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Technology Stocks : OnSale Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Pauly who wrote (977)	3/23/1998 11:04:00 PM
From: William Vu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4903

Pauly: I agree, the life length of a customer would be interesting to see. Or maybe ONSL should "de-register" bidders who have not made a bid in, say, 12 months, which would theoretically allow the number of customers to drop. That way, we would get more meaningful statistics about the number of active registered bidders. So, at least you have seen that many customers of "Onsale" are "dead" already. I am very satisfied with your progress. Note, however, "register" or "deregister" have no meaning. In "Onsale" press releases, the customers are to be permanent customers. Try to understand that this concept of permanent customer should not be used, and the "number of customers" should not be used as an honest indicator of "Onsale" business. It is funny to read that the "de-registeration" only "theoretically" drops the number of customers, (so, "practically" the number remains the same?). Or similarly ONSL could allow all registered bidders to perpetually remain registered, but they could show statistics on how many of those bidders remain "active" bidders. Aha, another, small though, progress. But, be careful, Pauly, you may go too far. Below is my response to "No Chips" 2. <<62,640 orders left for the total number of the so-called "418,000 registered bidders", so in "average" 6.6730523 customers must share one "purchase">> Why are you excluding the orders to the repeat customers? If the total number of orders is 232,000 to total registered bidders of 418,000, then orders to registered bidders is .55. Why exclude registered bidders? I allowed the repeat customers to make one more bid. Why not? Since they are repeat customers, one more bid does change a lot. So, if you allow the repeat customers to participate again in dividing the "pie", then you obtain the picture: almost seven customers must share one order in a whole quarter! I asked my 4 years old son: If the McDonald restaurant serves only one order for seven customers in a quarter, how long does it take to serve all these seven hungry boys? My son's answer was: 21 quarters, or 63 months, or 5 years and one quarter. Have you got the picture of "Onsale" customers? Roughly speaking: only the number of orders have some sense.The ultimate number is "earning", not numbers of "bids", "customers", or even "sales". But the number of "orders" can be used. But then, have in mind that either there are no repeat customers and there are many customers who just made one purchase and quit, or there are many repeat customers and then the number of "real" customers is essentially less than the number "Onsale" has released. "Onsale" never made this clear in their press releases. The "pie" is the same, if many people share, then the slice is thinner. William >><Pauly: Is it not true that the ONSALE management sent you to >> this thread in order to hype the ONSL stock?> > No, I'm a shareholder.