Shopping.com Says Screw Smaller Merchants, Raises Deposit From $50 to $700

[mandy]

1. Shopping.com raises its initial deposit from $50 to $700
2.  Shopping.com has temporarily stopped accepting new merchants.

As for raising its initial deposit to $700, I feel that Shopping.com doesn’t care about the smaller merchants. This is also a theory that Shopping.com flat out rejected. Now I’m a bit more practical here, there’s sometimes significant cost involved with getting a smaller merchant up and running. I understand this because we deal with it at SingleFeed every day. But if you lower the barrier to entry in terms of cost, the potential upside is huge.

My favorite phrase is metrics oriented marketing, what the web enables you to do: run tests, track and make decisions based on actual data. By increasing the minimum initial deposit to $700 (from $50), you cut off tens of thousands of merchants from ever considering running a test with you. If the service is good, you should offer merchants a trial at little or no cost because the proof will be in the results...

2 articles:
Shopping.com - Tales from the Absurd
http://www.comparisonengines.com/2007/11...he-absurd/
Shopping.com - There Are Always Two Sides to a Story
http://www.comparisonengines.com/2007/11...o-a-story/


FYI, Shopping.com is continuing the tradition of excellent service of its parent company eBay arcasm1:

automated emails from customer support say to expect a response within 7 days

[bargainbloodhound]

[quote author=mandy link=topic=16913.msg66446#msg66446 date=1195288427]

FYI, Shopping.com is continuing the tradition of excellent service of its parent company eBay arcasm1:

automated emails from customer support say to expect a response within 7 days

[/quote]

I don't mind using email support if I'm buying as a consumer, but I won't do any B2B business with any company that doesn't provide phone support.

[maggie777]

I no longer use them.  Their service sucks, the product database is a total disaster, and I repeat their service sucks.  If they think they can survive by providing the same substandard service to businesses which they provide to eBaY dumpster divers they're in for a rude awakening.

[sneakymagenta]

Everything Ebay touches turns to shit.