forward”…
On your welcoming/growing community point - Yes reasonably “stable” communities (and most become stable over time) become harder to enter due to “in groups” and “insider jokes”, etc. Without the context the fuck count, the continued sexual innuendo, continued banter (which to outsiders can seem mean) between several people (egged on by several others), can seem by outsiders as off putting and unwelcoming (especially since we have had examples of attacks on posters who violate unwritten norms that have developed over time).
This is one area where comments by employees who are also very embedded in the community as a participant can serve to redirect “community drift” back to where you want it to be. @JonT comes to mind as an “anchor” and he really hasn’t been replaced in the same way with respect to the forums. I don’t know if much of his job was community shaping/direction or he just “did” that in his “spare” time but since you have specific purposes in mind a meh position (not moderator job, rather community development for lack of a better word) mostly focused on that is needed.
The catch is though that that person would be new too (thus unaware of exactly where you are headed and won’t have deep understanding - socialization would be critical), unless you hire from the forums or “promote” someone who works at meh who already is “known” to the community…If an articulated value is welcoming to/openness to new members that needs reinforced directly in a planned way (thinking here, partly, of research on culture building - while much of that is directed to company/employee or city/non-profit community involvement, the underlying principles still hold).
When I think back to things JonT did/contributed, meh doesn’t have anyone doing many of those things anymore on any consistent basis… (and I think also of the thread where someone wanted to reinvigorate the community, feeling that it was not like it was). If he did them “by accident” because he is who he was, and not by “directed design” someone needs to analyze what he did that was effective and figure out how to start incorporating that kind of involvement/behaviors again - both in this community as it grows and in your new one. Norms will develop whether or not you have a hand in that. Since you have at least one purpose for this community and sound like you have a more “planned” one for the new one, better that this is deliberately planned for rather than just hope it will happen.
If the “non meh/mediocre” connections of those who buy but ignore the forums are part of your marketing efforts then I can see where the VMP status for transfer makes sense as that is a part measure of a metric of interest, but, of course, as is true for many things, there are multiple reasons for being willing to pay. I realize you may not care to share this, but I’d be interested in what percent of people who pay the “fee” are also frequent shoppers, how many months people who are frequent vs infrequent shoppers and what percent are frequent vs in frequent forum participants, what percent hold it without buying, etc.
What is of interest to me, personally, and that may not overlap anything you are focusing on (marketing is not my primary interest, outside of the fact that it represents behavior of people and affects company bottom line) the meaning people attach to symbols, one of which you have to “buy” and aren’t “awarded”. I find interesting questions like: of your non-frequent buyers who have the V, who deliberately has it vs gets it each time they buy something since there was no “added cost”; who then chooses to renew vs forgets to cancel when they didn’t buy the next month. Of those who realize they forgot to cancel, how many then choose not to once they notice they are still V (and is the behavior different for those active in the forums with the reminder they have V vs not active) and why…how the people who exhibit some of these different behaviors help to (or not) shape a community/culture, what personal needs does this meet for them that are met by the community (thus if there are common threads making sure the community continues to reinforce that is critical presuming doing so contributes to community fabric in a desired way); how does meeting these needs contribute to community (do these folks mostly “take” or do they “contribute” to other aspects)… and of course because we are talking about business here, how do these kinds of things relate to both the bottom line, and impact employee behaviors, culture within the organization from the employee point of view, not just the customer point of view.
Actually impact on employees of these kinds of things are questions that got me into this field to begin with since your people are your business, or in the non-profit sector, your program. An employee example (and the one that actually got me interested in this) that is sort of related is that people work for crap pay, in, at times, abusive to the employee environment (eg the company takes advantage of them because they can), for a specific, very large, international outdoor adventure program because they so strongly believe so strongly in the mission and values of the organization. As a result employees forgive a multitude of “sins” in how they are treated, the poor pay, field staff being told they can’t buy into the health insurance because they are “not worth the paper work” (umm your people are your program - and this was the specific precipitating event for me, as an aside I managed to convince them to allow access to health insurance for field employees), and other crap like that… Generally the employees are also then incredibly loyal to the organization and self- motivated to do their job well and engage in a lot of altruistic/community driven behaviors… (of course apple customers are an example from the customer point of view).
Anyway back to meh… I, at times, idly speculate on forum impact on employee behaviors, attitudes, commitment, motivation, to what extent does the forum serve as a “substitute for leadership” with respect to feedback, “rewards”… all testable questions that cross disciplines since forums are often viewed primarily as a way to further develop customer loyalty… That is a playground I’d play in given access.
On a side topic I was always curious if the original purpose of the meh button was to gauge what we thought of a product even if we didn’t buy… of course if that was the purpose it was hijacked by the community, I’d guess helped along by wanting to see now, not tomorrow, what today’s face would be, and of course holding “records” and brings people back…
@f00l not ignoring your request, rather I just spent my free time (I have about 20 jobs to apply for this week and each takes me around 3 hours due to researching the university and department members first… and even more time if their stupid application is bot driven and the site requires reentering, line by line, my entire vitae) writing a long ramble back to snapster…
So, are these changes set to coincide with One Thousand Days of Meh?
@KDemo
1000 days:
Anne Of A Thousand Days?
John Of A Thousand Days?
@f00l
@f00l
@f00l MEH
a Thousand nights of pointless…
Sigh!
Will there be cussing?
@phatmass you and I want different answers to this question.
My interpretation of this is that lots of retailers serving lots of niches might want the excitement (and pricing) of a deal a day site. But the infrastructure to take thousands of orders in a short period of time (servers, cc processing) reliably is beyond most. Same for shipping a different item a day, small or large, in quantity with minimal overhead.
Mediocre is good at logistics, but maybe not so good at getting new people in. Back when woot started, maybe it was easier to get the attention of new buyers. Now it’s harder.
So mediocre will do what it does well: logistics, tech, servers, payments (maybe), and let other orgs do what they do best and get people in the door.
Is that about right?
@zippyus yes but more than any of these services we provide, the reason is our appetite for inventory risk and our partnerships with manufacturers.
This is a storefront AND deals to sell.
@snapster awesome, thank you for the explanation.
@snapster Does this mean we’ll see a lot of crowdfunded-products and items that ended up being made at the wrong time, making them flops instead of successes?
@dashcloud maybe, if those folks start running more towards us. It’s not generally rewarding enough to chase them down. We feel like a lion trying to catch a squirrel.
Your explanation does not make it entirely clear to me what the goals are with your different “brands” (from the customer point of view with respect to what we can buy and why we’d go to three different sites on a daily basis, personally I’d rather go to just one. Top of page daily deal, tabs for the other two sites if they are going to sell the same stuff for multiple days). I see significant overlap and wonder about canalization. Do you anticipate a distinctly different customer base?.. Although it would seem maybe not since you are auto enrolling all VMP members.
I am not sure why there is a reason for meh once you open this as it seems like it would be a subset of a larger plan. Also, if you are continuing meh.com, having 2 forums I think will be to the detriment of both if there is significant customer overlap. It takes time to participate in forums and having 2 will likely mean neither community will be “winners” in this or one will “win” and one will “die” if/when many of the participants are the same…
Related to this - what are your future goals with meh.com? Especially since it would appear success has you disheartened with respect to what you want your life to be like as a CEO and what you want to deal with… perhaps you are happiest as a serial entrepreneur of startups?
@Kidsandliz
Yes. (a plurality of them)
I had hope that the culture sequence over on Meh would help define how well Meh solves for my aversion to conventional retail. Further, in my plan, Meh and future core-mediocre-retail community allow for this rather ambitious undertaking and remain the center of our universe.
My short term goal is to ramp up our organic daily audience. The number you see on the main page stats section of Meh.
@snapster - Long live the mehnagerie!
@snapster
I suspect we all volunteer to continue to be the center of your universe.
/image "purple galaxy
@f00l I like purple.
@snapster "My short term goal is to ramp up our organic daily audience. "
What’s it take to be part of your inorganic daily audience??
@eeterrific roundup?
@eeterrific mostly watching daytime tv talk shows right now. Other sites later.
So this gonna sortta be Snapster’sList.org for closeout junk. Kind of internet Ann&Hope. cool.
@snapster I say you should turn all of this into a meh-version of Shark Tank. Undershirt-wearing, occasionally crosseyed people come to you with ridiculously stupid ideas and inventions; you and your cohorts parse through them and when you find something that might have a granule of merit, you invest in the manufacture of some of those things and sell them to the masses (most of whom are likely made up of the originator’s friends and family, initially - but would hopefully grow by word of mouth).
Of course, since you’re taking on all the risk and responsibility, you’d have to set a fair apportionment of any proceeds. ie You get ownership of said idea and 85% of the proceeds… or something? It’s like Kickstarter, but not really at all like Kickstarter.
@marcee Are you trying to apply the record label business model to retail?
@marcee back at Woot, we participated in an “Invention Reality Show” called Everyday Edisons in which sale on Woot was one of the outcomes the winner would participate in on a future episode. I smile when I think of how miserable a failure it was.
I wonder if anyone happens to recall what the product was that we tried to sell? It’s probably way too buried and a decade ago. Pretty sure it was 2007.
@snapster Was it the SnacDaddy?
@Thumperchick Ha.Yep. Nice work! Sales on that thing were a great humility check.
@snapster I do remember when you tried doing regular product launches on Woot- that didn’t seem to work out too well either.
@Thumperchick @Snapster Well, dude, it’s your own fault for choosing a product that is essentially a storage container for chicken bones. Isn’t that what a garbage can is for? Or even a handy plastic bag? You could’ve done better - especially for your debut. You probably should have stacked the deck with some decent ideas.
@marcee oh we didn’t get to pick it but we’d committed to the process already
By any chance, are these changes taking place exactly ten days from today?
@KDemo nope, not 10 days from today.
@snapster So, 10 days from Wednesday, Kdemo time.
I’m drunk and dealing with struts2 vulnerabilities, so I’m cool with it, but how about the old Wine feature of Woot only with beer? I’d love to buy bargain beer to get the name of a brewery out there.
This may not totally apply to the post, but see the second (or third if you count contractions, Grammar Nazi) word in the paragraph above.
@novedrake often asked so I try to answer succinctly each time: Beer is either too cheap or it weighs too much. I hope you’re feeling ok this morning.
@snapster - That makes perfect sense, which is probably why I’m not in any sort of retail. And thanks, I’m feeling great. Interested to see where checkout.org goes.
@snapster I’d love to see what you can shake up with things like ticket sales. I work with a lot of small to medium sized venues/event companies and I’ve yet to come across anyone who is happy with the logistics, culture or structure of any ticket selling platform. Really go out of your comfort zone and expand your focus beyond basic retail product selling. There’s a market there waiting for someone with some seriously outside thinking and infrastructure to pull it off.
The clean screen look is always nice.
Jeez…that’s a lot of reading just to buy some cheap earbuds or Bluetooth speaker. Will I still just be able to log on at 11 PM (CST) and get a good deal on a refurbished blender? (sorry now that I slept thru marketing class)
@luckylouie this is mostly all just background info to explain a future Membership program.
I was a fan of woot from when it was vey young and I have a collection of about 100 woot monkeys.
I have enjoyed Meh from the start and I have so may meh shirts.
So I wish you the best of luck on this new adventure and I am really looking forward to building my collection of checkout.org somethings.(my wife may not be).
If I happen upon a pallet of Trip Glasses or Zip Ties or something, can I set up a checkout.org shop to unload them?
@medz Now why on earth would you want to do that? (wink wink)
Isn’t that you, @snapster… and the storefronts at Amazon, Newegg, fleaBay, etc…? What am I missing?
@RedOak presumably our desire to not have retail stores as a destination on the internet?
Buy on the internet where you enjoy real content or at the manufacturer.
The only thing that keeps Meh/Mediocre slightly different is that Mediocre is often adopting all of the product from a manufacturer. We’re assuming their role. But still, it’d be more efficient if folks would buy from the original manufacturer and avoid these bubbles of product we adopt.
@snapster so it appears my confusion might be related to “retail store”. To me retail = selling to the end consumer.
Perhaps your hope is to eliminate the single destination branded web address “retail store” and replace them with a more egalitarian multitude of manufacturer presences? So the manufacturers live and die by Google/Bing?
Do you consider the Amazon and Newegg 3rd party store fronts (not the sold by Amazon and sold by Newegg content) to be “retail stores”?
Are you arguing for a brand-agnostic (potential buyers don’t come to a walled brand-web address like Amazon) marketplace where manufacturers put up their “tables”? The Internet version of the brick & mortar farmer’s market?
@RedOak
The future I see is that I’m reading the NY Times and I want to buy something so I buy it from a native NY Times checkout function where it is offered by the manufacturer offering a promotion on it. Doing so helps my content provider.
If I’m listening to a podcast or watching TV or my favorite YouTube star, I follow their instructions to get a special promotion on an item. Doing so helps my content provider.
If I hear of that same thing I want to buy outside of a content provider who is offering a promotion on it, I go to the manufacturer site and buy it. Because the manufacturers site is the same distance and utility as any other site and has the lowest price. Some manufacturers might match a promotional offer for me going directly and others might rely on my knowledge that it was running, so I might do some searching still to learn more. For instance, this is how most people buy Apple products.
If I am not sure what I want to buy, then I talk to friends or head to a consumer review site. The least biased consumer review site might refuse to sell me the item (like Consumer Reports should do but they soil themselves online with affiliate revenue) but then I’d have to pay a membership dues. Regardless, each of these sites should send me directly to the manufacturers store to buy it at the lowest price.
I would try to aggregate in bulk the non-perishable small things so it would be worth buying these from manufacturers as well. Things I want to dribble delivery on I would sign up for subscription services to that specialize in quality or value or surprising me with curated variety.
Perishable things I buy locally to help develop and maintain a healthy local infrastructure of organics.
I need better terminology. I don’t consider any of these options to be the conventional store as a middleman. I do consider Amazon and Walmart to be conventional middlemen stores.
@snapster aha! Got it. (I think) Tricky to explain to someone outside the “industry” like me.
Fascinating model (actually models) - and it would seem a challenge would be achieving the critical mass (critical attention?) so that manufacturers naturally come to you to hook in.
So you’re playing with the walls (and creating proprietary tunnels thru them) that have taken over the Internet rather than fighting them or trying to climb over them.
@snapster
Haha. But CR soils themselves in many other ways as well. Like picking a too limited range of products to evaluate. Or not going into enough depth. Getting stuck on “list price” rather than transaction price. And getting all political. We’ve learned to completely ignore CR.
@snapster “distance and utility as…” Taking me back to my economics undergrad. Thanks
good times mmm good times.
@RedOak It depends on what you are buying. Camping gear they focus on low end, “family” stuff and not the stuff serious campers use and so is useless for that. Lawnmowers, cars… catch most of the “popular” brands. I use them as input for buying expensive things things that I’d only buy occasionally. In doing that those things tend to last a long time with few problems.
@snapster Basically, “You get a store. You get a store, and you get a store!”, right?
But how do you get around stuff that would torpedo a good deal. A YouTuber doesn’t have buying power for discounts. Does Medeicore? And what about MAP policies that prevent advertising good deals? And how when I go to a manufacturer’s site, they almost always are undercut by a reseller/retailer?
Wow, that sounded way meaner than I usually intend to be.
what’s the plan for customer service? that seems to have fallen off the back of the truck to some extent over at Meh.
@Yoda_Daenerys they added another CS rep and @hollboll is back from vacation. I suspect that they will be back up to speed shortly. CS ebbs and flows. Sometimes, things are going so smoothly that they spend time keeping us occupied in the forums. Sometimes they’re buried and it take a while to dig out.
@Yoda_Daenerys agreed. What @thumperchick says is getting us some relief but also the plan is “hire more people immediately”
@thumperchick thanks for the reply
@snapster i’m willing to work remotely if you have great benefits
@snapster on March 21st you said:
Please define “the next few days”…Perhaps you are counting in planet Venus days? (grin)
@Kidsandliz well we launched the first stack but we’re tweaking the second. It’s not that exciting for existing members - most just reinstalls things in two pieces.