My digital camera sold within 24 hours. Yes, I did undercut the other sellers a lot ($20 vs. $80).
I am happy. Amazon is the new Ebay. No more auctions. Just put something on Amazon for the price I want, and see what happens.
Monthly Archives: October 2008
Losing a potential customer
A few months ago, my girlfriend went into a local outdoor store, Backcountry. She was looking for a certain pair of shoes that she wanted to try on. While talking with one of the employees, she mentioned that her brother worked for REI. He stopped helping her and told her that companies like that put businesses like his out of business.
I was reminded of this story as I drove by their store. I didn’t stop to browse.
In fact, I never will again.
This employee had very valid concerns. Beth probably would have bought the shoes from her brother, saving a lot of money. REI is the 800lb gorilla for a store like that. My question is, did his reaction help out his business in any way? Making people happy means people will talk about you. Making people angry means a lot more people will talk about you.
Who hurts their business more, REI or one bad employee?
Another Amazon story
Amazon is one of my favorite companies. Not because they do everything I want, but because they are easy to use. Their site, although a little too daunting at first glance, is actually really easy to navigate and do things.
Today, I decided to use Amazon to sell an old digital camera. I could have used Ebay, but Amazon has some perks that I really like. They have a great reputation. I don’t have to deal with all the extras of Ebay, like purchasing a picture or not. It was simple. Within 5 minutes, my item was posted on their site. Whether or not it will sell, time will only tell.
Another wiz-bang-cool thing that happens during the signup process is you get a call from Amazon. As expected, it was automated, but they called me to verify who I am, and as soon as I typed in my verification code, the web page updated. Very cool.
Tools
Inspired by Hanslemann’s tool list, and realizing that if my hard drive fails I want to have links to all the tools I need, I have started my own tool list. Check it out..
My favorite thing, deleting code
After months of development, one of your developers refactors a piece of code to be much better than before. In many cases, you end up with code that is no longer in use. Some people say Keep it around in case I need it but I say Delete it
At first, this may seem counter-intuitive. Isn’t this gong to cause more work in case you do need that function? No. Delete it. Don’t think twice. Here is why.
Unused code isn’t being tested. Used code is tested everyday, by your users if nothing else. The last thing you want is a developer to use code that might be completely wrong.
It reduces your code base. The less code you have, the less probability for problems exist. The less code you have, the easier it is to learn the code base.
Lastly, your developers should be learning everyday. If given a second chance, many developers would develop the same function completely differently a year apart. They would code a better function, that is more thoroughly tested and uses best practices.
So, don’t worry about it. Delete it.