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Review: eDivvy- a potentially useful group gifting service
10/27/09
Some web ideas are DOA (flooz). Others sound good, but fail (webvan). I'm surprised by the success of web sites like Twitter ("I'm at Starbucks.").
There's a new web concept in town.
eDivvy is an internet service that combines online shopping and social networking.
How it works:
Somebody shops for an item and then invites others to help pay for it (functioning similar to the government, therefore). It's a variation of a registry that one might start for a wedding or baby shower except that instead of directing people to many different products, the person who starts the "eDivvy" invites many people to help purchase one product.
The advantage of this system is that one can buy more expensive gifts. This might come in handy for an office, say, that wants one presentation-worthy present for a co-worker.
One potential drawback of the service is the price of the items. I doubt that anybody would be willing to pay more just to have the convenience of not asking people directly for money. This isn't the case: the gifts are from reputable online merchants like Dell, Target, and Amazon and the price of the products are the same as on the vendors' site. To this price, one adds an eDivvy fee to alert the purchasers.
Just to check, I searched for a product I recently purchased, the Garmin Nuvi 255. The lowest price that came up was $129.00 from Amazon, which is in line with what I paid. An additional $12.99 would have allowed me to "divvy" the purchase between 10 people, by entering their emails.
eDivvy groups can purchase gift cards, send care packages to military personnel, and give to charities.
The worst part of eDivvy is that it continues the trend of starting product names with lower-case letters. If the world does end in 2012, this will be the reason.
Will it work? I give eDivvy at least an even chance because it's an online way of doing something people do anyways and easy to use.
Oh, and send me your email if you'd like to help purchase me a Kindle. Well, it's not really for me; it's for you- so that I can bring you more informative commentary and analysis.
Gift ideas:
3 comments
This concept seems needlessly confusing (not to mention expensive)! There is already a website called myregistry.com where you can set up cash gift funds designated for pricey items you want people to contribute to. I set up one for a laptop for my birthday and thanks to the 6 different people who contributed various amounts to the fund, I am now the proud owner of a new macbook pro! Plus, there was no fee for letting multiple people contribute and I got the word out using the free eCards on the site. Sadly, this new website sounds like another flop to me! 
I tried the eDivvy site and found it to be convenient. We purchased several high priced items for one individual for her birthday and chose what amount we could contribute toward the gifts. The donations were in excess of the gift amount and she was also given a Visa giftcard for the overage, which she used to donate to charity. I think it's a great site and a great way to gift. 
Group Gifting is here to stay (yahoo!) and yes, there are a plethora of sites that offer similar services, from: Everyone is all about making the process simple. Organize, invite, collect, send - it really is that simple. And we don't hide any fees - you pay a measly 10% service fee for making your life easy. So for a $10 contribution, we tag on a buck for our troubles (including packaging and shipping)- trust me, busy moms and co-workers think it's a dollar well spent! 
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