haggle4me

bs7

Steve_H4M wrote:

Lastly, just to confirm that you are not paying H4M £1 and that this payment is creditted to your H4M account.

But that's of little use if you don't meet the £20 savings target to attract a "haggle fee".

And since there's a 50p charge for withdrawals under £100 - there is effectively a cost for fully joining the site.

To actually say there's no cost for joining - you'd have to save other people £666.67 (since that would attract 20% fees (£133.33) of which you'd take 25% (£33.33) and leave the 'haggler' £100 - thereby avoiding the 50p charge). Granted you only need one 'haggle' to gain but that doesn't mean the user is effectively paying H4M (or, in fact, the bank) 50p to join.

And given that the site isn't exactly bursting with many high value items, and there are some very keen hagglers - that £1 is as good as lost.


I like a bargain as well as the next guy, but the £1 fee stopped me from sharing info with one person who could have saved a couple of quid for the item. I couldn't care less about profiting from it - but there's no way i'm giving over my credit card details to a relatively unknown and new internet company for no direct benefit whatsoever.

fuzzyrazer

I feel that for my £1.00 or 50p,it has made me money,i have never had any problems with the site nor has any shoppers concerning credit cards,to my knowledge.It's got to be the best £1.00 i've spent,as i said before i have made over £100 which transfered to my bank fine,this is my christmas fund and every little helps.....and i enjoy it too......

Steve_H4M

bs7 wrote:

And given that the site isn't exactly bursting with many high value items, and there are some very keen hagglers - that £1 is as good as lost.

You are right that if you join and are never saved money as a Shopper or earn money as a Haggler, then you will lose 50p when you withdraw the £1 deposit - because of the 50p transaction charge for withdrawals under £100. Unfortunately, we can't afford to wear both transaction costs i.e. when you register and when you withdraw. I guess we are asking new users to share the risk with us but hopefully you'll agree that the risk is small as most people will eventually save or earn money through the site.

In terms of their not being that many high value items on the site for Hagglers to earn money from - that is true. This is because we can't afford to do much marketing at the moment and, as you say, we are a new site and it is going to take a while for people to grow the confidence to use and trust us. However, we are in talks with investors and are hopeful that we will have enough money for a sustained marketing campaign in the near future, which will help the site to grow and give Hagglers a bit more to get their teeth into! We also have some excellent media coverage in the pipeline including pieces on the BBC 6 O'Clock News and Radio 1 (both recorded last week) and this should give the site a big boost.

bs7 - don't give up on us! When the site is bigger we'll be in a strong position to negotiate better terms with our Payment Service Provider and will hopefully be able to verify users without the need for a £1 deposit. In the meantime we are in a bit of a chicken and egg situation - we need more users before we can negotiate better terms but the present terms means we have to ask for a £1 deposit to verify users and this puts new users off! We'll get there in the end but need to build a core user-base of pioneering people before the masses will come on board (diffusion of innovation theory!) and the site really takes off.

Steve

bs7

Steve_H4M wrote:

bs7 - don't give up on us! When the site is bigger we'll be in a strong position to negotiate better terms with our Payment Service Provider and will hopefully be able to verify users without the need for a £1 deposit. In the meantime we are in a bit of a chicken and egg situation - we need more users before we can negotiate better terms but the present terms means we have to ask for a £1 deposit to verify users and this puts new users off! We'll get there in the end but need to build a core user-base of pioneering people before the masses will come on board (diffusion of innovation theory!) and the site really takes off.

Thanks for your very well considered reply.

However, the other thing stopping me personally from using the site to post listings is effectively because of the limitless/unquantifiable fee. Since the fee is a percentage of the saving over £20 i'm sure it'll put people off since the fee isn't known in advance - whereas if there was a set table of fees i'm sure psychologically it would be more attractive to people.

From the point of view of those haggling the effort required for finding a saving of £20 on a £200 item is probably more than a £20 saving on a £2000 item, so the pricing seems counterintuitive.

And to get the site started surely you want to encourage a decent userbase of 'hagglers'. Perhaps allowing a temporary period of a set fee per listing would achieve this: it'd encourage more people to list items since a fee of 50p or a £1, for example, would be clear and certain; it'd encourage people to sign up and 'haggle' for them since there would also be a set fee for providing the lowest price; and it'd get rid of the perceived monopoly by some 'elite' users on your site already - since there would be more items they wouldn't be able to find the cheapest price before everyone else.
To put my point the other way around - perhaps you ought to consider what is the minimum 'hagglers' are willing to 'work' for. Having scores, tables, competitions and points encourages non-monetary 'work' - but again i personally, don't see the point of spending 10 minutes finding a better price and find it only beats the guide price by £10 and getting nothing for it, but if in the same 10 minutes i find a price that saves £20 i'd get £3 for it. Surely, a set fee of £0.x for any savings between £y and £z, a fee of £u between £v and £w, etc etc. Or indeed let the lister choose the price they're willing to pay themselves - then the 'hagglers' could decide if it's worth doing or not; that way the 'listers' can effectively prioritise their listing.
And even if the current magic saving of £20 is reached - why not encourage people to 'haggle' anyway by offering some sort of competition or incentive (perhaps free non-withdrawable credit) for users that participate.

Another thought for you - why are the under-£50 listings on the forum - surely you want everyone to see how the system works and should be encouraging the use of the system; any site with a forum can have price-beating requests easily but yet your throwing away the chance of letting people see H4M at work and why it's better than other sites. Why not have it mirroring the normal layout so everyone from current users to new visitors can see exactly how it works. (Likewise, perhaps you should allow the 'lister' of the over-£50 items to choose to allow others to see the details of the listing, or a pay per view system where other people looking for the same item can pay a small nominal fee to receive the details too - indeed some of that fee could go back to the original lister).

Steve_H4M

bs7, thanks for your feedback.

I will bear in mind some of your comments when we come to further develop and enhance the site. However, in the meantime, we need to go with what we've got and prove there's a market for this sort of thing before we spend any more money on developments.

Steve

alchemista

This type of discussion takes place on the h4me website forums, suggest taking it there as there may be better feedback.

bs7

alchemista wrote:

This type of discussion takes place on the h4me website forums, suggest taking it there as there may be better feedback.

Perhaps...


but before using haggle4me people might wish to save themselve 20% of the saving first and try:
Kelkoo *
Dealtime *
PriceRunner *
* the links are MSE affiliated links - not mine
Froogle
Shopping.com
Shopzilla
PriceGrabber
ShopGenie
DooYoo
and Google

mo_haggling

I think you are right alchemista as they have been very open to any suggestions made on how to improve the site so far and have in fact made changes. These things all come down to money though and when you are a new business this is not always possible.

I have had no problems to date and will be sticking to h4me as I have been using them for a while now and I am happy to pay someone a small percentage of the saving they have found me for their time and effort. I know the bigger the deal they find me the bigger the fee I pay them but I'm still quids up because of the bigger saving I've made.

For instance, I've spent a little while this morning looking for an inflatable pool and I know when I list it today one of the hagglers will still do better than me. It'll cost me nothing to list and save me precious time to do things like the ironing!!! So what have I got to lose?!! I notice that even the hagglers list items from time to time as usually there is always someone else who can find you that saving. I know the £20.00 saving is not always possible but I think I would be right in saying that one of the hagglers suggested being able to pass this info onto the lister anyway, seeing as they've spent time looking - great gesture I think! H4me wouldn't make money in this scenario either but still made the changes possible.

I've also used the under £50.00 forum and have had to pay nothing for the info given. It's all about helping each other out and if i'm not mistaken the hagglers seem happy to do this?!

That's one too many paragraphs for me! Off for a coffee now as I'm worn out!!

bs7

mo_haggling wrote:

I think you are right alchemista as they have been very open to any suggestions made on how to improve the site so far and have in fact made changes. These things all come down to money though and when you are a new business this is not always possible.

It all comes down to how much people value the so-called "shoe-leather" cost of finding information for themselves.
I personally can't see it taking off: people like a bargain - but the idea of paying a percentage for that bargain i believe will immediately turn people off of it.

Also, because of the cost being a percent of the saving, each person is effectively having to commit to the purchase prior to listing the 'haggle' - thus the number of people willing to post is greatly reduced.
I believe they've made a serious miscalculation in believing that there are more people who have reached the stage of being certain about the item they wish to purchase (and even if they weren't certain but post one of the more vague listings - they then risk getting the cheapest item rather than best value for money) than there are people who would pay a lower nominal fee on the basis that being given the lowest price for an item is part of the information gathering exercise prior to purchase.
I think this is shown by the fact that there are around about 20 listings (over £50) at the moment on the site despite the site being launched in December. At the moment the total savings are just under the £1000 mark. So the listers set to save themselves £800, the 'hagglers' paid under £150 (75% of their 20% 'fee'), and the site under £50. £50 for a week would seem to suggest that something is going very wrong somewhere.

And as for things coming down to money for new businesses - if they don't have a semi-permanent coder on their team to complete any changes anyway then they'll seriously fall behind (as i said above, i think shoving the under £50 items on a forum is just plain crazy - to me it suggests little faith in their actually product/service - and indeed makes them seem more akin to a bedroom startup company than a serious going-concern). And their pricing stragegy would seem to be that of more of a longer term, more established business rather than a relatively new and somewhat obscure outfit. 20% makes ebay and paypal look very reasonable and they are a multinational enterprise who have been increasing their costs over the years. But if that's the price they are starting at, who knows what they plan to take it too once they (/if they) ever 'make it'.

Steve_H4M

bs7,

Thanks for your semi-constructive criticism. As with most things in life there is more than one way of doing things. In your opinion we could have done things differently/better. That is your opinion and you are entitled to it.

My opinion is we have in the main made good decisions. The h4m team - project managers, opertations directors, customer services people, programmers, accountants, lawyers etc, etc - have collectively spent thousands of hours designing, building and developing the site. Unless you have tried to get something like this off the ground then it is hard to appreciate all the issues that need to be dealt with and how these influence the decisions you take. This means we have had to make compromises along the way and as such our site isn't perfect... whose is? What we do have is a model that works i.e. Shoppers are saving money and Hagglers are earning money. Yes, we can improve things to make it better and that is what we are doing but remember... Rome wasn't built in a day.

We have effectively used the first five months since launch to "beta test" the site in a real world environment. This has given us the time to put things right that didn't work well and to make improvements before spending large sums of money trying to woo Joe Public - as opposed to the more pioneering and adventurous interent users who make up the bulk of our users at present. As such we have spent just £3k promoting the site online, which is why the number of listings is low. However, pending the completion of a couple of pending enhancements, this is about to change with a major marketing campaign planned. This should see the number of listings increase dramatically over the coming months.

Lastly, I will address your comment about our pricing structure. You talk about eBay and Paypal appearing reasonable in comparison to our charges - I would have to take issue with that.

I am sure that any eBay seller would be absolutely delighted if they were able to retain 75% of their profit after paying eBay and Paypal fees. The reality is that most professional eBay sellers earn more for eBay Corp each time they sell an item than they do for themselves!

As for Shoppers, the h4m services is for people who have been through the decision making process and decided what they are going to buy. We are simply trying to pursuade people to hold fire before they buy and check that the same item cannot be bought cheaper than the best price they have found. If a Haggler finds them a deal and they end up paying a fee, so what? They are still better off than if they hadn't listed on h4m! 20% of the saving seems fair to us and is just enough to provide a suitable incentive for Hagglers to work hard for the Shoppers.

As for our 25% commission we take on Haggle fees, I can assure you we will not be hiking them up as the site grows. If anything we will look to lower them, when economies of scale permit.

At the end of the day the thing to remember is that not everyone has the time or ability to "DIY it". H4m gives these people a way of getting better value for money and provides the people who help them with a financial reward for doing so. We think there is a market for this sort of service and you (bs7) don't. I guess time will tell.

Steve