

Show HN: Mashup of Amazon.com's wish list and Balanced Payments - peterbe
https://wishlistgranted.com

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hootener
Knee jerk reaction: Great work. I had a similar idea floating around in my
mind and it's cool to see something like it come to fruition.

Incoherent Rambling: How about expanding to more than one item wishlists that
span multiple site APIs and market it as a simple, efficient, online wedding
registry replacement?

You can rank your items in terms of preference, people can contribute money,
then the app just buys and ships the items from the top down until the list is
complete.

As a wedding gift purchaser I wouldn't have to make a trip to some random
store and go through the hassle of getting the registry, nor would I have to
navigate to a site I may never use again (I'm looking at you Williams Sonoma)
and setup an account to purchase one item.

As a bride or groom it would be nice to just supply someone with one short URL
when they asked "where are you registered?" without having to go through all
the hassle of setting up a ridiculous "we're getting married" wedding profile
on Yet Another We're Getting Married Social Network.

Like I said, incoherent rambling. Could result in an interesting tool, though.

~~~
joeframbach
MVP. If they had went for bells and whistles, it would never be released.

~~~
hootener
yeah, sorry if I gave the impression that "OMG this site NEEDS THESE FEATURES
RIGHT NOW!!!"

That wasn't my intent. It's legitimately a great idea and a seemingly well
executed MVP (I haven't dug deeply into it yet). Hence my suggestions being
prefaced with "Incoherent Rambling"

It's hard not to see a good initial execution on an interesting idea and think
aloud "I wonder where this could go next..."

In either case, OP, keep up the good work.

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normloman
Wishlists are so impersonal. Donating funds to someone's wishlist takes just a
few minutes, and you don't even have to speak with the recipient. If the point
of gift giving is to strengthen social bonds and show regard for one another,
how do wishlists achieve this?

That said, if wishlists are your choice, this is an efficient way to handle
it.

~~~
mildtrepidation
_If the point of gift giving is to [...]_

And if it isn't? I'm sure many people don't ascribe to this particular theory
of gifts as a universal truth. Also, gift giving often happens in an
important, larger context, which is always different; gift giving at
Christmas, for example, is hugely loaded depending on your background, your
attitude toward the holiday, what significance you do or don't attach to it,
this same set of attributes for every person you may want to give a gift to,
and many other things.

Wish lists can be considered impersonal, I can see that. Many people grew up
with them, though, and in that case they may not alter a person's perspective
of the gift at all. For Christmas in particular, when a whole lot of busy
people are expected to give gifts to a whole lot of other busy people, finding
the time and insight to get meaningful gifts for everyone involved can add to
an already often stressful time.

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peterbe
Here's a little blog post about how it started
[http://www.peterbe.com/plog/wishlistgranted](http://www.peterbe.com/plog/wishlistgranted)

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chavesn
The $1 transaction fee seems crazy wasteful to me on purchases under $50 or
so. I would consider just buying the whole item for a friend (through Amazon,
letting Amazon eat the transaction fee) before I'd give anywhere from 5-10%
extra to a third party.

If the average item was $20 and the average contribution was $5, banks would
also be making 10% or more per wishlist item when they would normally make 3%
or less.

That just rubs my cost-effectiveness sensitivities the wrong way.

~~~
peterbe
If you want to buy the whole item, bypass Wish List Granted and go straight to
Amazon Wish List and buy it there. It gets cheaper.

But if spending $20 on every friend you have, my site is a better alternative.

Also, the reason I add the $1 transaction fee is to cover the cost of the
shipping.

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jack-r-abbit
I like this. Just yesterday I added an item to my wish list that is quite
expensive. I know that a single person is not going to want to buy it for me.
But if several of them contributed, it would be more realistic.

Edit: It also makes a new way to get tips/donations. People might be more
likely to donate if their money is going to something they can see. You might
even get people to donate a little more if they see you are very close to
getting the item.

~~~
peterbe
It sounds like you like the idea and you are using amazon wish list. So let me
ask you, did you use the site?

I suspect the site is one of those "Great idea! ...but I wouldn't actually use
it" which is sad but maybe the honest truth.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Well... I mostly use my Amazon wish list to keep track of things that I will
likely buy myself in the future. I don't really expect people to buy them for
me. So I did not sign up for the site. However, it is a great idea and is
something I am likely to make use of at some point. I just don't have a need
at this moment.

~~~
peterbe
Sorry if my question sounded personally attacking. I'm just a web geek trying
to improve what I build.

So, it sounds like it was the concept that held you back. Not something that I
was doing wrong on the site per se.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Don't worry. I didn't feel attacked at all. I understand the need to get
feedback from users (or non-user in my case) to improve things. And it was not
even the concept that held me back... just lack of need at this time.
Generally speaking, I'm not one to sign up for something until I actually plan
to use it.

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hkbarton
Aha, nice hack, simple and interesting. Actually I launch a wishlist-similar
project for this shopping season few days agao:
[https://www.shoplify.us](https://www.shoplify.us) , that help people collect
their products not only from amazon but from any website. it's still in early
stage, and there are many features will be release later. Maybe we can do some
cooperation if you think it's cool :)

~~~
peterbe
The advantage of using only Amazon.com is that I don't need to store the
person's address. Also, I don't really need to store anything about the item.

I might morph it into any Amazon.com product that isn't necessarily on your
wish list. That way, you can pick an item for a friend and tell his/her
friends the URL to collect the money.

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sync
Cute! And timely.

Looks like you still have some work to do:
[https://www.monosnap.com/image/JkLBAEYvPAOE96ab7YqrFoXgc](https://www.monosnap.com/image/JkLBAEYvPAOE96ab7YqrFoXgc)

& Here's the console output:
[https://www.monosnap.com/image/JWwoDPyQrFyrokGxIt0b4i8Qe](https://www.monosnap.com/image/JWwoDPyQrFyrokGxIt0b4i8Qe)

~~~
peterbe
How the heck did you managed to get to that? What amount did you enter?

~~~
zende
The card was declined because it was an invalid card number.

"No such issuer" means that the first six digits, Bank Identification Number,
are incorrect and card was declined as a result.

We (Balanced) should be doing a better job to make this error more
understandable or mask it by returning some invalid card number error.

~~~
peterbe
Thanks for the reply. I still need to make a better job of displaying any
general errors from Balanced that aren't for a specific input field.

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jfoucher
Is there any chance this could be made to work with international amazon
sites? I tried to enter my amazon.fr wishlist URL, but it said that no such
wishlist was found on amazon.com

Great concept though!

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Karhan
Neat idea! If a little impersonal. Perhaps adding a personal message field
that gets printed on a card and sent along with the package? Theres gotta be a
service for that.

~~~
peterbe
It does that! If you make a contribution, you type in your name and a personal
message. That gets included later when the order is shipped from amazon.com.

~~~
pmclanahan
Nice!

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niels_olson
This should be marketed to charities, then the public. Unless peace on earth
and good will toward all mankind is available on Amazon.

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jack-r-abbit
You mentioned $$$ in another comment. May I ask how you will monetize this?
(obviously you don't have to answer... just curious)

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
Well, if the service becomes popular, the OP will find himself sitting on a
nice rolling account of cash (the funds that haven't yet been spent or
returned to donors), which might be capable of generating interest. I can't
imagine that income being appreciable (or entirely legally kosher), but who
knows?

~~~
peterbe
It's easy to make money on anything that is popular. The "profit" made on top
of adding a small fee. on top of Balanced's fee, is so minuscule and quickly
eaten by shipping costs.

Right now, I'm more interested in building something that makes a profit just
for the hell of it. All my other side-projects are making me absolutely
nothing. ...nothing but resume padding :)

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cbhl
Hmm. I'm tempted to create a Canadian clone of this (since you only work with
Amazon.com at the moment).

~~~
peterbe
Let's race! :) I'm going to add UK, CA later. Maybe FR and DE too. BUT only IF
this is a success which I don't know it will be. Getting onto HN just means
traffic but not necessarily $$$ which would the motivator for adding more
features.

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thesimon
Fraud will probably be quite a problem, but nice concept.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
I guess if you had a number of stolen credit cards you could set up a wishlist
item, then use them to contribute. I imagine the final Amazon purchase would
be on record as coming from WishListGranted and the item is gifted to you so
that might be one layer of separation between you getting an item and the use
of stolen cards.

Perhaps you could elaborate on what types of fraud you think would happen?

~~~
jc4p
A common use case for stolen cards is to do small transactions and see if they
are successful or not to let you know if the card you found/bought actually
works or does not. This site would be a great way to do that.

