Introducing BitCoinz SuperStore - bitcoinz.ca/shop

[Cusipzzz]

Congrats on your store..not sure we needed another dealextreme + markup in bitcoin dropship site, but meh.

Well, maybe until DX starts taking BTC themselves I guess. 

Best of luck!

[1714982619]

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[1714982619]

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[1714982619]

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[1714982619]

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[awozny]

Hello,

Thank you for your input. We are expanding our products line to include many sources. What you see is just a meager start. We are working very hard to bring low price deals to the BitCoin community. Five new customers today, thank you all for your patronage. Peace.

Andrew

[VPoro]

I do like the idea of a store accepting bitcoins, however, directly ripping off people by acting as a middleman between DealExtreme and them is not what's needed IMO.

If you compare, for example:

http://www.bitcoinz.ca/shop/index.php?route=product/product&path=36&product_id=69
and
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/personal-cell-phone-signal-blocker-device-4355

the description and the image is exactly the same as DealExtreme, including the spelling errors ("Perfect for the following senarios", for example). DealExtreme provides also free shipping, and for this example product, if you compare prices, 25.77$ for DealExtreme and 2.2 BTC (~32.2$) for BitCoinz SuperStore, it's quite obvious the store just forwards you products from DealExtreme and charges 25% extra on top of their prices.

I do realize that this saves you the problem of swapping your currency from BTC to USD via MtGox or some other exchange, and removes the exchange fees, but the fees for USD are only .25$ for a withdraw and .3% for a trade, i.e. in this case, for 25.77$, you would pay ~.35$ for the fees. So, for this particular product, the store gets around 6$ per ordered product, not that bad of a profit :p

Just do a search with the exact product names from the BitCoinz SuperStore, and you will notice that they are exactly the same as on DealExtreme...

P. S. It's quite lovely how you couldn't use the large images for example on http://www.bitcoinz.ca/shop/index.php?route=product/product&path=36&product_id=73, since they have the DealExtreme watermark (http://www.dealextreme.com/p/usb-mini-cooling-fridge-7340), so you had to use the low resolution small image - does the filename sound familiar? http://www1.dealextreme.com/productimages/sku_7340_1_small.jpg vs http://www.bitcoinz.ca/shop/image/cache/data/gadgets/sku_7340_1_small-140x140.jpg ;p

[Slasklitta]

So... Is this a scam? Due to the DX ripoff

[Coaster]

So... Is this a scam? Due to the DX ripoff

he's just doing drop shipping, and cashing off the conversion.

[RodeoX]

So... Is this a scam? Due to the DX ripoff

I would not consider this a scam at all. Sure he is reselling, but that's fine. Bottom line, you now have a place to shop for cool products with bitcoins.  I think it's sweet!

[Cusipzzz]

There are numerous people doing drop-ship from DealExtreme with a markup in BTC. The deal a day guy, this store, another electronics store I saw.

It's not a scam - just educated consumers should know they can get the product for less using fiat money at the original source, that's all.

[phillipsjk]

Your website seems to require client-side scripting.

Can your clarify where the "980000G 6000mW 802.11b/g 54Mbps USB 2.0 WiFi Wireless Network Adapter w/ Antenna" gets its power?

The USB 2.0 spec is only rated for 5V, 500mA, which is only 2.5Watts of power. Conservation of energy says the product needs an external power supply or is badly designed.

I would not be surprised if 6W exceeds radio emission limits as well. 30dBi is a very narrow radiation pattern. Is it possible that 6Watts refers to the Effective (isotropic) radiated power, and not the power supplied to the antenna terminals? (Which would work out to: 6mW, neglecting antenna losses if I am doing the math correctly)

For the record, I think the 6000mW figure must be EIRP. "EIRP is the product of the maximum output power available at the antenna terminal of the transmitter and the antenna gain." OET Bulletin No. 65, Supplement C (footnote 19, Page 18, pdf 22)

I like that many of your computer products seem to be Open-Source Software friendly. For example, your USB 2.0 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n 150Mbps WiFi/WLAN Wireless adapter should work with both BSD and Linux based systems (not tested yet..) due to the Ralink chipset. The exact model number of the chipset may be helpful though.

[amincd]

I do like the idea of a store accepting bitcoins, however, directly ripping off people by acting as a middleman between DealExtreme and them is not what's needed IMO.

He's letting people buy products usually only available for dollars using bitcoins. This is a useful service, that increases consumer options and does not in any way rip off people. Every one already assumes that goods priced in bitcoins are likely marked up from their dollar purchase price, but people are willing to pay the small markup in order to bypass the credit cards.

[VPoro]

He's letting people buy products usually only available for dollars using bitcoins. This is a useful service, that increases consumer options and does not in any way rip off people. Every one already assumes that goods priced in bitcoins are likely marked up from their dollar purchase price, but people are willing to pay the small markup in order to bypass the credit cards.

Small markup - yes, 25% markup... I still think that is a ripoff. Of course, if you are willing to pay 25% extra for the convenience of not using Mt. Gox or some other exchange to swap your BTC -> USD, this is probably a great service.

The true ripoff part comes from the fact that he's claiming to order the products 'directly from the manufacturers':

"We strive to provide the absolutely lowest prices to the Bitcoin community.

We deal directly with the manufacturers of all our products. This guarantees that we can pass along the lowest rock bottom prices for all the items you want. These manufacturers are not quite as fast at delivery as the big box retailers. Our shipping will take a little longer than some retailers, but our prices are considerably lower because of this, you will save a lot of money when you buy from us."

If you act as a dropship for DealExtreme, fine, but be honest of what you are doing - just say: "You can order products from DealExtreme through us with a 25% markup on top of the prices you would get from the original source. This is a service which allows you to bypass the exchanges-step and directly buy items from DX with BTC."

However, if they really order the items from the manufacturer, they probably should explain why the descriptions are 1-to-1 with DX including the typos, and the images are the same (including the same file names), just lower resolution to not to use the DX waterstamped ones.

[awozny]

Hello,

I have noted the recent comments about Bitcoinz.ca/shop. I have removed the "directly" from my manufacturers comment. I did not realize it would cause confusion and accusations of it being a scam. We do deal with Dealextreme as noted above. Dealextreme is just the first supplier I have setup and many more will follow.  I have added mention of the drop-shipping aspect of the operation. My store is still in it's infancy and I truly apologize for any confusion I may have caused. I value all your input. I am an engineer by trade and Bitcoin enthusiast by passion. I believe in the viability of the Bitcoin economy and just want to do my part to make it a reality.

It is a legitimate operation I assure you. I have had many, many orders over the past few days . Thank you all for your patronage. Please forward me any comments as suggestions.

Peace.

Thank You,
T. Andrew Wozny

[amincd]

VPoro,

You make some valid points and it looks like he's addressed your concerns.

Awozny,

Thank you for your work.

[phillipsjk]

Looks like refunds are priced in USD, rather than bitcoin:

If an item you order turns out to be out of stock from our factory, we reserve the right to refund your order or ship a similar product of equal value. We will always contact you first if this unlikely situation occurs. Any refunds will be in Bitcoin, in an amount equal to the current USD equivalent of your order.

- Terms & Conditions

Depending how long it takes an order to be canceled, somebody may be very upset to only receive the "current USD equivalent" of the order. This would be especially true if the bitcoin price doubles during that time, meaning only half the BTC paid is refunded. Would holding the bitcoin until the order ships be so hard?

Edit: The Privacy Policy is misleading:

This privacy statement discloses what information we gather about you when you visit the BitCoinz.ca Site and describes how we use that information. Our policy is to keep the personal information we receive from our Site completely confidential and used solely for internal purposes. We will not share your personal information with any other parties.

While it may be true that bitcoinz.ca does not share the data with third parties directly, at least two third parties are invited to do their own tracking and data-mining using their own code hosted on their own servers:

• http://www.facebook.com/plugins/likebox.php in an iframe
• http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js loaded from inline scripts in the page.

[awozny]

Hello,

Thank you phillipsjk for your input. I have adjusted my terms of service to address the refund issue. You are right refunds should be in BTC not USD. As this is a new venture there are still kinks to be worked out. In regards to privacy I will not share any data with anyone else. Facebook and Google Adsense of course do their own thing out of my control. Unless I am mistaken all they can track is IP#'s and visitor numbers and similar metrics, they do not have the reach to gather your personally identifiable information. Please if I am wrong let me know and I will figure out how to word the privacy policy better. I greatly appreciate your knowledgeable input in these matters.

Thank You,
Trevor Andrew Wozny

[phillipsjk]

They both set cookies. They can personally identify you all they want; though Google seems to promise you need to opt-in first. You (and possibly your users) need to review the relevant privacy policies.

When you click Like on a company's Facebook Page, ad or products:

• You create a connection to that company and you'll receive updates from it in your News Feed.
• The story of your connection will appear on your Wall.
• Your friends may also see the story of your liking the company in their News Feeds. You can always review and manage your likes, activities and connections by editing your profile. To learn more about the Like button, visit our Help Center FAQs.
  

If you like a company and that company runs an ad on Facebook, we may pair your name and profile picture with the ad when your friends see that ad, in a News Feed-style story. This social context makes the ad more relevant to you and your friends. Learn More

- http://www.facebook.com/privacy/explanation.php

We may institute programs with advertising partners and other websites in which they share information with us:
 

• We may ask advertisers to tell us how our users responded to the ads we showed them (and for comparison purposes, how other users who didn’t see the ads acted on their site). This data sharing, commonly known as “conversion tracking,” helps us measure our advertising effectiveness and improve the quality of the advertisements you see.
• We may receive information about whether or not you’ve seen or interacted with certain ads on other sites in order to measure the effectiveness of those ads.

If in any of these cases we receive data that we do not already have, we will “anonymize” it within 180 days, meaning we will stop associating the information with any particular user. If we institute these programs, we will only use the information in the ways we explain in the “How We Use Your Information” section below.

- http://www.facebook.com/policy.php

My reading of that is that you are not anonymous until 6 months have passed: by which time you may have visited the page in question again, resetting the timer.

... When providing ads tailored to your interests, we offer useful tools for you to view and manage the information that is being collected and used to serve ads. To protect your privacy, we follow three principles when we serve ads:

• Transparency – We provide detailed information about our advertising policies and practices.
  
• Choice – We offer innovative ways to view, manage and opt out of advertising cookies and other anonymous IDs.
  
• No personally identifying information – We don’t collect or serve ads based on personally identifying information without your permission.

- http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy/ads/

... How we use the DoubleClick cookie information

We use the advertising cookie information collected on AdSense partner sites and certain Google sites to:

• Enable the following ad serving features:

      = Frequency Capping: Prevents users from seeing the same ad over and over again;
       = Spam Filtration: Uses cookies as one of many signals that allow us to identify invalid clicks (or ad queries) and to protect our advertisers from fraudulent behavior;
       = View-Through Conversions: Provides insight to advertisers on how many people who were exposed to an ad, didn’t click, but subsequently visited the advertiser’s website;
       = Interest-Based Advertising: Allows advertisers (including Google) to serve ads to users on AdSense partner sites and certain Google services based on online activity and interests associated with the DoubleClick cookie and to serve subsequent ads to you after you leave that advertiser’s website.

• Audit, research, and analyze the data in order to maintain, protect, and improve our services;
• Ensure that our ad-serving technologies function properly; and
• Develop new services.

The advertising cookie information described above is provided to advertisers and publishers who use our advertising services. In addition, Google or our advertising and publishing customers may use web beacons in conjunction with the DoubleClick cookie to collect information about your visit to the website and exposure to a particular advertisement.

- http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy/ads/privacy-policy.html

They go on to say that they don't use your personally identifying information without your consent, but I fail to see how information about your interests is not personally identifying.

If I am more knowledgeable about these things than the average person, it it probably because I have a bad habit of reading fine-print. That is one of the major reasons I am interested in bitcoin: on the surface, less onerous "Terms of use" to follow. Though, some of the onerous terms in Credit Card agreements seem to stem from anti-money laundering and terrorist financing laws.

[awozny]

Thanks for the information... I guess ultimately the only way to be truly anonymous is to unplug from the net completely.

[awozny]

Hello All,

I would like to thank all my customers that visited my store this week. First week has been great. I have performed an upgrade to the site, now it should look more top tier. I have added more suppliers so the range of products will improve over the coming days. I strive to add new products everyday.

Our categories are:

AV Equipment
Cameras
Camping / Survival / Outdoors
Car Accessories
Cell Phones
Computer Accessories
DIY
Electronic Cigarettes
Gadgets
Glasses
iPod / iPad / iPhone
Lasers
Lifestyle
MP3/MP4/MP5/E-Book Players
Netbooks
Pipes / Bongs / Lighters
Radio Controlled (R/C)
Spy Gear
Tablet PC
Toys
Video Games

Please follow us on twitter and FaceBook.

Peace

[Fuexr]

Hello everyone.
I'm posting my experiences with BitCoinz.ca.
I purchased an 8" Android tablet on July 13, 2011.
My product arrived to my house on August 2, 2011.
The shipping took a while to come from China. A few days ago, I was curious if there were any updates that the site owner could give me. He responded quickly and professionally. I would definitely recommend this service to others. The shipping may be slow, but that is the fault of China Post, not the site owner.

[marks1976]

Love the site.  Prices look good.  As soon as I build my bitcoin up enough I have my eye on a few items.

[the joint]

When will your site be available to purchase items from again?