www.dailytelegraph.com.au/business/ebay-woolworths-and-big-w…
The new Click and Collect service will let shoppers choose from over 40,000 items on eBay and then collect their purchase from one of the participating Big W or Woolworths stores in Australia.
The service includes a handful of approved online stores including Surf Stitch, Your Home and Mytopia but plans to expand to 205 sellers are already in the works.
It's Sydney and Tassie to start with.
Why was it removed?
Good question.
See this comment https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/159761#comment-2585247 Strange request as it is on the front page banner of ebay this morning.
@sparkyglo: So it is - http://pages2.ebay.com.au/Simply_Collect.
Other post was incorrect, and it was yesterday (before it went public.)
Eh. Not that exciting if it's big Aussie stores only since you know, you could probably just drive and they tend to have reasonable postage anyway.
But hey, we'll see. Banner should really give a lot more info.
Most of the items in most of the stores already include free delivery. Woolworths are just doing what Australia Post have already done.
Woolworths and Ebay's senior management would be more than a tad upset about
the leaking of this deal to allow free-delivery of EBay items to Woolworths and
Big W outlets.
The news was first leaked on Ozbargain last Sunday night and broadcast on Sydney radio 2ue's Whisper segment about 7.10am Monday.
According to the moderator's post here:
See this comment https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/159761#comment-2585247
Woolworths senior management almost immediately demanded that ozbargain remove the thread about the deal - done about 9.58am on Monday 24 Feb 2015 - less than 14 hours after it was first posted.
Then national media started reporting this.
However, according to the initial post, Woolworths had wanted to announce this major partnership on Saturday 28 Feb 2015 - clearly hoping to break it as a major story in the national Sunday newspapers.
Now, after Ozbargain stole the retail giant's thunder, and given that the news is already out - then the story may not get the prominence - and masses of free publicity - that Woolworths and EBay were hoping for.
If this theory is correct it would be interesting to calculate the value of lost media publicity to Woolworths and EBay. I'd reckon potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars if it was a slow news weekend and the story got strong, even front page prominence.
Oh well, I guess they'll just have to spend more on advertising to get the word out.
In any case - free delivery of EBay items - once it ramps up to include almost any Australian EBay seller - has the potential to be a game changer for retail in Australia.
Why would people shop at bricks and mortar stores if you can purchase online and have items delivered for free pick up at Woolworths outlets?
It will be interesting to see how store staff cope with the influx of new parcels!
It's a bit weird, it was leaked by someone associated with woolworths/bigw if i remember the picture correctly. That and it looked like there was a small stand about it on some sort of bench or table. possibly a woolworths service desk counter?
already posted and then removed by mod…