What is it? Beats me. Here’s my attempt to work it out.

Play.com’s helpdesk states the following (edited for simplicity):

When you make a sale on PlayTrade the proceeds of the sale are deposited into your PlayFunds account, less a commission fee of 10% of the sale price plus a 50p closing fee. ( Subscribers to our ProTrader scheme pay just 10% commission when an item sells. ProTraders do not pay the additional 50p closing fee. )

When you withdraw money from your PlayFunds account we deposit the money directly into your bank account, less a transfer fee of 5% of the balance transferred.

Subscription to our ProTrader scheme costs just £19.99 per month. As well as receiving a discount on fees, ProTraders are able to list more than 50 items for sale at any one time, and also gain access to our ProTrader volume selling tools.

All of our fees include VAT where applicable. If you are a VAT-registered business within the EU you may qualify for VAT-exclusive fees.

And that’s about it. To get the full story, I had to contact their merchant helpdesk. Luckily they’re a lot more clued up on VAT than any other retail employees I’ve asked about VAT in the past. The answer?

Dear Merchant,

Thank you for your email.

The only part where you’re not quite correct is the VAT excluded commission fee which is rounded up to 9.35%. and yes, the 5% transfer fee is not affected by being VAT registered. Doing some quick maths, 9.35% of 419.65 comes to £39.23 (£39.24 if you round up), your commission and handling fee added together comes to £39.21.

Hopufully this makes sense and all adds up. Please let me know if not.

Kind Regards

James

So, to clarify:

• Closing fee = 43p ex 15% VAT = 50p inc.
• ProTrader Subscription Fee = £17.38 ex 15% VAT = £19.99 inc.
• Comission Fee = made up of two seperate charges, the actual commision fee ( 4.3478 percent ex 15% VAT = 5 percent total ) plus a payment transaction fee of 5%, not liable for VAT due to it being a financial service – sneaky that, eh? In reality, the 4.3478 is rounded up to 4.35%, so VAT registered sellers can expect a total 9.35% final comission fee.
• And finally, there’s the Payment Transfer fee of 5% – again, a financial service not liable for VAT.

So, the VAT registered ProTrader can expect to pay £17.38 per month + 14.35% per transaction after banking, versus £19.99 & 15% for non-VAT registered dealers.

So they don’t exist as an independent entity anymore, but their marketplace may start becoming more useful to myself. The final decision comes down to price, but how to incoporate these in to iGPC?

AFAIK, Play.com has no API*, no RSS feeds, no mobile site, no other simplified way of accessing data – hell, their site doesn’t even allow search by barcode. So, how do? Same as eBay.

* Actually, they do have an API, though the primary one is only available to subscription ProTraders, and only allows limited functionality to reference current items being sold under your account, no wider access to the catalogue.

The plus side is, Play.com tents to use (and *only* use) the official manufacture titles for items, and like Amazon (or even more so) they only show up in a single item page. Which means a search through the standard site, in the right category, for the proper title, should bring up your item as either the only result, or at least the first result.

Double plus, the current lowest New and Used prices are shown on the same page – given Play.com’s inevitable high reliance on people simply picking the lowest priced item (an educated guess at this point), this is probably the only price you wanna pay attention to.

A standard URL search string is this, which is normally shown in a textualised form to end users when browsing (eg. …/Games/PlayStation 3/Consoles/…):

Option A (using only searchfilters query):

http://www.play.com/Search.html?searchfilters=s{XCOM:+Enemy+Unknown}+c{362}+c{10065}+

Option B (seperate searchstring and searchfilters queries, primary difference being this will visually display the category navigation on the page):

http://www.play.com/Search.html?searchstring=XCOM:+Enemy+Unknown&searchfilters=c{362}+c{10065}+

URL and Query Formatting:
http://www.play.com/Search.html? – Search root.
searchfilters= – Prefix to any filters relating to search queries.
s{Title Here} – Search string, insert title between brackets, standard real-world formatting can be used (eg. “Here: Is an – Example”) but preferably convert spaces to “+”. Blame unix. Or blame windows for ever allowing them without. Or something.
+ – Seperates any search filter – as above, you can leave them out, but best not…
c{362} – Root category, this *must* go before any subcategory. In this case, it’s Games. Full list added below shortly.
c{10065} – Primary Sub category, in this case PlayStation 3. These can be left off to just search the root.
c{3707} – Secondary sub category. Varies depending on main cat, for Games this usually includes various game generes, Accessories, and Consoles. In this case, PS3 Accessories.
+ – Trailing “+” – in browsers, this is added automatically if left out, and best to keep it there. It’s not required, though coders will need to enable the CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION flag if it’s not used.

Additional Extras:
&ob= – Additional option for search result ordering. 0 = “Best Selling” (or alternatively leave the query out and it defaults to this). 1 = A-Z (best option if searching by a full title – ie. it puts all re-release / limited edition results later on), 2 = Z-A, 3 = Price High to Low, 4 = Price Low to High, 5 = Customer Rating, 6 = Release Date,
& – Inserting an additional ampersand (&) proceeded by a blank space within the queries section (ie. a blank query) results in a bug removing most of the Play.com header and sidebar, consequently saving over 10,000 characters in the HTML (approx. 10% of the entire file). Useful for cURLing pages, then. Eg: http://www.play.com/Search.html?& &searchfilters=s{XCOM:+Enemy+Unknown}+c{362}+c{10065}+ Note that the exact placement of the blank query may need to be adjusted on how many other queries you have present.

General URL Info:

A standard URL as available for a Play.com listing = http://www.play.com/Games/Xbox360/4-/28742448/XCOM-Enemy-Unknown/Product.html

Made up of root / primary category / sub category 1 / sub category 2 / item sku / item title / page type.

However, a number of these can be ignored / blanked out, though the structure can’t actually be changed / removed altogether.

The name can be blanked (-), as can sub-category 2 (it is by default 4- when no sub-sub cat is available). Eg. http://www.play.com/Games/Xbox360/-/28742448/-/Product.html

The primary sub category can actually be any sub category of the main category, the SKU will still bring up the right data.Eg. http://www.play.com/Games/PC/-/28742448/-/Product.html

And infact, the main category can be any category, so long as subcat1 is a correct subcat of it. There’s some exceptions to this (/DVD/DVD/ only brings up DVD results) but in general, this URL will work for any SKU: http://www.play.com/toys/toys/-/28742448/-/product.html?&+ (blank query added to create branding removal detailed above) . Bear in mind however that some SKUs (music items specifically) will redirect / update the URL as they use a slightly differing URL structure, though hopefully CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION will solve this as mentioned earlier.

Search Result:
Data to parse shows as follows (ymmv, if they change the code as often as eBay do):

17 New  from  £23.99  FREE delivery

Available  used  from  £19.99

Root Categories:

34 – Music
57 – DVD
91 – Books
321 – Electronics
362 – (Video / Computer) Games
363 – Sports & Outdoors
397 – Mobile
420 – Computing
439 – Gifts & Gadgets
470 – Clothing
600 – Blu-ray
2317 – Toys
4854 – Baby
4855 – Office

Primary Sub Categories:

362 – (Video / Computer) Games

10005 – Game Boy Advance
10006 – Gamecube
10009 – PC
10010 – Sony PS2
10018 – Xbox
10047 – Nintendo DSi & DS (inc. 3DS)
10041 – Sony PSP (inc. Vita)
10049 – Xbox 360
10065 – Sony PS3
10066 – Nintendo Wii (inc. Wii U)

Secondary Sub Categories:

362 – (Video / Computer) Games
10065 – Sony PS3
3707 – Accessories
4658 – Consoles

362 – (Video / Computer) Games
10010 – Sony PS2
4174 – Accessories
4661 – Consoles

362 – (Video / Computer) Games
10047 – Nintendo DSi & DS (inc. 3DS)
3985 – Accessories
4659 – Consoles

362 – (Video / Computer) Games
10041 – Sony PSP (inc. Vita)
4155 – Accessories
4660 – Consoles

362 – (Video / Computer) Games
10049 – Xbox 360
3798 – Accessories
4656 – Consoles

362 – (Video / Computer) Games
10065 – Sony PS3
3707 – Accessories
4658 – Consoles

362 – (Video / Computer) Games
10066 – Nintendo Wii (inc. Wii U)
3892 – Accessories
4657 – Consoles

Nice little comment from a Tesco boss on MCV:

“…a retailer looks at key factors like market growth, margin, cost to serve and ease of operation, shrink risk, returns and exit protection, and broader traffic and spend driving properties.

Video games currently scores poorly on every one.”

So. That bodes well.

Popped in to a few GAME stores today to buy stuff. Even though they’re in dire financial straits, they still have staff questioning whether they’re allowed to sell multiple copies of one title to someone, whilst others are putting multi-buys through the til in multiple transactions to avoid upper management noticing and becoming annoyed at the extra sale/s.

Geez, GAME, maybe if you started selling multiple copies to everyone you wouldn’t all be about to loose your jobs. Still, not that it really matters now, it’s probably too late already. Either way, most of their stock seems to be vanishing fast, and we all know they ain’t getting anything new in… Shame, really. If any managers in their dispatch centre read this, you can come work for me. You always were the best pick/packers I ever had the pleasure of purchasing from .

Depending on who you believe, Game Group – comprising GAME, GameStation, and until some Point larer today, Gameplay, are in big trouble. And that means you, likely Game customer, are too.

See, their credit rating’s shocking (and you dont even wanna see their share price), and supposedly there’s no cash to pay for anything up front. Which means supplier after supplier is refusing to hand over stock of the latet titles. Which brings me to the point of this post.

Here’s what some suits at Game decided on hearing EA wouldn’t let them sell Mass Effect 3, emphasis mine:

“We know [pre-order customers] will be disappointed regarding Mass Effect in particular, and in recognition of this, we will be contacting our Mass Effect pre-order customers and as a gesture of goodwill we will be offering them £5 of reward card/elite card credit.”

If that’s not clear enough, i’ll spell it out.

You give Game X pounds (in this case £5) to pre order a title.
For whatever reason, Game dont supply the title.
Game keep your £5. End of. I’d love to find the T&Cs for that.

Oh and, because you might complain and cause bad press, out of the goodness of their hearts and supposedly not something theyre legally required to do, they’ll give you £5 credit with them. Credit which we already know isnt in the best of shapes.

Yes, Game customers, you just all became Game creditors.

So thats one reason i’d be staying away from pre orders with them, or anyone for that matter.

Up next, pics of the new office

http://www.therestartpage.com

Happy days. *g*

Quick link to my fav. hacker come manufacturer Bunnie Huang’s latest post on counterfeiting in electronics. The same mostly applies to video game hardware (albeit no one quite trying to pass off any truly counterfeit consoles yet afaik), and also why I’m not a huge fan of re-packaged / re-sealed games.

- A design curtosey 1990′s Geocities and Windows Paint, with
- A tsunami.
- And some oversized penises.

Bad enough?

Nope, it gets worse. Much, much worse.

Cheers josh for the heads up. And hi to all iG’s fans in Leeds Grainger Games. Love you really