Dawdle Blog

Dawdle.com's Position On The ECA

2009-12-04T10:09:36-06:00

Dawdle has had a number of people contact us regarding our association with the Entertainment Consumers Association. Dawdle is a partner of the ECA, and we offer a reduced commission structure for Dawdle sellers who are ECA members.

We are well aware of the controversy and backlash regarding the ECA's cancellation policy. (See here, here, and here for a good run-down if you're not familiar.) We are disappointed that the ECA requires registered snail mail to cancel an ECA membership; that's about as evil as the workout gyms that continue to charge you long after you've left.

However, at this time, we've decided to not drop our partnership with the ECA. Let me explain our thinking for a bit.

First and foremost, the ECA does do good work. They are forceful advocates for gamers' rights in a way that no other organization is. They do their best to keep the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) honest and they do a remarkable job of monitoring legislative developments at the state and local level. These efforts take people, and the ECA is funded primarily through memberships.

Let's be clear: people at the ECA will be fired because of the controversy and the resulting reduction in membership dues that decreases their budget. This is not good for gamers.

I get that the ECA feels that the Amazon coupon stackers were taking advantage of the organization's efforts to deliver value to its members. Unlimited coupon stacking is like an infinite juggle combo in a fighting game - you may want combos, and you may want juggles, but no developer wants to have an infinite juggle combo exploit - it kills the game. If Amazon and the ECA couldn't close the infinite coupon stacking loophole, I get that they needed to withdraw the 10% off benefit.

However, that's no excuse for being draconian about membership cancellation. It doesn't mean that the ECA needs their technical partners (who, in my experience, aren't the greatest) to set up an online form, but they should be a lot better than certified mail. At Dawdle, for example, we kill accounts after an e-mail request. (We also disable the e-mail address.) I will say that I have seen some organizations auto-increment credit card expiration dates, but it's not the standard as far as I know, and Dawdle doesn't do this either.

Lastly, I received an e-mail from the ECA late last night. Let me quote from the e-mail (and this is without his permission):

Hello Sachin,
We are currently working on a revamp to our member cancellation system because it has caused a bit of a problem. The ECA in no way tries to take advantage of or exploit our member base. I hope you understand that we value our member base and partners more than anything and this is a bump in the road.
Please feel free to call me with any questions and I encourage it in fact. [xxx-xxx-xxxx] is my direct line.
-Best
Seth Stebbins- Marketing Manager
Entertainment Consumers Association(ECA)
64 Danbury Rd.| Suite 700| Wilton, CT 06897

Here's my response, in full:

Seth,

I trust you guys to get it right. Don't let me down.

Cheers,
Sachin

Here's his response from this morning:

Thanks Sachin, we working [sic] round the clock…

Based on our strong belief in the ideals and programs of the ECA, as well as their word that they are working "round the clock" to fix the situation, we are presently satisfied that this is truly just a bump in the road. However, if the ECA does not rectify the situation to our satisfaction, I will not hesitate to terminate Dawdle's association with the ECA.

I personally have an ECA membership, and at the end of the day, I trust the ECA to live up to its word and fix this situation as soon as humanly possible.

Cheers,

Sachin Agarwal

President & CEO, Dawdle.com

Know Your Roots - Take Advantage of a Slow Q4 to Play the Classic Video Games You Missed!

2009-10-05T10:30:00-05:00

While many of this fall's big games were delayed into next year, there are always more games to play than there is time. Many great games have been released in the past few years, and this fall and winter are a great opportunity to get caught up on past classics.

Most Xbox games work just fine on the Xbox 360, so why not check out some past classics? Of course there are games like Halo, Grand Theft Auto, and Ninja Gaiden that redefined console FPS, open world sandboxes, and difficulty levels, respectively. There are some great overlooked games, such as Super Monkey Ball Deluxe and Batman: Vengance that are definitely worth checking out.

While most people know that the Xbox 360 is backwards compatible, did you know that all GameCube games play natively on the Wii? Yup, it's true - there's a full-on GameCube chipset in the Wii, and four controller ports on the top of the console. You can even plug in a Wavebird controller. Why not try the GameCube version of Super Nintendo classics like Star Fox Adventures or F-Zero GX? There are also some criminally overlooked games like The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures and Ikaruga that you definitely have to give a whirl. And some people may prefer to play Twilight Princess with Link as a lefty (and with full camera control!).

And, of course, there are thousands - literally thousands - of classic NES, Genesis, and Super NES games available for sale on Dawdle. Sign up now and start playing some great classic games and get some even better deals. (And, of course, you can sell your games back to other gamers on Dawdle to buy even more classic games when you're done!)

Why Penny Arcade is wrong about GameStop being a pawn shop

2009-03-17T10:04:42-05:00

Penny Arcade recently ran a comic that compared GameStop to a pawn shop. And in the post accompanying the comic, Jerry equated the two. While we're no fans of GameStop (honestly, one of our goals at Dawdle is to put them out of business), it's patently unfair to compare GameStop to pawn shops.

It's unfair to pawn shops and their patrons.

A large majority of items taken into pawn shops - somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of items - are redeemed by the people who bring them in. The majority - perhaps a vast majority - of people go to pawn shops to get loans to live their lives, not to unload stuff that they don't want any more. Pawn shops are lending institutions, first and foremost - they're not, at their cores, retailers. Their interest rates are regulated and they inspect the merchandise that comes in. If we've learned anything over the last twelve months, it's that access to credit is a critical part of keeping the economy humming. Pawn shops serve a vital economic interest. (The splattered blood in the comic is, in my opinion, pretty unfair, however.)

GameStop's not a pawn shop. They don't lend money. No one trades in a game at GameStop with the intention of repurchasing it in 30 days. GameStop takes advantage of people's desire to realize some measure of residual value for their games by offering a significant discount to an item's true value (by definition, the price GameStop sells a used game or system at) and giving them store credit (which, by definition, is worth less than cash money).

GameStop provides a service, no doubt - they allow gamers to reduce the total cost of ownership for a game. It is clear that lower prices drive sales - the NFL 2K5 experiment resulted in a five-fold sales jump over the previous installation - and drove EA Sports to lock up an exclusive on the NFL license. Valve's recent price drop experiment also resulted in a net gain in revenue. But those examples are the equivalent of Kia reducing price on its cars to jack up sales volume; the path the gaming industry has chosen has been to maintain premium pricing for premium products. That's a completely rational path - but if and only if the proceeds from used games go into buying new games, a process I like to call the "money multiplier". (In this political environment, I'll refrain from using the name Keynes.)

GameStop locks in those who trade games into spending their proceeds at GameStop stores. Then they subvert the "money multiplier" process by pushing used games on buyers looking to buy new. (That's the part of the GameStop model that gets Dave Perry the most upset.)

At the end of the day, the game publishers and gamers need to divorce their feelings about used games from their feelings about GameStop. If the sales of new games resulting from the "money multiplier" process are greater than the forgone new game sales lost to used games, then used games, by definition, are good for the industry. But it's pretty clear that, because of GameStop's economic structure, their lock-in via the use of store credit, and their incentives to push used games at the expense of new games, that GameStop as a company is not good for the gaming industry.

That's where the misplaced hate comes in. So be nice to the pawn shops - at least they give their patrons cash, not store credit.

Welcome TechCrunch Readers!

2009-02-16T15:03:15-06:00

Thanks for dropping by Dawdle! Hopefully, the servers will hold up under your benevolent onslaught.

I figured that I'd take this opportunity to highlight some things about Dawdle that may not be so obvious at first glance.

Everyone, not just retailers, can get their free online storefront with their custom username. Get yours now before someone steals your Gamertag!
When you set up your storefront, links to your profile on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn pages are automatically created if you've put that information in on your Personal Info page in MyDawdle. In addition, we'll display your Xbox Live Gamertag, PlayStation Network ID, and Wii Friend Code if you've entered those. You can turn the display of all of these on or off in your storefront settings.
Credit card entry is really easy on Dawdle. You can use dashes or spaces to separate numbers that you enter; you don't have to input one long 15 or 16 digit string that's hard to double check. We'll automatically strip out spacer characters. This makes it so much easier to enter your numbers so you don't get accidental declines when you try to buy things.
We have bulk upload via FTP for professional sellers, defined as people who make a living selling video games and gear. They also get the option to display their store's name instead of a personal name. We have partnerships with FillZ and others to help them list their product on the site. All of these tools are free; see Dawdle's Professional Selling section for more details.
We're really, really proud of our screening. We're the only marketplace that lets buyers screen by price and seller reputation from the get-go. You can daisy chain screens with free text search to drill down to exactly what you want. The free-text search is a little wonky, so if it doesn't work, try
We have tools that everyone can use. (Yeah, they're free too!) We have a Dawdle toolbar and a Dawdle Search Firefox extension that you can install on your machine. They're great to search the site quickly no matter where you are on the Web.

There are also a few hidden Easter eggs throughout the site and we've done our best to be playful and funny and non-offensive with our jokes and error messages. And, if there's anything you want to add, just go to the Dawdle UserVoice page. We use it pretty much as a public roadmap, so add and vote for the suggestions for the features you want. You can see that we try to respond to messages and add the features <vw> that the people vant. </vw>

Thanks for dropping by! We hope you... linger for a while. :)

Dawdle.com 2008 Year In Review Navel-Gazing Blog Post

2008-12-29T19:26:54-06:00

Inspired by our Chicago neighbors, I thought it would be fun to do a Year In Review post to go over all the things we've done and the progress we've made at Dawdle.com this year. We've done a ton of things this past year, and made a lot of changes. The changes seem to be for the better - sales, users, etc. are all up dramatically. But, no, we're not going to give you raw numbers. Sorry. :)

The Big Change

We essentially did a 180 on how the site works. Prior to May, Dawdle essentially was Priceline for video games and gear. You could name your price, but you couldn't see what prices sellers were willing to sell at. We did it this way to solve the sniping problem on eBay. If you can't see what other people's bids are at, you can't outbid them by just a penny at the end. And, if you know that other people can't see your bids, you could bid whatever you really felt the item was worth to you. We called this our Intelligent Matching Engine, as we matched buyers and sellers the same way that eHarmony matched men and women. The idea was that people could come to Dawdle once, name their real price, and then wait for the listing to expire to see if they won or not, saving them the hassle of having to come back over and over again to up their bid by a quarter.

In May, we totally flipped this on its head. We made seller listing prices public and became a pseudo-fixed price marketplace. Now, rather than having no information, buyers had full transparency as to what sellers were listing their products at. This meant that we could publish data feeds out, and that buyers coming to the site had cost certainty. However, we were really proud of our Intelligent Matching Engine, so we left that functionality and re-branded it as Make a StandingOffer. With StandingOffers, you can still name your own price for the stuff that you want; in addition to helping gamers find good deals on hard-to-find items, it's a great way for resellers of video games and gear to acquire inventory for sale. Needless to say, sales went way up after this change, and StandingOffers increased as well, so that was a big success all around.

From day one, however, we've handled all the payment processing. We've always used intelligent credit card processing and direct deposit to not only make sure that sellers get paid, but that it happened automatically. So we got some of it right.

User Experience (UX) Changes

When we launched out of beta in October, we had a brand new redesign, courtesy of Naz Hamid at Weightshift. This design was much more inviting and a celebration of gamers. The previous design was functional, but really just wasn't as professional as what we have now. (Needless to say, the previous designer was me.)
In addition to Naz's redesign, we launched the most powerful search on any marketplace site on the web. Not only can you search by keyword, but you can screen listings by pretty much any category imaginable. Dawdle is the only site that lets users screen listings by price and by Seller Rating (which is our improvement on basic feedback ratings on other sites) from the get-go. If you want to find Sega Genesis games under $10 listed by sellers with at least a four star Seller Rating, go right ahead.
Even after Naz's redesign, we didn't rest on our laurels. We never stop making the Dawdle experience better! Just last week, we totally revamped our Product Pages. Now, you can choose the seller that you're going to buy from (even as a fixed price marketplace, the Intelligent Matching Engine still matched you to a seller). It's a small UX change that took a massive amount of work on the back-end. It's not too much by itself, but it is a predecessor step to some major new features we'll be releasing early next year. :) We also added suggestions for other items you might want to buy, and moved around the descriptions and details of the product based on user feedback. (And we love your feedback - just Contact Us!)

Professional Seller Changes

Bulk uploads - by far, the number one feature request from our professional seller partners was bulk upload. (Pro sellers are people who make a living selling video games, either from an independent retailer in a strip mall or mall store somewhere, or online as a seller on marketplaces like Dawdle, eBay, Amazon, and other web stores.) Based on seller input, Dawdle has the best - and we don't say that lightly - bulk upload process of any site. We require less data, and are smarter with what you give us, than any other site. We just require UPC, quanity, Comes With, Condition, and price in a simple CSV file. And we use a "wipe and replace" methodology for our bulk upload. This means that whatever you send us in your most recent file is what's up on the site - no need to track what you've given us before and create a complicated DIFF file. Just send us the latest! And if you want to take all your listings down, just send us a blank file - it's easy peasy. Just e-mail us at pros@dawdle.com for all the documentation your heart desires and to get set up with FTP access for bulk upload.
Self-service refunds: because our professional sellers sell a lot of product on a lot of sites, sometimes an item sells somewhere else before it sells on Dawdle. Based on user demand, we built a simple refund program in MyDawdle to allow professional sellers to handle refunds to customers quickly and easily. At Dawdle, we believe the customer belongs to the seller, not to Dawdle. We want to provide tools, then get out of the way. This is an implementation of that policy. We want sellers to feel empowered, not boxed in.
Partnerships with FillZ, Wolf Track Software, and Extreme POS. At Dawdle, we want to make it as easy as possible to help sellers get their inventory listed on Dawdle. As part of our launch in October, we announced partnerships with FillZ, Wolf Track Software, and Extreme POS. These partners are the best of the best. FillZ has a rabid focus on helping media sellers sell online, whether it's a large online-only seller or a small pawn shop. Extreme POS and Wolf Track are the leading providers of point of sale systems to independent retailers and regional chains. With Extreme POS or Wolf Track, retailers will be able to list their products on Dawdle in seconds - with no external software or exports - from right within their existing POS systems. This is the first time any marketplace has integrated so closely with retailers. Credit for this goes to Dawdle's crack technical team, who has lots of experience in the niche area of integrating in-store POS with online commerce.
A dedicated site - because we know that professional sellers have special needs, we created a special section of our website at http://www.dawdle.com/pros/ . We want professionals to feel "at home" and welcome on Dawdle and we constantly are looking for partnerships and features to make Dawdle the best place to sell your inventory online. This microsite is an example of our dedication to the professionals who make it easy for gamers to find that obscure Dreamcast game or that childhood favorite on the NES.

There are so many other new things on Dawdle - Dawdle's affiliate program, our fancy new (expensive) servers to deal with all the load, our very successful fundraiser (co-sponsored by Midway Games) for Child's Play charity, but I've already gone on long enough.

Thank you so much for all your support of Dawdle, and please - do let us know what we can do better and how we can make selling on Dawdle in 2009 the best experience you can possibly have!

Cheers,
Sachin