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Trade-in your old cell phone

Published September 5th, 2007 in Money Saving Tips. 5 Comments

Recycle Cell Phone What do you usually do with your old cell phone once you upgrade to that shiny new model? I used to sell mine on eBay but not lately. There is simply no time for it. My last two phones are still sitting in the drawer collecting dust.

Folks at SlickDeals have started an interesting discussion with people comparing different options for recycling your old cell phone. Some imply a charity give away, some give you cash, and some pay you back with a store gift card. Here are the websites mentioned in that discussion (in no particular order).

Website	Proceeds
CompUSA	store credit
BestBuy	store credit
RecyclingForCharities	tax deduction
CashOldPhone	cash
BuySellUsedPhones	cash
SecondRotation	cash
CellForCash	cash
CashMyPhone	cash
SimplySellular	cash

I have not used any of these but looking at how the trade-in process is organized at each, I think I like SecondRotation the best. It didn’t only give me the most options to customize my HP h6315 but it also offered the best price among all. I think I am going to give these guys a try.

Have you used any of these services? What was your experience?

Wirefly — the good, the bad, and the ugly

Published April 25th, 2007 in Business: Strategy. 23 Comments

Telephone When I received a ReviewMe request from Wirefly last week it really got me thinking. I used to scorch websites ordering a review on ProBargainHunter in the past but this time it is different.

Contrast to some, I am a believer that bad publicity is not something businesses usually make money from, and this is exactly why I am writing this review.

Please accept it as my sincere unbiased opinion and feel free to add your own comments below. But please be constructive. A Wirefly representative will likely come to check on it and I want them to learn something useful from what they find.

The good

Wirefly online store is similar to other websites selling phones online. You can shop by carrier, phone, or service plan. This part of the website is very easy to use. I entered my postal zip code and the list that came back had every carrier I have ever heard of.

The plans are priced at the rates typical to what you will see if you go directly to the service provider. It is the phones where you will find the best deals ever. From my personal bargain hunting experience, Wirefly is one of the names that pops up more often than anything else as far as deals on cell phones are concerned.

In addition to phones Wirefly offers a huge selection of cell phone accessories which you can choose by the phone brand or the carrier.

And finally, they offer a separate section of the website for you, ring-tone junkies. $10 a month will buy you enough credits to ~~annoy~~ excite all your friends with a new collection of 10 regular or 3 music ring-tones every month.

The bad

Wirefly offers great deals on the phones however this is one of the cases when the saying “you get what you pay for” fits perfectly well. I have heard complaints about Wirefly before, and a quick visit to several websites that rank resellers has confirmed my expectations. Here is the roundup:

Yahoo Shopping gives 2.5 out of 5 points based on 218 reviews
ResellerRatings gives 6.58 out of 10 points based on 92 reviews
BizRate reports 77% positive, 4% neutral, and 19% negative reviews
Epinions gives 3.5 out of 5 points

The feedback that people leave is ranging from “Everything met my expectations.” to “Avoid this company like the plague!!!”. Looking at particular complaints, the majority is customer support related. To save on costs, Wirefly outsources support calls to a call center in India and the reviewers describe the service they receive as “horrible”, “incompetent” and “abysmal”.

The ugly

It is not the great deals what Wirefly is famous for at the bargain forums I frequent. If anyone posts a cell phone deal from Wirefly that requires a mail in rebate, the first comment is usually “forget it, you will never see your rebate”. But don’t take my word for it. Search for Wirefly Rebate Problems on Google and see it for yourself.

Notably the most interesting Google search result comes from Wirefly itself as their official response to Attorney General for the District of Columbia concerning a consumer protection lawsuit related to the use of mail-in rebates.

The final statement in that letter sounds very promising: “Wirefly is proud of its commitment to customer service and will continue to work hard to serve our customers.” I hope the money Wirefly spent on this review is not wasted and it will help them set their priorities as to how exactly the business can be improved.

This post is sponsored by Wirefly via ReviewMe

Dissecting BassaBids online auctions

Published April 10th, 2007 in Business: Strategy. 13 Comments

It is a known fact that SMS popularity in the US is a far cry from what it is in Europe. US mobile plans, with their large blocks of monthly minutes, create less of an incentive to use SMS. This in turn produces an interesting paradox. Businesses built around SMS take up big market share in Europe but they are practically non-existent in the US.

No one probably knows if SMS ever becomes popular or not in the US but some are willing to bet on it. BassaBids is one such company. What is BassaBids and what do they offer?

The lowest unique bid wins

On the surface, the idea behind BassaBids might appear very much like a regular online auction in the sense that people make bids and win things. The difference is that it is not the highest bid that wins, but the lowest one, or to be precise, the lowest unique bid. For example if you are the only person who made a bid of 3 cents while a few other people made a bid of 1 and 2 cents, then your bid wins. Here is a chart that explains it:

BassaBids Auctions

Bids are free during beta

If you go to the website right now, you will notice that it is still in beta. There is only one auction active and it is free to bid on it. In addition, the SMS part of the service is still disabled, which leaves you with the Web as the only way to bid.

I have signed up for an account and have been making bids for some time. There are probably hundreds of others testing their luck as well because shortly after I place my bid, I often get back an alert right away that my bid is not unique and I need to make another one. I will be very surprised if I turn out to be the winner.

What is the catch?

The free auctions that BassaBids runs are costing them one iPod Shuffle a week. This is a good way for the team to tune up their bidding engine and to generate some buzz along the way. Everyone loves free stuff!

Starting end of this month, the company is planning to launch a few “not free” auctions that will have a $1.99 per bid fee to participate, according to the How it Works section. If you look at the front page, you will notice that the first such auction is for MacBook Pro which has 8500 “remaining bids” next to it. It means that the auction will start on April 30, 2007 and will run until 8500 bids are made. If the price per bid doesn’t change, BassaBid will have $16,915 in revenue for a laptop valued at $2799. Not bad, huh?

Update 04/12: The company reduced “remaining bids” counts shortly after this post was published. Read the comments for details.

Why enabling SMS is important?

Bidding on things online with BassaBids is a pretty dull process right now. It is nothing like the show JellyFish puts up around their daily SmackDeals auctions. Yet, enabling SMS bidding opens a whole new market for it. I can see things really pick up when you can make bids in a circle of friends or, say, while enjoying a drink in a restaurant.

In addition, enabling SMS opens an additional revenue stream for BassaBids, from profit sharing with the mobile providers charging you for those SMS messages.

Online auctions or online gambling?

The more I think about the business model the more similarity I find with online gambling. As you make a bid, you don’t have a way of knowing if it is a winning one or not, unless you have tried out each and every bid starting with $0.01. If someone bids the same amount as you do, you will get a “not unique bid” alert and will be tempted to give it another try, and so on. This is exactly the feeling I often experienced when I went to Las Vegas last summer.

Each person who makes a bid has an equal chance of winning the prize, which in the case with the MacBook Pro above means that each bid has a 1 out of 8500 chance of winning. Don’t let the “lowest unique bid wins” motto confuse you. BassaBids is nothing about saving money or bargain hunting. As soon as you start paying for those bids, it becomes an addictive game where you have much more chances to lose than to win!

This post is sponsored by BassaBids via ReviewMe

Do I really want coupons sent to my cell phone?

Published February 26th, 2007 in Money Saving Tools and Shopping Coupons. 8 Comments

The idea to use your phone for bargain hunting is not new and some companies have been testing the waters for quite a while. One more website opened doors to the public today aiming at assisting you with finding hot shopping deals while you are on the go.

Text2store is a Chicago based startup that wows to find the best deals and bargains for you and deliver them to your mobile phone. Text2store doesn’t require a service plan or software installation. You open a free account, setup your alert preferences (that is product category and a search string) and wait for the deals to come your way by email and/or SMS.

Sounds simple, huh? It is simple. I have taken the service for a run and though I haven’t received the confirmation code to my cell phone (did I really expect all bugs fixed the day of the launch?) setting it up was really no brainier. This is how the deal alert configuration looks:

Text2store

I am not sure if I am going to keep it though. My service provider charges me for each SMS message I receive and I don’t feel like jacking up my already fat cell phone bill even more.

My main concern with Text2store is the company’s ability to attract merchants to fill in the service with attractive coupons and promotions. Unfortunately it is a chicken and egg problem. Unless you have a decent user base, no merchant will have business with you. Unless you have coupons, no users will come to your site. I wish Text2store good luck solving this very common for a startup problem. And hey, fix that confirmation code bug!

Frucall – a useful shopping tool or a toy?

Published November 17th, 2006 in Money Saving Tools. 3 Comments

I learned about Frucall a while ago but have never really taken time to look at it until today. This is one of those things that you put into your back burner and never have time to go back to again. I guess one of the reasons is that I am just not doing much shopping in the stores these days. Except my groceries and maybe some stuff for home (think Target and Home Depot) I seem to buy everything else online. Why is it important? Read on.

Frucall is about assisting you in making the decision should you buy the thing you are looking at in the store or order it online -- and you do it all from your phone. How does it exactly work? If you just want to check the price you dial 1-888-DO-FRUCALL from your cell phone, wait for the short commercial to play (this is how Frucall makes money), and enter the UPC or ISBN number of the item you want to check. If the item is found on-line then you will hear the price range and the list of stores selling it.

I have tested UPC's off of several boxes from my recent purchases (those that I could find around the house) and the results are pretty satisfactory. Most of the items were found with the exception of stuff I bought from Sams Club and Costco. As for the prices, the popular items such as printer or tape recorder would return 2-3 alternatives while less popular items would only have one or none at all.

In addition you can do such generally useful things like bookmark the item you are checking the price for or leave yourself a voice message tagged to that item. This might work for some however I prefer to use my PDA for things like that. First, it is visual (I can see it on the screen in front of me), second it is accessible (turn on PDA and go to your notes), third it is processable (I can copy, email, edit, or delete my notes).

If you sign up with Frucall for a free account you can then buy things on the spot via Frucall if you like the on-line price you hear. Keep in mind though that Frucall works off of a network of affiliated stores and this alone already indicates that there is a good chance you will not get the best price (think cash back).

In general I see one big problem with using this tool. Making a call and checking the price takes time and you are not going to do it for small items like tooth paste or a magazine. So it really works for big ticket items (priced $50 and up). The advanced shoppers (the most likely users of this service) will do their research before going shopping for anything this expensive. The mainstream shoppers do not know about Frucall or do not care.

So is Frucall a useful shopping tool or a toy? I think it is for each of you to decide for yourself. Everything depends on your personal shopping habits. As for my advice to Frucall team, get additional funding, do more mainstream media ads, and... support blogs like this (my big evil grin goes here). Educating shoppers works to your benefit.

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