Can somebody explain Priceline to me?
492851
lol you have the luck of talking to a GSM here, \n\nall of the online bookings work like this.\n\nwe have alot of rooms empty alot of the time. \n\nthese rooms cost so much per day to keep up and running ours are about 23.17$ a day, that stacks up when you have 59 rooms, so we bid out to the online bookers for a cheaper rate, really places like hotels.com and such pay on avg 37.80 for each room. then they oversell to you for rates of such and such. that is as simple as it works. works teh same for there airline tickets as well
621297
well i have had all kinds of offers and the best one i have seen is that they give you equipment for free, no monthly charges, no minimum requirements and then a small percentage fee per transaction. They all vary upwards from there. see buyerzone.com i got four offers right away there and then used them against each other to get them to keep lowering their prices and requirements.
521724
call someone, and ask them to buy oil from you. ... once you have the order, call around and try to buy it from someone else. Soon you will realize that demand alone doesn't make a market easy to participate in. The markup is slight...but the volume and the regulations are amazing. Where will you store your gas/oil if you have a one or two day lag between when it gets delivered to you and you deliver it to someone else? Gas and oil cannot just be held in a big box...\nHow will you judge the quality of the product you are getting? Will your costs when buying really be better than a company who buys a million gallons a day from a wholesaler? And, will your buyers pay as much when you are new and delivering smaller amounts??? Some stuff to consider...
366060
you're wasting your time.  I just go to priceline or expedia.  It's all on the web now, a monkey could do it.
638615
There are the initial fees for posting, plus a percentage of the final cost when you sell. That is based on the value of the item when you post it and what it finally goes for.
1148783
It is all about supply and demand. The demand is there and the supply gets cut back so the price increases.
1083989
no a sale is final. So if you sold the item you are supposed to follow through with the transaction. sorry! Next time you may want to set a reserve price.
11073
equiserve.com manages direct stock purchase plans for hundreds of companies. Perhaps the one you are thinking of is listed there. The transaction fees buying direct is a lot cheaper than paying the $7/trade through Scottrade or $10-17 for etrade.\nI know Exxon charges no fees when you buy direct through them (equiserve.com manages their purchase program)\n\nTo find out if the company you are interested has a direct stock purchase plan, go to the company's website and click on the "investors" links...and see if they have any information. \n\nIf the company doesn't offer direct purchase, your next cheapest way is to go through a discount broker  like scottrade,etrade,waterhouse. You can also look at sharebuilder.com if you want to buy the stock monthly at a set amount. It can be as cheap as $1/transaction every month if you put money in 20 different stocks..normal fees are $4/trade via their monthly plan.\n\nKeep an eye on the stock and watch for company news. Investors Business Daily recommends cutting your loss if the stock drops 7-8% from your buy point. This is to protect you from the possibility the stock drops even more. Also keep an eye on the daily and weekly volume in the stock. There is support in the stock if it goes up and the volume is above average. The opposite is also true...a down day with high volume or volume 2-5x higher than normal may indicate institutional investors are dumping.\n\nGood Luck!
889338
There is no hard and fast rule, it varies tremendously by product and sector. A good starting point is to check out your competition, you don't want to discover that you have priced your goods way above your nearest competitor.
205547
Times are changing and so do prices. How can they expect you to keep giving great service if you can't make enough money to keep your buissness afloat. If anyone has a good idea of how to explain that with finece be my guest.
1037312
Not me. I can't figure out why businesses persist in using this outmoded contrivance. Most people look at a price like that and automatically round up in their heads. A lot of people (like myself) see it as an insult to our intelligence, and it doesn't take a genius to see there's little difference.\n\nThis convention is used in cents and in dollars, but it never amounts to large amounts.  For examples, you may see prices like $1.99, $19.99, $199.99 and you may see prices with no cents displayed like $199 or $1999, but you won't see that convention used in larger numbers like $100,000 and up (unless WalMart starts selling Rolls-Royce cars).\n\n\nWhat really gets me is how the price of gas on a pump is displayed as, say $2.78.99 rather than $2.79. I mean, is there a solid study or market analysis that shows a real reason for splitting off one one-hundredth of a cent?  \n\nPull-eeze!
125239
=cell ref 1 (qty)* cell ref 2 (unit price)to get the price (same for buy and sell, buy is -ve and sell is +ve)\n\nUse one separate column for the transaction costs. Use =sum(range of cells) at the end of each column. Use =sum(range of cells containing the totals) at the end of last row.\n\nI have a spreadsheet like this (a little bit more complicated) can trace P/L in every minute.
792117
Have you heard of buySAFE? They will guarantee the sale for you. But I seem to recall that they take 1% of the transaction as their fee for the service.
189058
This sounds a little more like a real estate question... so I'll answer this way...\n\nA seller's credit is money given back to you at closing to be paid towards your closing costs and prepaid items.\n\nWhen purchasing a home you total costs including financing can start a 4000 and go higher from there.  A seller credit allows you to come to the closing with a few less dollars.\n\nIt is structured by agreeing on a sale price, then raising the sale price by the amount of the credit.  The contract will note the amount of the credit.  \n\nThe credit cannot exceed 6% of the purchase price if the LTV is 80% or less or 3% of the purcase price if LTV is 80% or higher.  The total sellers credit can not exceed the combined amount of prepaids and closing costs.\n\nHope this helps...
197127
Good question. My guess is inventory. You have to spend money to obtain it (cost of goods), and you "sell" it for a profit (fees).
30244
It has to do with being at the right place and at the right time. Many of the big powersellers have had access to low cost products in several ways. \n\n1. Discontinued products. Many times, a product line gets discontinued with a newer model. The older model becomes very difficult to sell. Someone comes in and agree to buy the whole lot for a fraction of the manufactor's price. It helps the retailer keep their products fresh and minimizes loss.\n\n2. Refurbished. Manufactor refurbishes a product and sells it in a white box for a fraction of the price of the original product sold in the retail box. Manufactors get the products from the retailers as a returned item and has to credit the retailer. This gives the manufactor an opportunity to recover the loss. Some powersellers established a business relationship with the manufactor to purchase those refurbished products.\n\n3. Retailer Returns. A powerseller may have signed a deal with a retailer that says they'll pay cents on the dollar for everything the retailer gets returned.\nSo lets say retailer buys something for $10 from the manufactorer and sells it to the consumer for $25. Items will always get returned either damaged, unopened, or opened and for any variety of reasons. If the retailer returns it to the manufactorer, they may get a credit of about $1 or $2. The powerseller buys the products for $3, $4, or $5. Taking the chance, they know that at least a minimum % of the products to be working and can sell the working products.\n\n4. Directly from the manufactor or distributor. As more products you buy in bulk, the greater the discount the manufactor give the buyer.
360639
I feel like I've explained this so many times.\n\nHere are the very basics: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/;_ylt=AsWuQtNGN4MOLLzL5ebfcGsjzKIX?qid=1006042124751\n\nIf your costs go up and you always pass on a 10% markup, of course nominal profits are going to go up.\n\nI assume you're familiar with net margins.\n\nEveryone likes to use Exxon as an example while making up random numbers to support their arguments again Exxon, so I'll use that also.\n\nI have no idea how you came up with 100% increased profit.\n\nThe quarterly data is here: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=XOM\n\nThe yearly data is here: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=XOM&annual\n\nExxon typically floats around 5-10% on their margins if you look back at all the old annual reports for the last 20 years.\n\nThe breakdown for the price is here: http://money.howstuffworks.com/gas-price.htm\n\nThis is a bit outdated even though there's the explanation.  A more up-to-date picture is here: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/gdu/gasdiesel.asp\n\nThey're grossly adjusting that last 4%, eh?\n\nEdit: People *love* that 400M golden parachute.  Go back to their income statement above.  Off 370B in sales, 400M is less than .1%.  .1% of your gas price of around 3 dollars is 3/10th of a cent.  His pay is irrelevant to a high volume company like Exxon, but obviously a lot higher than we make, so we complain.\n\nNothing against you, really.  It's just that most people on the Internet tend to look at one side of things without actually taking the time to do a few simple calculations.  It's getting tiring, and honestly, I don't really care if people hate corporations or whatever.  Emotions aren't strictly rational.\n\nMost of what I see on the Internet is so-called "propoganda" for one side or the other.  Just see the Politics section of Answers.  It's dissolved into a bunch of name calling really. *End of my rant* :)\n\nYou're still free to hate on Exxon for that last 10%, but people get the idea that Exxon could charge $1.50 for gas if they wanted to and that's really not the case.  If there was a price ceiling there, Exxon could make more money just selling the raw crude oil on the futures market.  And none of us would have gas.