Quick Pitch: Glyde combines the great deals of a person-to-person online marketplace with the ease, simplicity and safety of a retail store.
Genius Idea: Glyde makes it easy to buy and sell CDs, books, DVDs or video games without the hassle of listing fees or finding a trusted seller.
Like a lot of people, I'm a big media fan. I have an ever-growing collection of DVDs and Blu-ray discs, music CDs, books and video games. I'm always on the lookout for a good deal, and also for an easy way to sell items I've either upgraded from (like going from DVD to Blu-ray) or that I no longer want or need.
It's not hard to find items to buy, but as places like eBay become more like regular retail sites, the deals that you could find 10 years ago just don't exist anymore. To get around high listing fees, more and more sellers charge really high rates for shipping, even though they just end up sending stuff by Media Mail anyway. Selling online means I have to get all the shipping stuff together to mail out an item, which can be a hassle if you aren't a frequent seller.
This is why I like Glyde, a new marketplace that makes it super easy to buy and sell products. Think of Glyde as a listing service and an Escrow service combined into one. You can list your items for free, and when the item sells, Glyde will take 10 percent of the sale price and the cost of the Glyde Mailer. What's the Glyde Mailer? When you item sells, Glyde will send you a pre-stamped, pre-addressed package. All you have to do is drop your item in the envelope and mail by the next day.
As soon as the buyer receives the item, money is deposited into your Glyde account. That's a really hassle-free way of selling new or used media items.
For buyers, your payment is protected until you get your item. Glyde tracks your item and sends you an e-mail upon delivery. If you're happy with your purchase, Glyde releases your payment to the seller. If you don't get your item, you get a refund. If you aren't happy with what you received, you have 48 hours to return it.
A really interesting part of Glyde is its transaction policies. When buying or selling an item, there's always the risk that the product either won't appear as it is described or that a buyer will renege after receiving their purchase. Glyde handles this by enforcing a shared responsibility approach. If you receive your item (and it isn't suspected of being counterfeit or illegal), you can return it and get your money back, but you pay half of the return shipping (around $2.50). The seller pays the other half of the return shipping fee, plus the cost of the mailer ($1.00 - $1.75).
If a seller consistently gets bad feedback or if items are sent back, Glyde can cancel his account. If a seller hawks something that is illegal or counterfeit, all fees are charged to the seller, he is banned from the site and the authorities are contacted. I like this shared responsibility approach, because it gives everyone an incentive to list items accurately and take buying an item seriously.
Overall, Glyde's Web site is attractive and easy to use. I especially like how Glyde has combined an Escrow service with a listing service.
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