EBay’s RedLaser app lets users ‘Buy It Now’ from local stores

November 11, 2011 By Andrew Couts

EBay RedLaser mobile app lets customers skip the long lines this holiday season by purchasing gifts from local retailers directly from the app.

In an attempt to make it easier to purchase all the gifts customers want to buy this holiday season, online auction giant eBay has built in the ability to purchase new items directly from local retailers, reports Daniel Terdiman at CNet. The feature is not available on eBay.com, however, nor through the eBay mobile app, but through the eBay-owed bar code QR code scanner app, RedLaser.

RedLaser has long allowed users to view local retailers that carrier a certain product. But until now, users were given the website and phone number of a particular store, like Toys ‘R Us, which a person could then use to find out whether the item they want is in stock. With this most recent update, RedLaser shows whether or not that item is in stock, and lets users purchase the item directly through the app, and then pick up the item from the store, without having to wait in line.

Of course, RedLaser also shows the same items available on eBay, as well as wide variety of other online stores, so you have that option as well.

There currently exists a major downside, however; only a few retailers have signed on with the RedLaser plan so far, so it’s most likely that you’ll have to use the app’s old functionality to purchase what you’re looking for. From our tests, the only store that popped up was, in fact, Toys ‘R Us. This will differ for each user, depending on location. We haven’t yet heard what other stores have jumped on the RedLaser bandwagon, though eBay CEO John Donahoe tells CNet that others are expected to join soon.

Limited as this may be at the moment, shoppers will likely appreciate any chance they can get to skip the insanity of holiday crowds this season. So if you’re planning to shop at Toys ‘R Us, then RedLaser may be the way to go.

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Philip Charles Cohen at 1:24pm 12th November 2011 “Most folks on Wall Street view eBay really as PayPal plus a marketplace …” http://ebaystrategies.blogs.com/ebay_strategies/2011/10/could-ebays-worst-nightmare-be-happening-soon-.html#disqus_threadThat’s an astute observation, and John Donahoe and Scott Thompson are simply delusional if they think that PreyPal can continue to underpin the faltering eBay Marketplace “house of cards” by becoming even a minor threat to the existing payments systems of the banks/Visa/MasterCard at traditional Point-of-Sale—the idea is pure science fiction. (“Beam me up Scotty!”)The real question is, when are the world’s various banking regulators going to finally do something about over-sighting PreyPal, an unethical, unprofessional, effectively unregulated and clunky financial operator that offers unlicensed banking-type services and is, in effect, a money gouging arm of the Ho’s “eBafia”?Even though PreyPal clearly offers banking-type services (ie, holding users’ funds in non-prudentially regulated and non-FDIC insured banking-type accounts, etc), PreyPal is mostly registered in some places not as a bank nor as a provider of credit but only as a “money transmitter” (like Western Union), and PreyPal has even claimed that they “are not a payment network”, and there is a grain of truth in that claim because most (but not all) of their activities facilitate the transmission of funds simply by riding on the back of the banks’ existing payments processing systems.In fact, the only thing creative about PreyPal has been their founding use of users’ unique email addresses as identifiers for online payment transactions. PreyPal is otherwise no more than a blood-sucking parasite riding on the back of, and in the main cannot function except via, Visa/MasterCard and the banks’ existing payments processing systems.Regardless, outside of PreyPal’s mandated use on whatever will ultimately be left of the Donahoe-stagnated* eBay Marketplace, PreyPal (and most other third-party payments processors) will eventually be consigned to the history books by the retail banks/Visa/MasterCard once those “professional” players get their “online” act together. There is nothing surer than the sun will rise in the morning.Both eBay and its ugly daughter PreyPal are most devious, unethical, unprofessional organisations: both have become the most despised commercial entities on the planet—apparently, more hated by many than even “the banks”. eBay, amongst many other things, has forever knowingly and criminally, facilitated shill bidding fraud on their trusting auction buyers. And what else can be said about PreyPal that a great many PreyPal merchants don’t already know, to their cost: the probability is that if, as a merchant, you have chosen, or are forced, to use PreyPal you are eventually going to get burned; it’s really only a matter of the degree of the burn.Having said that, it’s possible that PreyPal can survive by becoming the merchant account provider “of last resort” for those very small or unscrupulous merchants unable to get a real merchant account from their own bank—Oh, hang on, hasn’t PreyPal always been just that, and charged all their users accordingly?* See http://eventhorizon1984.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/ebay-inc-2011-third-quarter-earnings-call-numbers-of-interest-to-small-business-sellers/PreyPal Claims that PreyPal Is Not a Payments Processor! http://forums.auctionbytes.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=24148eBay, a Knowing Criminal Facilitator of Auction Shill Bidding Fraud: Case Study #4: http://forums.auctionbytes.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=23540And, from along the way, a compilation of (mostly inane) quotes from eBay executives: http://forums.auctionbytes.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=24159Enron / eBay / PayPal / Donahoe: Dead Men Walking.