LastMinute.com - oxymoronical disaster...

[devolution]

My essay on LastMinute.com

Since the early days of the late 1990s, nothing has featured more prominently in the ecommerce arena than LastMinute.com.
Set up by a few failed graduates, it promised to be some kind of modern miracle.
Over five years on, we are still waiting for that miracle.

The problem with LastMinute.com, is that it doesn't offer anything that cannot be bought elsewhere, and usually cheaper.

It's main raison d'etre was that it claimed to offer goods, services and holidays at short notice, at bargain prices.
Whilst it did offer things at short notice, it's prices have seldom been anywhere near bargain.

Research found that 'Last Minute' holidays and flights on the site actually costed more than from standard travel agents!
No doubt LastMinute.com's markup added something to the price, but put simply, who would really pay more for less?

LastMinute.com has seen it's share value destroyed over the dotcom bust period, and yet it still persists, like an old mother-in-law that you wish you saw the back of, with it's empty promises of great deals and bargains.

LastMinute.com has just set up two 'new' services, which it feels will bring in desperately needed revenue.
These services are LastMinute-DVD.com which allows you to buy DVDs, and Last Minute DVD Rental.
On closer inspection, LastMinute-DVD.com turns out to be just a simple custom storefront operated on top of Blackstar.co.uk - totally unoriginal. And the DVD Rental scheme is some oddly concocted scheme operated in association with BT Internet Phones. Customers will be able to visit BT's few-and-far between Internet Phones and order DVDs to be rented for the princely sum of £3.75.
To be honest, who cares? Who wants to go down the highstreet to a phone to order a DVD online, when you can do it in the comfort of your own home from your own PC, from one of the many DVD rental services?
Oh... what's this? 'Last Minute DVD Rental...powered by MovieTrak.com' is plastered on the homepage. Ah well, you cant expect anything better I suppose...

Without being too harsh, these efforts are akin to the dying calls of a one-legged half-blind sheepdog that needs to be put out of it's misery.

Unless LastMinute pull their act together extremely quickly, then it will be finally consumed by the Grim Reaper of cyberspace, and 'fondly' (huh!) remembered as LastMinute.con....