Fishpond.com.au

Fishpond.com.au is an Australian e-commerce company that has grown to become the nations's number 1 online bookstore.
It was founded by Daniel Robertson in 2005.
Locations
Headquarters
The company's global headquarters is located in Auckland, New Zealand. It has satellite offices in Melbourne and Perth, Australia also.
Product lines
The current product range consists of: Books, CDs and DVDs.
The company launched 'Sell Yours', in 2005. A classifieds style element, that allowed public users to sell their own products through Fishpond's high traffic site. This move diversified the supplier base for many products, giving shoppers greater choice.
'Cash Rewards' is Fishpond's loyalty program, whereby users are given account credits for: writing product reviews and als using the 'Sell Yours' program. These account credits can be applied to future purchases.
Website
Product Reviews
In many respects, Fishpond have taken a 'crowdsourcing' approach to populating their website. Up until recently, all product reviews were incentivised, with the reviewer earning a $0.20 credit each time. Now only the first reviewer for a product earns this credit. However, since 17 May 2009 review editing has not worked. Whether they are doing away with this function remains to be seen. It still is not working as of 09 June 2009.
Search term recommendations
In an attempt to replicate Google's sophisticated search term recommendations (for when you mis spell something) Fishpond's engineers introduced their own system in May 2007. This is still in beta.
Affiliate Program
Fishpond operates an affiliate along the lines of Amazon Associates. The Fishpond program offers 10% commission on all referred sales and caters
Linked Lists
Lists of award winning and bestselling products, continually updated.
Text Vouchers
Gift vouchers delivered to mobile phones as text or picture messages
Product recommendations
Shoppers are shown the 'most desired' and 'most popular' products.
Wishlist
Shoppers can add products to this list for purchase at a later date, or to send to friend who might want to purchase an item or items on the list as a present.
Multiple Payment Methods
Shoppers are not restricted to credit card payments. They can use Paypal, bank transfer or cheque as well.
Innovations
Cash Rewards
Sample Music
This unique characteristic allows users to listen to short, approximately 30 second clips of each track on the CDs they are browsing. This function is designed to enable users to listen to the CD and decide if they like the music, or if the particular album features the songs they enjoy.
Shipping destinations
Global, but excludes high-fraud countries like Nigeria.
Customer service
All customer enquiries are serviced by a dedicated help desk team, via email only.
This is hugely unsatisfactory as orders are often late or confused and customers need re-assurance that they have placed a secure order.
Third-party seller pricing
'Sell Yours' allows independent authors and other motivated sellers to offer their products for sale on Fishpond. Second hand items must be priced at least 10% cheaper than the Fishpond list price.
Sounds great! doesn't it? In reality, it defaults to their new price and secondhand doesn't really exist....

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