Comments on: Cellfire’s Couponing Service

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 23:35:42 +0000

From the Cellfire site:

Will the cashier accept my Cellfire coupon?
All the cashiers have been trained on how to accept Cellfire coupons and will be pleased to do so!

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This reminds me of Moblil Lime’s model. A huge problem is making mobile coupons redeemable like they are a regular paper coupon. I don’t think it’s realistic to expect cashiers to recognize a cellfire coupon. It’s just not possible to keep up the level of training. Also, the entire system must be passive (getting people to download an app to the phone is tough too) and work with existing infrastructure without special training for employees or the consumer. Showing a cellfire coupon to an employee will ensure that the transaction will take longer than normal, a.k.a the melted ice cream/screaming kid phenomenon.

By: Beatie Lives

Beatie Lives — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 23:18:32 +0000

Cellfire seems cool, But I don’t use it very often any more, What would be great is if I could actually make a purchase from the phone.

By: Brent Dusing

Brent Dusing — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 18:27:17 +0000

Andy, Kedar, hi, just wanted to answer some of your questions. We do not charge consumers anything to download or update their coupons. The question is whether you have a data package or pay for data as used. If you have a data package, it will be free. If you don’t have a data package, when you use the “Update Coupons” feature, it will cost you around 3 to 4 cents. You can get multiple coupons from updating once, so it’s far less than a penny per coupon. We specifically wrote our network language to minimize charges for users.

Thanks,

Brent

By: Kedar

Kedar — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 11:24:34 +0000

I will start with same sentences as Andy, this service is great and don’t get me wrong but someone need to specify data charges. Brent and company is doing good job on bringing youth oriented coupons but do they differentiate themselves from other available coupons in market. I don’t know since I don’t live in California, I am not sure of their service but I do know about one eg. Hollywood video coupon they offer is offered on lot of websites. Still I need pay data charges to download that is not fair.

Hope as they made a fast progress on developing application and getting venture money, they will also move faster on other fronts.

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 03:05:45 +0000

This is cool, but i’m wondering how the costs really stack up against an SMS approach. If the app downloads coupons from a server, then it must use data bandwidth, and most users aren’t on unlimitted usage data plans yet. How much does it cost to receive a single coupon? A few cents? If the app downloads a dozen coupons for you to browse, from which you might be interested in one or two, then how much are you paying for that coupon? How does this compare against receiving a single SMS per coupon? I wonder how many users really understand these costs, and I wonder how much that will affect adoption rates. Don’t get me wrong, though. I still think it’s cool.

By: Brent Dusing

Brent Dusing — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 21:37:10 +0000

Russell,

Thanks very much for your time in looking at Cellfire. We are very excited about the prospect of delivering great deals at great retailers to consumers. When we originally built Cellfire, we were very adamant about two things: 1. We wanted it to be as non-intrusive as possible, which is why we chose to build an application; 2. We wanted it to be free–since we’re helping people save money, we figured we’d do our best to keep their phone bills low as well.

The unique FlexGUI technology we built allows the application to do just that. We’ve got some great retailers on board, with more to come.

Really appreciate your insight and expertise.

Best,

Brent