Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryanwaggoner | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com