Trade Me's Treat Me launches with $1 burgers and bagels

UPDATE Wednesday: read Burger, interrupted.

UPDATE 8am: The deal has sold out. It turns out the cap was 20,000 burgers (3000 sold by 1am, TradeMe's MacAvoy told NBR). Now, can Burger Fuel deliver? I'll find out tomorrow, when the deal goes live, with my own voucher. Email me your experience.

A parallel deal in Wellington was still on at 9.30am, with just over 10,000 bagel vouchers sold.

UPDATE 7.25am: Asked if there was any cap on the number of burgers that could be sold under the $1 deal, Trade Me's James MacAvoy replied: "We don't have an official number to share but we are planning on setting some records for New Zealand."  

Hmmn. More transparency, please. 

Trade Me's group buying site Treat Me launched at 12.01am today (see NBR's preview here) with a $1 burger offer.

I just ordered one.

The credit card transaction went through instantly, and the voucher appeared in my inbox in a second.

This was 5.45am, but then again Treat Me was barely quiet.

When I first looked at the site, 4200 burgers had been sold. By the time I'd had coffee and dug out my wallet, it was 5365 [UPDATE: that was over 8000 by 6.51am].

No doubt that number is going to rapidly head north once the rest of the country wakes up (there is no limit on the number of burgers - at least that I saw, although I'm checking with Trade Me on that one).

I'll badger someone in the NBR office to buy a voucher too a bit later on to see if the site's performance holds up once rush hour starts in earnest (one rival, Groupy, had a couple of hiccups with online payment processing and email delivery for its launch offer, a $1 Hell Pizza, which was capped at 12,000; feel free to email me your experience on that, Treat Me's offer today or any other group buying site deal.).

Will Burger Fuel fall over?
So: Treat Me it looks like a raging success for Trade Me, even before the sun has risen on launch day.

The question now: can Burger Fuel hack the pace?

It helps - or helps Burger Fuel, at least - that you have to choose one of 27 branches where you have to redeem your voucher.

I choose its store at 191 Queen Street, Auckland, as it's just next door to the Town Hall, scene of 2degrees big announcement today at 11am.

I'll let you know how I go redeeming the voucher as I live blog the 2degrees event.

One glitch
I think it's fair to say that all the group buying sites have slick, simple interfaces, and Treat Me is no exception. 

It does enjoy the advantage that most of the nation are already Trade Me members, meaning there's no back-and-fourth malarky with temporary passwords, or click-to-confirm links.

With the launch offer, you can only buy one burger for yourself, but you can give a second as a gift.

I did so. Once you've entered your credit card details once, you can execute a one-click buy the next time you log on, which is handy.

This time, I did encounter one minor glitch as I was told that the giftee's email address I'd copied and pasted was invalid - but when I copied and pasted again, it worked fine.

What's next?
Treat Me has promised to run multiple offers per city, which will be one of its points of difference (at least from most local group buying sites; Grabone introduced this feature earlier this year). Others will be the sheer scale of its parent's membership and email database, and the trust that Trade Me enjoys (which hopefully I'll retain after I start queuing for my bounty around midday).

Even if Burger Fuel somehow fares okay today, and the rest of the week, I've already got the heebeejeebies about a coming-soon Treat Me offer already advertised on the site: 20 DVD rentals for $3 - it's easy to see that one overwhelming any bricks-and-mortar chain, or further bogging down the already sluggish Fatso.co.nz.