We love to meet all the sellers we work with, the buyers we sell to, and the all eBay people taking notes on everything, but you know how conventions like this are. There's so much going on around you, and you want to see it all and talk to everybody and check out all the panels and all the booths... until it finally dawns that you've been on your feet for fourteen hours straight. And you're in pain. From the knees down. A LOT of pain.
All in a good cause, though. There's too much temptation to just work inside one's own bubble. It's important to step outside the echo-chamber office, particularly when there are such cool people to meet and interesting sights to see. We caught sight of Suze Orman walking around surrounded by her security, and Jared "The Subway Guy"
Fogle wandering the floor on his own. We even caught a glimpse of eBay President and CEO Meg Whitman. It's not often you see a billionaire stroll on by. We also hung out with our old friend Marsha "_eBay for Dummies_" Collier at her swanky party at the Westin. She passed out a few copies of her fantastic new book, "_Santa Shops at eBay_," which again gives us a nice mention.
Even though this year's eBay Live felt more subdued - Boston is no Vegas - we definitely met a lot more electronics sellers than in years past. Our proud little booth got a visit from _Mr. Wireless_ (and Mrs.
Wireless, too), spent a little time with Doug from _Blue Bay Electronics_, and traded a long list of notes with Jonathan from _Cell Phone Brokers_. We even walked away with some cool swag; _ChinookMN_ have us an iron-on Minnesota P.D. patch (that's going right on Vince's North Face fleece pullover, good buddy). We were also flooded by a wave of sellers-to-be, who'd just gotten out of a lecture on starting an eBay business that - we soon found out - prominently mentioned SquareTrade. Maybe they were just at loose ends when Google canceled their party.
Even better, we got to meet a ton of people who'd bought SquareTrade warranties, and we were really stunned by the overwhelming enthusiasm for the services SquareTrade offers. More than a few people came over just to say hello specifically to Kord, our message board master/customer experience manager, and thank him for the personal touch he always puts on our customer relations. We even ran into a few inaugural members of the Kord Fan Club (he's still deciding what the annual dues will be), and an odd amount of surprise that yes, Kord is his real name.
They'll have to change that name, though. "KFC" is taken.
The thing is this... we know we offer a great service for a great price, but it's always nice when your customers, the people who have actually experienced it for themselves, make a point of walking up to you and saying they got their money's worth. Everybody was enthusiastic about the experience they had with SquareTrade. A lot of them talked about how they told their friends about it. They even liked using the new _Buyer__ Center_ which we just rolled out. We'd just like to say Thanks to all the people who came by to say Thanks to us.
It was thoughts like those that kept us warm when the snow marooned us in Chicago on the way back home. Luckily, next year, eBay Live is being held in Chicago, so that should make things simpler.
We'll see you all then.
