I will pass on your comment and ask them to contact you.

Like most online businesses they have setup their customer support to encourage people to contact them via email, as that is the most effective way to provide a speedy response to a large customer base. And, generally it seems to work well. However, that system obviously breaks down when you can’t reach them via email for whatever reason.

There is no email contact for us and when I used other emails like “support” “service” @ fishpond etc I have had no replies.

More than 6 times I have tried

Not good enough.

Can YOU sort it out for me?

Can you help?

Thank you very much
Noeline Spark

The Linux department when broadband really came into its own and after a short stint selling surplus stock on Trade Me from their aborted T-shirt department, I handed in my notice. There really wasn’t much else a guy from Invercargill could do.

But I still use them heavily – I’m a five-star user. Being automated and having the 2.5million products means they have a better chance of having the obscure title I want. Back in the day, if there was a specific title I wanted to order, they would go beyond the call of duty and manually add it into their database for me.

I was happy to be there in the beginning and I’m happy to still give them my custom now. :)

I haven’t been back since.

But great that they are growing quickly, hopefully that means more purchasing power, and lower prices, and they turn into Australasias amazon equivalent. If I was better at PHP, I might be interested!

I’ll be super-interested if they follow Amazons example of becoming the default logistics operator for small retailers (providing infrastructure, warehousing, online shops etc etc). I love that about Amazon!

What do you do, stuarm? are you some sort of competitor employee, or fanboy?

The main issue is their pricing. All the books I’ve looked at in the past were more expensive on Fishpond than other shops in NZ. Some times it was cheaper to import from Amazon and pay the huge shipping fees from the US. To back up my findings I compared some pricing on the Fishpond site with other NZ shops.

“Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince” is featured on the Movies page, and is $39.99 (down from $51.99). That seemed expensive for a DVD, so I looked at the Warehouse and the same movie costs $29.80 which shows a saving of $5.19, making the usual price $34.99 – still well below the Fishpond price.

On the Music page Fishpond have the Twilight Soundtrack featured at $32.97. Again, this seems expensive for a CD and a quick look at The Warehouse shows they have a special edition of this soundtrack (which includes an additional DVD) for just $21.

Fishpond claim to have: “New Zealand’s lowest prices. Guaranteed.” The guarantee seems to only include local, online bookstores, which rules out The Warehouse pricing. I looked at the Whitcoulls website and compared the first three books featured on the Fishpond Books page. “New Moon”, “Touch the Dark”, and “Love” are ALL cheaper on Whitcoulls. I didn’t bother comparing any other prices.

I’m guessing that Fishpond aren’t even bothering to compete on price. Instead if someone goes to the effort of finding a cheaper price, Fishpond will just take the 10% credit hit (and note that this is an account credit, and not a refund – so the money will go back into Fishpond anyway.) It’s a good (but obviously slimy tactic) as Fishpond will have made more profit on the other sales where people haven’t noticed they aren’t the cheapest.

Also, has Fishpond really trademarked the phrase, “New Zealand’s Biggest Online Store”? How can you trademark that phrase? What if another online store is bigger than you? Does this really mean that Fishpond is the biggest in NZ? How is that measured? And what if MightyApe trademarked the phrase, “New Zealand’s Best Online Store.”

Again, I don’t mean to flame, but it really annoys me when online retailers (especially those in NZ) are so expensive.