A new feature that has been added to OzBargain over the last couple of days — Store Representatives. Basically there are two types of people posting on OzBargain —

1. Consumers/bargain hunters/cheapos who have found a bargain.
2. Merchants/shop owners/service providers who want to promote their own products or services.

In order for us to correctly identify members from category (2) in the process to resolve the self-promotion issues, I would like to call on every merchant who is promoting their own deals on OzBargain to apply for the Store Representative status.

What Are The Benefits?

So if you are a merchant/shop owner/service provider, what benefit do you get if you have the Store Representative status?

• You are the official representative on OzBargain for your store. You are automatically more authoritative, and our other members will look up to you for answers.

• You get a small icon next to your name on the deals that you have posted against your store. Our other members and visitors can immediately see that this deal is posted by the store reps.

• Your store will be listed on our store profile pages, with your user name listed under Representatives.

There might be other benefits in the future, but I won’t promise anything yet.

However, a “rep-posting” earns no extra favour from our members. A bad deal will still be voted down regardless whether it has been posted by a store representative.

How to Apply?

If you have been posting special deals on OzBargain and would like to apply for the Store Representative status, you need to:

1. Log in to your OzBargain account.
2. Go to the Contact page, change the drop-down box to “Store Representative Application”, fill in required data, and “Send e-mail”. I will need:
   • Who are you representing?
   • A short blurb about your shop that will go into the profile page.
   • If you are not using your official email address (name@<your store>.com.au), I will also need one from you to verify.
3. You should be assigned the Store Representative status within 24 hours.

Another nice thing to have is to apply for a Gravatar, as OzBargain uses Gravatar to power its profile image. You can put up your company/shop’s logo there to make your representative status more obvious.