Death of Peerflix
Checking my email tonight includes a “Important Service Notice” from Peerflix letting me know that they are discontinuing their Marketplace and DVD buy/sell/trade aspects of their website. Peerflix had been a website where you could list DVD’s that you owned for trade with others. If you were buying, you would pay a small transaction fee and the marketplace price set by Peerflix. If you were selling, you could sell for the marketplace price with the postage paid by the buyer.
It was one of those seemingly good ideas that just did not take off in the end. There were complaints from sellers about the marketplace prices being too low. Some movies were priced a lot lower than what you could buy them from places like eBay, Half.com or Amazon.com. Halfway through their existence, Peerflix did a big upgrade and switched from a credit based system to a dollar based system that caused issues within the trading community.
In the end what seemed to kill it was the marketplace though, you had lots of buyers with no trade cash or sellers refusing to sell at the prices set by Peerflix. I know personally I would go through looking for a movie and see lots of haves (people with the movie and willing to send it out) with little wants (people with trade cash (TC) to buy). In my case, I have 38 movies listed in my Peerflix account, only 1 movie (Seabuscuit at 3 dollars) has a “want” with trade cash.
A market economy can only survive if there is a balance in the system of buyers and sellers.
Here is a example from my own account of the problem:
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: 51 haves (15 ready to send) vs 4 wants (0 with TC)
Men in Black II: 71 haves (32 ready to send) vs 6 wants (0 with TC)
Lollilove: 1 haves (0 ready to send) vs 7 wants (0 with TC)
The Beatles – A Celebration: 8 haves (2 ready to send) vs 0 wants (0 with TC)
Trapped in Paradise: 32 haves (16 ready to send) vs 0 wants (0 with TC)
Trapped in Paradise is a particular sore spot with me thanks to the Peerflix upgrade. I had built a few credits up in my account. For some reason, I had added this movie somewhere in my account even though its not exactly on my must have right now list. No big deal, I had not recieved any movies from the system anyways. Then Peerflix made the big switchover with their upgrade and suddenly they send me that movie along with a couple other movies that were in some list I had, but not exactly DVDs I were craving. Now I’m stuck with some movies I couldn’t unload if I tried even though its my fault for having not removed them completely from my lists.
Bye Peerflix, you were a nice little experiment into a trade economy, better luck next time.