Never pay retail again. | Hacker News Reader

Never pay retail again.

employeediscounted.com

24 pointsgtdwngtdrty25 comments

Employee discounts for all.

OK, so let's say I own a retail store and I see that my company is on here. No problem, I just sign up, have an employee buy some stuff for me so I can find out who they are, and fire them.

I bet that this violates the agreements most employees sign for discounts, which probably says they can only buy for themselves (or maybe family/friends), and that they can't resell the items. So this is fraud, basically.

Perhaps I'll start a site called "EmployeeOfficeSupplies.com" that hooks up people in need of office supplies with people working in offices who are happy to steal them. Or maybe one where I help people "share" their health insurance benefits.

This is stupid.

I think this site is a great idea for retail owners. As long as they sell to employees at a profit, this is a really good way of increasing their price discrimination.

Most of those people who are happy to pay full price won't bother using this site anyway. Those that aren't, but are willing to pay the discounted rate will become extra sales the company would not have otherwise had.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination

[Edit: I don't believe that employees should do this behind their employers' backs, just that it's probably a good idea for the employers to let them.]

You're missing the fact that the people that are happy to pay full price are also (as a general rule) also happy to pay less than the full price.

Only if they know the site exists, and are willing to bother themselves fiddling with it. The dollar rich are often time poor, so will be willing to pay full price to save hassle -- after all, they don't collect coupons (for example).

No, the way price discrimination works is that you set up hurdles that are expensive for someone who makes $80/hour and cheap for someone who makes $8/hour, so you get business from both. If this site reduces the cost of getting a discount, it weakens their price discrimination power.

Fiddling with a website and trying to arrange a transaction with one of these insiders is expensive for someone who earns $80 an hour. They're time poor generally, and they don't want to waste what little they've got.

Think on the margin.

Or, I either raise the price or lower the employee discount so that there is a sufficient margin and get all my employees to sign up and profit.

In other words, you harm the employees who aren't cheating you, and and then you approve of the ones who are?

The ethics of startups can often be on the fringe - the music industry was completely shaken up by startups there were operating on, or beyond, this fringe. Mp3.com pushed the fringes of copyright (they figured they were in the right btw).

These people were disrupting markets that are broken... Perhaps the coupon/employee/etc/etc system is broken? This has a definite scam aspect that bothers me personally, but it's worth considering how the market has evolved that this can happen.

Sorry to offer criticism, but this is the most unethical thing I've ever seen. Not only that, the market for this sort of trading is already stitched up by eBay, and they do it better by not being so blatant about the source of the discount.

So this product actually does a worse job than eBay - that's no mean feat.

I know sometimes game-changers come about by pushing ethics around - but this is morally wrong in so many different ways I'm struggling to express it.

Purely out of interest, I'd love to meet the person or people who came up with this, but only so I could do my grumpy old man bit about the "me" generation.

this is the most unethical thing I've ever seen.

I'm guessing you don't watch the news very often :)

Fair point, so perhaps I should wind it down a bit: it's certainly the least ethical website I've seen launched on HN.

I agree with you in full. Giving other people your employee discount is a method of theft. It is no different than other methods of employee theft such as over-charging customers, identity theft, theft of stock or theft of time. The only difference is sharing your discount is an easier form of theft to rationalize.

This website is a black market and is likely profiting. I'm pretty sure that's illegal.

Cool idea but this won't last. First companies will sack staff they catch on here. I guess you could obfuscate the buyer/seller information but eventually some staff will get tracked down based on their products or the discount they offer or whatever. Secondly, eventually it will just be filled with companies themselves selling the clothes on here right and ultimately moving the average price up. That or this will just work to remove the notion of employee discount.

Companies will sack staff on this site? In this economy, companies will probably reward staff on this site if they move product. Heck, companies will probably just put themselves on the site!

Strange but true: Microsoft encourages their employees to get their non-employee friends to use the employee discount.

A sale is a sale, I guess.

It would be strange if it was true. Unless things have changed in the past ~1 year, Microsoft does not encourage employees to get their non-employee friends to use the employee discount. There is some fairly specific stuff about being able to use your employee discount on gifts, but not in exchange for $s or products.

Weird. When I bought MS-Office at the Microsoft store on the Redmond campus, an employee gave the cashier his employee number while I waited. Lots of people were doing that, just as openly.

"eventually it will just be filled with companies themselves selling the clothes on here right and ultimately moving the average price up"

Dude, that's every online retailer's dream.

This could be a really successful "in" to having an online business. The trick will be to continue adding value after the initial hook has worn off and prices are no longer competitive. If you can make the shoppers keep coming even after they no longer get the employee discount, you have a profitable venture.

It's a sting operation.

Retailers: Need to cut back on staff, but don't know where to start? Let us help...

Everything said so far, and also "employee's".

I mean, taking unethical advantage of a benefit is one thing, but poor grammar? In bodytext frozen in an image no less? Unnacceptable :)

Nice idea, but I think it needs a catchier name. Something with a little more zip.

EmployeeTheft.com ?

THIS IS SO ILLEGAL

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