Honesty.com Weblog: Honesty Team Blog

September 06, 2006

Honesty Team Blog

Welcome to the Honesty Team Blog!!

What is Honesty.com?

I guess before I introduce the team and give you a general overview of things I should explain what Honesty.com is all about!!

In a nutshell, Honesty.com helps you find bargains on eBay. There is a whole section of our About Us page devoted to who we are and why we built the site and we’d love to have you peruse that page.

The premise is simple, but the process is complex. The premise is that with so many items on eBay at any given time, its impossible to know if you are getting a real bargain or throwing cold hard cash away. Honesty.com eliminates the unknown and tells you right up front the bargain price. The process uses complex algorithms and historical data to determine the bargain price of an item. This is the lowest you can expect to pay for the item.

Let me "nutshell" that last statement for you J. Just because an item starts at $5.00, doesn’t mean that is the "selling price". If that item listed at $5.00 is sells at Macy’s for $500.00, its not selling on eBay for $5.00, even if that is the starting price (other bidders will flock to the item), but we’ll tell you that the bargain price for this item is $200.00 and you can aim your bidding arm for the bargain price or slightly above to assure you get the item.

Introduction

I wanted to use the introduction area to talk about the team you'll be meeting in this blog, ramble a bit about frugality and online shopping and then give you some nitty-gritty to assist you with the basics. So if you're interested in just one of the sections, please feel free to jump down. We would not want to bore you :).

My name is Crystal Wells-Miller, and I'm the community manager at Andale. I've not quite figured out how to answer when people say "what do you do", because I have a wall full of hats which I get to wear daily and I get to do a lot of different things. My ideal job description! I've the honor of doing the first blog post, as I'm a master of impatience. Meaning, when Prashant said, who wants to write the first blog post", there was a three second pause, and I said, "I'll do it". Everyone at Andale knows that if there is enough of a pause, my impatience will kick in and I'll do it.

I’d also like to tell you a bit about the brains behind the Honesty.com website. Our fearless leader J Prashant Nedungadi is the CTO at Andale and the rock behind this project. I say rock because a typical meeting goes like this. "I like the blue", "I hate the blue" and the "discussion" begins. Prash (we call him Prash, and you can too!!) brings us back to reality and brings the calm back to the room. We are all totally passionate about the Honesty.com project and if you put a bunch of passionate people into a room and we all want to be heard. Prash listens and then does it his way! (really, he listens and does it the best way!). And before I give the impression that Prash is not passionate about this project, I've seen his eyes light up every time we talk about this project. He just doesn’t freak out like the rest of us :)

Other folks who you will see in our team blog are Digvijay,Neel and Ardaman , each of whom worked tirelessly on the project, and probably dream algorithms!! You’ll hear from Wyatt, the Product Manager and the guy that will be reviewing all your feedback from the Honesty BETA (Wyatt LOVES feedback, so please send it in!!).

The Ramble

I wanted to spend a minute talking about shopping on eBay. I've been on eBay since 1997. I came right at the transition from Auction Web to eBay and I've sold a lot of items. On the converse side, I've purchased a lot of items. If you're a seller, I probably bought from you :). I have a strong belief that sellers should "shop" eBay first. My friends and family hear this from me all the time. My sister bought a book for school and she spent $200.00. She could have gotten the same book on eBay for under $50.00 in less then five minutes, which was a lot less time than she spent in line. Not to mention gas and a Saturday afternoon. I do this with folks I work with. What do you mean you purchased a coffee pot from Macy's? Are you nuts? Look, go to eBay.

SEE!!! 1/2 the price and no lines!! I'm a very frugal person (okay, cheap). I have my Christmas shopping done before October and unless it’s a special request gift that is not available on eBay - ALL my Christmas shopping is done on eBay. If you have 10 weddings to go to this summer, save yourself a ton of cash and shop eBay. Not only do you get a better deal in most cases, it’s so much easier to shop with your fingers than your feet! I'm so excited about the honesty site. Instead of spending time looking for the "I told you so items", I can just type it into honesty and get a quick idea what they should have paid. I know I can bring more people around to my way of thinking. Frankly, I think most people could build up quite a nest egg by just shopping more frugally.

So my mantra is don't wait IN LINE, shop ONLINE :)

or it could be...EGADS, you paid HOW MUCH for that ??

The Nitty-Gritty

I thought maybe this would be a good time to shut up and show you the nitty-gritty in picture form.

Here’s the results page SUMMARY section:

Here’s the results page Items section:

In addition to the great bargains, we also offer RSS, which will be explained in a later post (in great boring detail!!), side bar navigation and some other cool things we’ll be talking about.

Ending this long post with a THANKS FOR READING !!!

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September 06, 2006

Honesty Team Blog

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