Vinnie Mirchandani is going to love this. For those that don’t know, Vinnie’s mission in life is to get the best value out of software companies and their associated hangers on for his clients. Jason Holden just pinged me about Haggle4me.
Like all brilliantly simple ideas, this is so obvious it should smack you in the face. Instead of using eBay, where you find things and bid up to the price you’re prepared to pay, why not bid down? But not in the conventional sense.
You know what it’s like. You’re beaming from getting a new toy at a knock down price from eBay and someone says: ‘Hey what’d you pay for that?’ You tell them and they retort: ‘WTF? I know that if you go to XYZ widgets you could’ve saved an extra 10%’ Really ticks you off. Enter Haggle4Me.
The idea is you put out a call for an item, stating the best price you’ve found for it over the Internet. The community behind Haggle swings into action and finds it cheaper and hey presto you’ve got a bargain. The person who finds the best deal shares the spoils with the buyer. There is a de minimus saving of £20 before the savings share kicks in so I’d guess this will appeal to those seeking higher value items. Neat.
OK – a few caveats:
- It’s totally reliant on the community to be sufficiently interested that they take up the challenge
- Building communities isn’t easy but then they did get a slot on BBC which as anyone knows is the best free advertising you’ll find. Looking at the forum suggests there are a decent number of people prepared to give this a shot but they will need a heck of a lot more. That seems to reflect in the fairly thin listings.
- It doesn’t provide RSS feeds. In the modern age, that’s crucial because it allows automatic notification of updates to those who prefer using RSS readers. That’s me and a few million others who are over the bleeding edge
- It needs a TechCrunch tip but it won’t get that without providing RSS and possibly some sort of tagging mechanism that can show tag cloud data. That allows people to see the things that are popular rather than having to wade through lists
One really cool thing – they have a very clear ethics policy. I like that. So why the heck should something as consumery as this appear on this site?
It’s innovative and uses the idea of community for a common good but in a way that rewards. I can see a day when procuring business services and equipment could go this way. We’re in a time where boot strapping is the name of the game for young or new businesses. If you can contribute to helping your business colleagues in this manner, that makes you a good person with whom to do business.
It reminds me of the reverse auctions that were mooted in the late 90s before spend management became a hot topic. But since SMBs can’t play with the likes of Ariba, this is a darned good substitute.
Technorati Tags: innovation, procurement
