Dawdle Blog

Dawdle.com's Position On The ECA

 

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

Welcome TechCrunch Readers!

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.  :)

Welcome New Galaxy!

Welcome to the new site for Dawdle.com!  We are very proud of all the growth we've seen since we launched in beta last November and are thrilled to already be the largest gaming marketplace out there.  We want to change the way that people buy and sell their games and gear - it makes absolutely no sense for people to go to GameStop to trade in their stuff for pennies on the dollar.  GameStop just slaps on a yellow sticker and triples the price to sell it to someone else.  We can all do better than that.

Dawdle is Hiring!

Credit: fwaggle on Flickr

We're looking for a Salesperson/Relationship Manager to contact independent retailers across the country to get their inventory up on Dawdle ASAP!  We're gearing up for the holiday season, and with AAA new titles few and far between this winter, now's a great time for people to try out some older games. 

You can work from home, but you must be professional, accountable, and damn good at selling over the phone.  These stores across the country are great people, but may not want to try new things because they've been burned in the past.  Your job will be to show them just how easy and safe Dawdle is, demonstrate that it's risk-free, and prove that we handle everything so that they can still sell to their walk-in traffic while increasing revenue by selling in a dedicated and trusted platform online.

Salesperson/Relationship Manager position at Dawdle.com (Startuply)

Hey affiliates: Dawdle now available on PopShops!

Dawdle is excited to announce that you can now promote our products with a handy new tool called PopShops (http://www.popshops.com/dawdle-com-affiliate-program) - voted "Best Affiliate Tool 2007" on ABestWeb!

Use PopShops to search across our entire product catalog and pick the products that you want to promote on your site. You can build storefronts, multi-page shops, and widgets. Pop them into your website, or plug them into platforms like WordPress, Blogger, and TypePad. You can even use PopShops to create SEO-friendly content for your site. Best of all: PopShops requires no programming knowledge whatsoever, and the service is free!

You can learn more about our affiliate program on the Dawdle affiliate page.  You can sign up for our affiliate program on the ShareASale Dawdle affiliate page.

Meet us at SDDC this Saturday!

Dawdle will be out in force at SocialDevCampChicago this Saturday, August 9!  We're a sponsor and Sachin Agarwal, our lead suit, will be leading a session on trust metrics in communities.  (Seriously, it'll be really interesting and informative.  Hopefully funny, too.)

It's free and will be at the cool-ass McCormick Tribune Student Center building thing on the IIT campus - you should really come, if not for the free beer afterwards.  Learn more and sign up!

Sometimes we wish IE had won

We're aware that a number of our lightboxes do not work in Safari 3; they used to work in Safari 2, but perhaps Apple broke something. 

We're looking into it, but for now, please bear with us and use Firefox or Flock if you're on a Mac.  (BTW, the staff at Dawdle all have MacBooks, so we're as upset as you are.)

Yay Hooray

So, you may have noticed something.  The New Year hit and we didn't activate our 50 cent listing fees.  Well, we noticed something interesting - people weren't making a bunch of fake listings even though they were free.  We never planned on trying to make money on listing fees - we credit them back when your item sells - we just wanted to make sure that people weren't listing things that they didn't have. 

But throughout November and December, people were really good about this.  People weren't listing stuff they didn't have.  No buyers complained that they didn't get what they paid for.  Turns out we worried for nothing.

So, if we weren't trying to make money on listing fees, and they're a pain in the butt for everyone anyway, why have them? 

So we don't.   Enjoy!

Belated Congrats

Posted while watching the Giants/Pats game...

A belated congrats to Eric G. of New York, NY for winning our Wii contest!  His odds were not good - many others had many more listings, but in the end, random() chose Eric. 

Thanks to everyone for their listings - keep them coming; we'll be doing surprise drawings for all sorts of stuff throughout 2008.  You never know when you may get an unexpected Priority Mail delivery from 60661.  And there are many more cool developments coming; keep your eyes peeled.

And Happy New Year!

Welcome to Dawdle!

Thanks for coming to Dawdle.  We've been busy little chipmunks to get up and running, and we're proud to have built the best marketplace for people to buy and sell their video games, game systems, and accessories online.

We wanted to highlight a few things we're particularly proud of:

• Search.  We've done a lot of work to make searching for your item as easy as possible and to get results to be as good as possible.  We've put some example searches underneath every search bar, so you can get a feel for what kind of searches work best.  Of course, you can still browse around if you want a more leisurely experience, but we make it easy to get in, do your thing, and get out.
• Our Product Pages.  This is where the magic happens - you can use our easy 1, 2, 3 step process to submit a bid.  Your bid is good on every single listing between when you place your bid and when it expires.  You don't have to come back over and over again to see if someone has it for sale.  Plus, it's easy to list an item to sell from here - just click on the big green button on the upper right of every Product Page.
• Our matching process.  When you tell us what you want (or have), we don't just search for exact matches.  We search for exact matches or better.  Better meaning better condition, higher seller rating, or a higher bid (if you're a seller).  And when we make a match between a bid and a seller's listing, we complete the transaction automatically.  This way, sellers get paid faster, so buyers get their stuff faster.  Our matching process means you'll never get sniped and you'll never have any unexpected shipping charges.
• MyDawdle. The Summary page includes a feed of all of your activity in reverse chronological order, just like an RSS or Facebook feed. You can easily jump around and see all of your activity and edit or remove your bids or listings at any time.
• Security.  We work hard to protect your info.  We've gone the extra mile for VeriSign's Extended Validation SSL certificate.  If you have IE 7 or the Firefox extension installed, your address bar will turn green on every secure page to show that you're on our servers.  We also use Yahoo! DomainKeys to sign our notification e-mails, so you know that e-mails that look like they're from us actually are from us.  (We're also particularly proud of the fact that our automated HTML e-mails render pretty nicely on BlackBerries.)  We're also a TRUSTe licensee, so you know that our Privacy Policy is up to snuff.

We've tried hard to make it simple to list items for sale and to bid on listings, so take a look around and let us know what you think.  We'll be on all the major forums, such as CAG and NeoGAF (that way you know we're not censoring anything) and we'll be pretty active on the blog.

Again, welcome, and Happy Dawdling!

Cheers,
The Dawdle Team