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About LinkBacksYep and they have been pushing the services of other sellers more and more in the last year too.Originally Posted by OilSheikh
Yep and they have been pushing the services of other sellers more and more in the last year too.
Maybe they aren't going after Amazon but the classifieds market like eBay?
Which made them totally unusable for me. If I want to by from a 3rd party I'll go to ebay or amazon.
At least 2 if not 3+ years since the last time I used Play. First, they lost the price edge for things I was interested. And I think there was something I didn't like when I was going to update my credit card. I actually forgot what it was, but it was asking information that it did not before, and did not see the relevance. That was enough to make me stop using them.
I couldn't believe they'd gone down the marketplace route, looked an absolute mess last time I was there. Haven't bought anything from them in years though, Amazon have been much better.
Not supprised really they've been steadily going down hill for years.
This is indeed sad news - although not a huge shock as most people I know (including myself) have not bought from Play in a long time, as Amazon is nearly always the better option. I've never used their marketplace either as it's not been that great - again compared to Amazon where it's so easy and cheap (Fulfilled by amazon is an awesome service)..so not sure how successful this move will really be.
From what I know at the moment though I suspect this will be more of a shift in focus and marketing more than anything else - I can virtually guarantee that play will still be selling direct, but they will be one of the marketplace sellers in the list rather than as the main agent - a bit more like amazon's model but taking it a step further. If they invest in the right front end software and remaining competitive on costs, then they stand a good chance of relaunching. They are perfectly placed to make use of their existing infrastructure too to offer an FBA option (where sellers send play.com stock, and play.com do the shipping/picking/CS) which again will go down well if their pricing remains competitive.
Roughly 50% of my purchases on amazon are now from marketplace sellers - so if this is a common trend then maybe this isn't such a crazy idea or such a bad thing for us as consumers. We are all getting more savvy and are desperate for more choice - this is a way to provide that choice whilst still taking a cut.
Good luck to them - we'll see what happens in the coming months!
To be fair, we all know that the host a company outwith the UK mainland dodging tax would never last, Especially if this is what they used to reduce their margins,
Lets hope it doesnt turn into a disaster when it goes "marketplace"
People please read the article it's got the key points in it.
The loop hole was the Low Value Consignment Relief which meant no vat on items under £15 only
The loop hole was closed last year.
play.com was sold by the original founders two years ago.
so the owners sold out before it went bad (I wonder if they caught rumours and got out as things seemed to be starting to turn bad)
There's other factors to look at here as well, there has been a large slump in dvd retail sales, in part because of other media/outlets, lovefilm and similar rental services and more online streaming services have had a big impact.
That's part of the issues play was having, the market changed but they didn't.
[rem IMG]https://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i45/pob_aka_robg/Spork/project_spork.jpg[rem /IMG] [rem IMG]https://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i45/pob_aka_robg/dichotomy/dichotomy_footer_zps1c040519.jpg[rem /IMG]
Pob's new mod, Soviet Pob Propaganda style Laptop.
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Ding ding ding, we have a winner!
Updated..BBCBreaking: Music retailer #HMV to suspend shares and appoint administrators, BBC understands
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21021073#TWEET524856
Last edited by Stoo; 14-01-2013 at 10:01 PM.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21021073
Yup. But everyone knew that unless HMV had a stellar xmas, their time was up!
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
Yup, it's been on life support for so long, I think they still thought the beep was coming from the tills...
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