RedWeek Debate on TUG

[GateKeeper]

I ran accross an interesting debate over on the TUG discussion board and thought that putting the more interesting points here would be interesting reading.


It seems that there is divided opinion on whether RedWeek has done the right thing by charging potential buyers and vacationers a fee to "respond" to ads on their site. The two primary arguments are.

A. By charging potential customers a fee, it weeds out tire kickers and "looky looms", and other "time wasters".


B. Who would pay to go shopping, let alone make an inquiry about an item?

Those that claim that "a" above is true, are truly optimistic in my opinion. I have never paid to make a inquiry about availability at a hotel, or paid a dime when phoning the airline to inquire about their fares. I wonder how RedWeek or those that believe this is a smart choice would believe that doing so for timeshare is any different. This is really skewed thinking.

Everyone reading this message has an opportunity now to evaluate this rationale and hopefully will agree that this is just weird logic. Opponents to this new fee agree and believe that it is a reflection of a greedy organization. Hats off to them for having signed their 1 millionth member. Check back here in two years, and I'll post our numbers, too.

The proponents of "b" above should be signing up at TimeshareGateway any day. What have we done to help weed out shoppers? Well, aside from making our Pay-per-Offer (read as Pay-per-inquiry) as useful as possible before even the seller/owner pays a fee, we believe that timeshare is not a common enough concept yet to think that it will withstand charging fees to interested parties to freely interact with owners directly. Imagine, massive reservation systems for airlines and hotels do not charge you to make an inquiry, who are timeshare owners to think that RedWeek is doing them any favors by introducing this to their business model. It suggests a certain arrogance to believe that timeshare is in such demand that you can now charge to even asks questions about an ad.

The most TimeshareGateway we will do to keep unwanted visitors from contacting our advertisers is two fold:

1. We require that any interested party be a member. STOP THE PRESS! Don't worry, it's FREE folks. The casual visitor is probably not even going to take the time to register for an account in order to send unwanted solicitations. It takes 1 minute to register (email address is all we require), so we really aren't impeding anyone's interest and yet it's enough to keep the really silly ones away.

2. Our pay-per-offer model has a field in it that clearly states an amount the interested party is "considering" for their interest. If a timeshare owner places a pay-per-offer ad, any interested party has to indicate an amount in their "inquiry", "offer", "lead" (whatever you want to call it). The owner sees this information before ever paying for it. Those with the wherewithall to pursue each lead will pay for them. Those more discriminating (the "a" types) will be able to decline the offer, without any payment, using our auto-decline feature.
We take the pay-per-offer model to the next step in limiting unwanted inquiries, by limiting each member to three concurrent inquiries. So not only do they have to be a member (Free of charge), but then can't SPAM our members with unlimited inquiries. They have to be selective, and that's enough for us to believe they have some interest in making contact with our owner members.

The point to take away from this is that there is no reason to charge a fee to a buyer or vacationer for their inquiries in order to maintain order in the ranks. I will not judge RedWeek for their decision as being "greedy" as many are suggeting, but the choice begs for a good explanation otherwise. There are many other ways to program a website in order to reduce the level of "noise" on the site, but the fee is truly an aggreesive approach.

Anyone is welcome to sign up here, FREE, place your ads FREE, and pay commensurately when you are contacted by an "interested" party (remeber, what you do with each inquiry is up to you!). Some will opt not to be bothered with paying for each inquiry, and we offer very affordable alternatives with our pre-paid ads.