@lte_owner wrote:
Hi Everyone,
My name is Jim
I'm new here to ebay. On my first day, I posted a few ads, and got three people that wrote me expressing some interest in my offers. I replied to them right away but got no response in return. I then began to search for these customers and found little to go on. One appeared and disappeared, another had no activity for a month from what I could see. The first two that wrote me came pretty close together and both from St. Louis MO. I found it all a bit suspicious. The next step was to look into fake buyers and found that ebay has a history of fake buyers and sellers, which lead me this morning to learn more about fraud here on ebay.
Well, I found that there were posts from some very upset sellers who had been victims of fraud, and learned that ebay and Amazon protects and supports the buyers much better than the sellers. This imbalance is extremely detrimental to both platforms by destroying the sellers confidence. This kind of mentality is good for ebay and Amazon by attracting ambitious sellers trying to grow a business, and it offers a free for all for thieves. The eventual outcome is, both platforms fail, while counting your money, and the thieves walk away with your products and we the sellers are left with our bills and ruined reputations, no?
What would you say to a solution like this? Keep in mind, this is an open discussion, a brainstorming if you will, process.
What if there was a clearing house as it were between the buyers and sellers. An escrow account of sorts that would be an intermediary to hold funds for clearing of passage from the buyer to the sellers, and to act as a receiver of goods from the sellers to the buyers. In my view, this would serve the sellers to both store and ship products and to prove both description and functionality, a quality control center of sorts to protect the sellers and buyers from fraud on both parts, and to ensure payments are made successfully to the sellers for their wares.
Let's begin shall we? What are your thoughts, I'm intrested to hear responses from both buyers and sellers.
Thank you.
Hi Jim, Welcome to the fray! I have not read the replies yet, I'm sure they're... uh... interesting.
I'll just address your points.
While the clearinghouse idea has some merit, there is some history that suggests this is unworkable. I presume this would be an eBay run operation, and there have been some limited and more targeted "clearinghouse" operations in the past that suggest eBay cannot run such a thing properly.
There is the Global Shipping Program, which is only a shipping middleman operation for international purchases, that only focuses on the shipping aspect. It is run by an eBay "partner" (Pitney Bowes). They have a widely reported history of repackaging parcels, often doing a poor job of packing (and reducing box size and packaging, no doubt to lower the volume/weight of items). Items arrive broken as a result, and eBay/PB has not always covered the loss as the program Terms suggest. Additionally the cost is sometimes way out of line with other shipping options and buyers sometimes incur taxes/duty that is either not required or not collected by destination countries in most situations.
There was the eBay Valet, a program where the seller sent the item to eBay, and they (their contractor) listed and shipped the item to the buyer. That program had a history of poor packaging too, in addition to writing poor listings and not being very good at getting stuff sold for appropriate money. That program had additional fees to the seller (owner of the item) too.
Once upon a long time ago, there was two way transparent feedback on eBay, and there was no "Money Back Guarantee" program. While it had its problems, and detractors, it was a balanced approach, and the feedback part kept everyone interested in resolving issues and treating others decently. Because it was pretty much the only "protection", users paid attention to what their trading partner was up to and were protective of their feedback profiles. The transparency made it so everyone could usually tell who was lying, who was trustworthy, and who to avoid - both with regards to a particular transaction, and in general. You could see everyone's ID, everyone's purchase history, and the listings that were involved in any negative feedback.
This was very different than traditional retail, but with independent 3rd party sellers, and auctions, eBay was very different than traditional retail. It wasn't Walmart, or Amazon. Now, eBay wants to be like Walmart and Amazon. Problem is, eBay still has 100% independent 3rd party sellers, and it still isn't Walmart. Despite them trying to move dispute resolution and feedback concepts into that model, it isn't ever going to be Walmart or Amazon either. If they were to get there (as is their wish), they'll be gone, because eBay sellers are not going to be able to better Amazon and Walmart, who are giant corporations that own many boatloads of inventory and handle it themselves.
My proposed solution is stop trying to be Amazon and Walmart, and put it back like it was (say, around 2006 or so). It's not a universally popular solution, and it's certainly not one eBay is ever going to embrace now - they're committed to being big Fixed Price NIB consumer retail goods, with policies and functionality that commonly come with that.
The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves.
