Ebay learning it the hard way

Ebay, to increase its sales, came up with a very innovative idea.
There were thousands of ebay registered users, and >90% of them never bought a single item from ebay! This was a disaster. For this, the ebay team came up with promotional offers, where in it would lure this population (who never bought a single item on ebay yet) to buy an item (only 1 in quantity) at a very low price (No shipping charges as well)

For those who are unaware, you could have got Close-up toothpaste (MRP: 67) or Haldiram bhujia (MRP: 60) or Dettol handwash (MRP: 70) at 19Rs each. Yes.

This created an uproar - it did NOT get most of the existing ebay population to buy an item each; rather it got a very small population who bought 1 item each (i.e. bought one Close up at Rs. 19), and then they progressed to create 100 user accounts on ebay, and ordered the same item (i.e. bought 100 Close up paste now at Rs. 190) . Oh.. Did I mention, that some of these users were shop keepers? Now, you do the math.. :)

After learning it the hard way, ebay finally modified this a bit, and it now sends such promotional deals to the said population over emails only, after some network on age is spent i.e If you registered today, after say 2 months of time, you'll get this link to the promotional offer, and you'll be able to buy one quantity of this item. I appreciate the thought put in, even though aware of the fact that it still is not foolproof :)


Everything said and done, we are in a state of revolution in India - it is luring a layman to use his credit card online for just 19 rupees. However, you know what - these users will be back again and again, looking for attractive deals, and end up spending 20 rupees now, and they'll be badly hooked!

Believe me, its addictive! The world of deals had got me, for quite a while!

Superstitious Software Professionals

A recent comment on facebook got me a few likes. It was about the website of Indian Railways:

1. Always respect IRCTC (Never try to switch to any other site while booking tickets - pay complete attention to it). Ritual*
2. Never use ICICI Payment Gateway (Use HDFC preferably) - its frequently goes down.
3. Never login using the same user in two browsers - it does not help.
4. Pray

And you might think that's humorous, wouldn't you ?
No, its not for plain humor!
Its a fact for some of us.
You can call us Superstitious Software Professionals.

Didn't the software working perfectly just the previous day, show some abnormalities today? And isn't there 0.1% chance that it might just work again tomorrow, even though we did not fix it at all?

Doesn't your personal computer have its own set of preferences for some softwares; like my laptop has some attitude problems when working with IE or WORD.

If you do share the same feelings, share a few superstitious examples with me. Its fun to share :)