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Jobs Gives In…A Little

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 22:34:26 +0000

Even though Apple CEO originally told the iPhone faithful – the ones that stood in line even though they didn’t need to – tough titty about this week’s $200 price drop just two months after launch, it looks like he’s throwing them a bone, er, a coupon.

Jobs Gives In…A Little

"I have received hundreds of emails from iPhone customers who are upset about Apple dropping the price of iPhone by $200 two months after it went on sale," writes Mr. Jobs at the Apple.com blog. "After reading every one of these emails, I have some observations and conclusions."

Among those conclusions is you can’t just go giving refunds to everybody that paid too much for a product when it first came out.

Nelson Muntz joins Mr. Jobs with a point and a hardy "Ha ha!"

However:

"…we have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store. Details are still being worked out and will be posted on Apple’s website next week."

Will be enough soothe the pain of having to decide between iPhone and a Nintendo Wii? Two months later they coulda nearly had both.

Oh well, it’ll still be fun watching Nokia try to poach Apple customers through Google AdWords.

PayPal, eBay Crushing Google’s Options

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 23:22:57 +0000

In terms of traffic growth and market share, it’s just no contest. So many more people hit eBay’s options that Google’s Checkout and Base may as well be invisible.

When Microsoft is beating Google at something, it can’t be a good thing. As Hitwise analyst LeeAnn Prescott noted in her look at how Google Base and Checkout have fared since last summer against eBay and PayPal, Windows Live Expo has a larger market share than Google Base.

That’s a tough slice of icy cold reality to have for breakfast. I’d hate to be the Googler who has to take that little dish to whoever’s the project manager for Base. “Sorry, but Microsoft’s hit us with a chair, ma’am.”

Recent market share for eBay versus Google Base and PayPal versus Google Checkout…well, it’s best if LeeAnn tells you:

According to Hitwise data, last week (week ending 2/3/07) the market share of visits to eBay was 844 times greater than the share of visits to Google Base. Paypal’s market share exceeded Google Checkout’s by 71 to 1 in the same period. Clearly Google Checkout has been doing better than Google Base, thanks to aggressive promotions, which is not something that Google typically does.

Google Checkout did enjoy a big spike around Christmas 2006, when they ran their $10 off discount offer. PayPal recently one-upped Google by offering a $15 rebate for purchases of $30 or more made through them with a roster of merchants like Barnes & Noble and 1-800-Flowers.com.

Google Base has seen its market share drop 18 percent from July 2006 to January 2007, based on the infograph LeeAnn provided in the post. Google Checkout share leaped by 362 percent, thanks in part to the $10 signup discount they continue to offer.

“eBay commanded 1.6% of all Internet visits in January 2007, so an incremental 1.3% growth for eBay is almost 10 times larger than Google Base’s entire January market share of 0.0019%,” LeeAnn wrote.

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Amazon API Helps Open Rebate Site

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 19:01:34 +0000

RefundPlease.com keeps track of price changes for items purchased by users; a price drop within 30 days of purchase entitles the buyer to apply for a rebate.

When Amazon opened various web services to developers, including Historical Pricing, they probably didn’t have RefundPlease in mind as a potential project for development based on them.

It’s a little-known policy at online retailer Amazon.com that permits buyers to benefit from a price change at the site. Amazon confirmed the policy, which rebates customers the difference in price should it fall within 30 days from the purchase.

The onus falls on the customer to keep track of the price and apply for the change. Now a website called RefundPlease (formerly AmazonCreditsYou.com) does that tracking for customers instead.

Users enter the product’s ISBN or ASIN, the price, date of purchase, and an email address. A price drop detected by the site generates an email to the user, along with a link to request a rebate of the difference in price.

RefundPlease plans to add more retailers besides Amazon; one they listed as having a similar price rebate policy is Circuit City. The site lists the total credits found by users as well as the largest single credit found; at press time the numbers were $3,635.51 and $65.55 respectively.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.