SquareTrade Warranty Blog

The iPhone Cometh.

So it's Launch Day, and everyone's counting down the hours (5 left at this second) until the iPhones go on the shelves... if they even make it off the palette. We've already seen lines around the block at all our local Apple Store, some of whom look suspiciously like our fellow SquareTrade employees.

Curiously, we only counted seven or eight people in line at the AT&T store around the block, which will also (supposedly) have some stock on hand come Six O'Clock.

We also caught "Today" show co-host Meredith Vieira providing fresh YouTube fodder when she, the one non-gadget freak in the entire cast, tried to puzzle out its highly complex interface. Not being able to correctly touch the screen in order to pick up an incoming call is probably a moment she'll be living down for a while.

So the whole country is officially iPhone crazy... and it's ineligible for AT&T's Wireless Phone Insurance program.

Apple's CarePlus offer on the iPhone? $69 for two years.

SquareTrade's? $49.99 for 3 Years on the 4GB model, $59.99 for 3 Years on the 8GB model. And that's before you bring any 10% off coupons into the equation.

We've actually been passing out a few flyers to people standing in those lines, and they seem very interested in the idea of getting more for less. That's a pretty easy sell, any way you slice it.

Now we just need to get in line ourselves. At the AT&T store, naturally.

And so the post-eBay Live recovery process begins..

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.

Is This a Real Company?

The other week, we did a very corporate thing. We conducted focus groups.

We're talking the whole enchilada: board room with a moderator leading six or eight people in discussion, while we all hid behind a two-way mirror and took reams of notes. We listened to people who bought our warranty, people who bought our warranty despite a no-warranty policy, and people who never buy warranties, period. We even listened to one sterling gent describe in detail how he was planning to defraud us (wouldn't work) while our C/S lead jotted his name down for future reference. Interesting stuff.

The guiding mantra at SquareTrade is to make things make sense. We want our warranties to work the way warranties should work, at a price-point that reflects reality, with a level of service we'd want to experience. Sounds fair, right?

So the surprises in those groups weren't that they liked the service, the price, the big value propositions. They did, and we're glad, but what they really latched onto were more "built-in" features. Basic I things that we don't always spend a lot of time thinking about, but are fundamental and unique to the way SquareTrade works.

The first was Time. They did like the thirty-day window SquareTrade gave them to think it over, do a little research, and buy their warranty. It felt more honest to them.

The second was how they could check and manage their warranties and claims through our online account manager. The idea that they could actually find out how much time was left on a warranty, or see where their item was in the claims process just by jumping online was a lot like moving from stagecoach wheels to steel-belted radials.

The third one caught us a little off-guard: they loved the simplicity. They loved the fact that the same warranty terms applied to laptops or refrigerators, cell phones or PlayStations, digital cameras or iPods. One warranty, one set of terms to keep track of, for everything.

And that's really how it should be. One standard, with the bar set high.

Things wrapped up pretty late that night, and everybody was a bit drained. The last focus group was breaking up and heading out the door. After finding out all the things SquareTrade does and plans to do to completely change the warranty industry, one of them paused and turned to the moderator, and asked "Is this a real company?"

We like to think so.