Is eBay Worse Than Early Sears Catalogs? 438
prostoalex writes "The New York Times claims eBay can learn a lot from the early Sears catalogs, which promised unconditional returns (postage paid by Sears) in case there is any dissatisfaction with the product even if the product behaves exactly as described. Apparently eBay is doing something right, but with no buyer protection, no seller authentication, and no desire to participate in seller-buyer conflicts, no return policy, can the business model be sustained?"
After this long (Score:1, Insightful)
eBay is not a catalog nor a retail outlet. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't deal with this, don't shop on ebay.
Can the business model be sustained? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ebay is not a retailer. It is a marketplace.
Marketplaces do not need to be perfect, they only need to be better than the alternative.
Ebay is so much better than the real-world alternatives - small ads in newspapers - that people are happy to accept its flaws.
eBay (Score:2, Insightful)
What can they do about it? (Score:5, Insightful)
What exactly is ebay supposed to do about it?
Seriously - what can ebay do about problem buyers and sellers? If a buyer or seller flakes out on the other party it's the buyer's word against the seller's. Putting aside the massive amount of man hours that would be needed to mediate disputes, how in the hell can you ever know which person is being honest or if they're both being honest and it was the shipper's fault or someone else's fault? At best, you're just listening to two people's stories and judging which one sounds more believable. That's a pretty poor solution if you ask me.
I mean... I know people complain about ebay and they complain about my site too. But just what exactly do people think we CAN do?! I'm not inside either person's head and I am just a distant third party to the transaction. I give people a forum through which to post, buy and sell with each other. That's all there is to it. I don't know them personally, I dont' process their money and I don't ship their item. How is the auction owner supposed to keep tabs on every aspect of every transaction with all of these parameters that are out of their control?
I'd love an answer, but I'll be fucked if I know.
3rd party for insurance, etc (Score:3, Insightful)
Short answer: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's an auction marketplace, for crying out loud. "eBay" doesn't sell product. Comparison with Sears is apples & mushrooms.
I may be missing something, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
However, how is this eBay's fault? Why should eBay be responsible for my failure to check out the items I'm buying or the buyer I'm buying from? Likewise, why should eBay care if my buyer didn't read the item description?
Nanny bloody society.
Nick.
Hilarious (Score:3, Insightful)
Incorruptible (Score:3, Insightful)
So it was basically a free, rental-service for all goods? I can't see how that could be abused.
business reality (Score:4, Insightful)
ebay (Score:1, Insightful)
Amazing (Score:2, Insightful)
Feedback fills the gap (Score:3, Insightful)
Feedback.
It's priceless. Any of the larger sellers have loads of honest feeback from purchasers. You can guage your own risk. It a model that works well when you understand it. Not only does it help the buyer, but it motivates the seller knowing that public feedback about the transaction will be left by the buyer.
It's a system that works quite well, regarless of a lack of a bricks and motar parallel.
-Pete
Re:Not if someone better comes along (Score:3, Insightful)
I still can't establish if folk really are having trouble with paypal. Sure there are sites filled with complaints, but most of the complaints seem to be folk who had a weak password, saved their password in internet explorer and someone else used it, or small organsiations where they shared the password and someone with access cleaned out the account.
Paypal has made cheap processing of credit cards available to the masses, and an awful lot of folk are using it every day. Are the number of complaints really that high in comparrison to the level of use, or is it just that a high proportion of its users know how to make websites and complain loudly in their blogs?
I dunno. (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, it's a bit like expecting the guy who owns the parking lot to pay for your broken flea market merchandise.
Re:Network effect and customer service (Score:3, Insightful)
Marketing 101 my friend: eBay tries to reproduce a garage sale, therefore their interface is carefully designed to be slightly hard to use, to make people warm and fuzzy when they find what they're looking for, just like in a garage sale.
Why buy on eBay? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Not if someone better comes along (Score:5, Insightful)
I have used paypal for about 2 years now. I had one bad eBay transaction where the seller took the payment, then disappeared. Their e-mail address bounced, their number was disconnected, etc... Paypal "investigated" for less than two weeks, then gave me a full refund.
My father's paypal account was hacked by someone in Lithuania, who ordered a Raider's jacket. He was also given a full refund by paypal (turns out he was using a weak password).
I'd say given my experience with paypal that they're far from fraudulous, and will continue to use them. Much like eBay, their service beats the alternative by leaps and bounds.
Re:no more e-bay for me (Score:1, Insightful)
"If the seller had less than 100% positive feedback then shame on you for buying from them."
Highly unrealistic. Those with 100% feedback, it is safe to say, will not always have 100% feedback. You can't please everyone all the time!
Re:Not if someone better comes along (Score:2, Insightful)
Not necessarily. There is accountability and responsibility in hosting as well as posting. Recently I had the pleasure of reporting the GNAA guy to his ISP's abuse department because he posted to the comment section of my website. Unlike Slashdot, I will not pay to host that kind of trash -- so I recorded his IP address and contacted his ISP (Keycom/Keysurf) as did another person interested in tracking down this asshole. I don't know if we nailed him, but we both did our part to help police the Internet.
Aside from that, anyone who has a website with a public comment section has the responsibility to remove content which violates the rights of others. In other words if I post hate speech (which is NOT protected "free speech") the owner or administrator of the website has a responsibility to take it down as it serves no possible good and serves to harm innocent parties.
Likewise an auction site should do its best to eliminate fradulent sellers, and to completely disregard PayPal, a service notorious for robbing its users. If you don't believe me, see www.paypalsucks.com and www.paypalsuit.com among others. I personally have lost money because PayPal decided that they needed to freeze my seller account even though there were no chargebacks or other similar activities pending on my account.
If eBay were a responsible business, it would be making a lot of changes. As Microsoft has proved, being the most popular exempts you temporarily from being responsible for your customers' safety. I bet -- and you can totally call me on this -- that Microsoft and eBay and many other online businesses will all go down within weeks or months of each other. Internet consumers (or perhaps credit card companies or banks) are going to demand merchant accountability very soon, and the crooks that run PayPal/eBay and other similarly don't-ask-don't-tell online businesses are going to be in a lot of hot water.
-JemRe:eBay is not a catalog nor a retail outlet. (Score:2, Insightful)
That's why there is a huge risk when buying something from eBay.
And no, I don't buy anything from eBay.
If you are a Libertarian, yes. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Not if someone better comes along (Score:2, Insightful)
How exactly do hateful comments do harm to innocent parties? Sure, it's crap and a waste of bandwidth, but I don't see how the GNAA crap can be equated to, say, beating someone. Or even calling them something in person to their face. Also, the law dictates that if you police the content of your forums in some cases, you have a duty to do it in ALL cases. So if you take on the duty of deleting a few messages based on their content, you are going to be responsible for ALL the messages on it. This may be fine if you get three or four messages a day, but a real busy forum with dozens, hundreds or thousands of posts every day is impossible to do this with.
As for doing your best to eliminate fraudulent sellers... Well, that's easier said than done. To start with, how do you prove that someone is a fraud when you aren't the buyer or seller in the transaction and you had nothing to do with the transfer of the money or the item? If I tell a friend "I know this guy who's selling a car" and I tell this guy who's selling a car "I know a guy wh's looking for a car" and they get together and are unhappy with their transaction later - how am I to know what happened and who is right or wrong or if there was fraud involved or not? I mean.. you're asking ebay to take responsibility for something that they can't possibly prove or disprove. And what happens when you start kicking users who aren't really frauds? Or if someone complains about another user and you kick them only to find out you kicked the wrong one based on information from the other person?
Really.. it is FAR EASIER said than done, man...
Re:eBay is not a catalog nor a retail outlet. (Score:4, Insightful)
Say you want to buy a monitor. what's the most you'd pay for it? let's say $100. If someone snipes you at $101 that's not unfair. You didn't want to pay over $100.
If someone at the last minute pushes the bid up from $50 to $95, and you still have $100 as your top bid, it's not like they're suddenly stealing $45 from you. You wanted to pay $100, you won it for less.
The only problem I see is people addicted to the dramatics of bidding, by pushing up the price 50c at a time. If that game is part of the fun then... uhhh I guess it's what works for you, personally I use eBay to just buy things.
Bid your max bid first and leave it. everything is fair afterwards.
eBay is the world's yard sale, Sears is a store (Score:3, Insightful)
eBay is basically the crap you don't want or need anymore or the stuff you stole that you're trying to get rid of. So we all lower our own expectations accordinginly.
Kinda like TigerDirect.com which is the last refuge for old/used/returned/opened equipment sold as new or something quite like that and you wouldn't really know it's crap until you read the fine print.
Anyway, eBay would be a lot better without PayPal which is really just a polite way to steal from you. They take a system that basically works well; credit card sales, and they insinuate themselves into the middle of each transaction in order to suck a few more dollars out of you. Which truly sucks.
Ah well you people made eBay what it is today. Enjoy.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Typical: reporter misses the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Also worth noting is that ordering from a catalog a hundred years ago is nothing like these days, with lesser amounts of technical information, practically no standards, and nothing but hand-drawn pictures to go by for illustrations. These days, you can be a lot more certain of what you're buying than you were then, and there is no longer any need to overcome the resistance to ordering sight unseen, as was the case then.
Oh, one other thing. The NYT reporter should have a look at what has become of Sears these days when considering how wise it would be to emulate them.
Re:Hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
Ebay's low risk, low captial method got it to where it is today. Slashdot's overly cynical nature is unnecessay. Ebay works and its great.
Re:More machine than man/Paypalsucks is a scam too (Score:3, Insightful)
Go to the site. Notice the banner ads? They are for competing services to paypal. PAYPAL'S COMPETITION sponsor the site!!
I feel MUCH safer with Paypal than I do with my bank. eBay depends greatly on good press. The days where "bad press" news items come out about eBay - the stock usually takes a 2-3 point hit. Paypal/ebay have stockholder's to please and analysts to appease with tight security. Is it perfect? No. Is it better than average? A resounding: YES!
Read this article [adzoox.com] on my website about Paypal and PayPalSucks.com where I corresponded with the webmaster.
What is most ironic - is that scammers use paypalsucks.com as a way to say they aren't a scammer! Saying:
"I don't use Paypal - see this website for why"
Re:Not if someone better comes along (Score:1, Insightful)
As for the hate speech.. That's a little harsh. I hate a racist, sexist or homophobe as much as anyone else, but they're certainly free to think and speak the way they do. I would and do remove such speech from my site when I see it (rare) but I do that because it's a personal choice - not because I think they should not be legally allowed to spew the shit they do.
Do you consider comments like "all sex is rape" from Patricia Ireland to be hateful? How about the thinks Farakhan says, the things Jesse Jackson *does* and a lot of similar situations? Or is it only hate if it comes from a white male?
Anyway - I hope you aren't suggesting that just because it harms society (in your opinion) that it shouldn't be allowed anywhere. In fact, I would suggest that it is enlightening to see or hear how hateful and ignorant some people can be. I have had almost no exposure to racism in my life, until I had a twenty year old roommate who constantly said crude and hateful things about black people. After a couple months of this, I kicked her out. It was clearly more important to her to be homeless and *vocally* racist than to keep her mouth shut and have a place to live.
But that was a personal choice. I don't care to be around racists. I don't want family, friends or acquaintances who are racist and I will end a relationship with them based on that behavior. But that is my personal right to not deal with those kind of people. I have a right to not allow you to speak that way in my home or to not be around you when you act that way elsewhere - but nobody has any right to stop you from acting or being that way in general. Nor should they.
Re:no more e-bay for me (Score:5, Insightful)
What about people who get ripped off, then leave the seller a negative feedback, to which the seller retaliates and leaves them negative feedback? Then the buyer has a negative feedback on his record, and for what? For complaining about getting ripped off?
Your "100%" threshold seems a little high to me. It discourages people from ruffling feathers and leaving negative feedback in legitimate cases, for fear of tarnishing their own history to anything less than the flawless that buyers like you demand.
can it be? not really (Score:2, Insightful)
A year or two ago, I could actually find things on ebay that I was looking for. Hell, no matter what it was, I could find it.
Now, any search just turns up a million hits for people who aren't using ebay for what it was good for, but are instead using it to sell ultra-low quality crap they bought in large volumes.
searching is rougher too - I go to look for anyone with weights for sale in upstate NY, and have to go through a billion diet pill and video things just to find the one item that almost is what I was looking for.
Do I buy it? No...the fact that ebay has a rep for scammers and ripoffs now does help make that decision, too. More and more, that's their rep.
I wish there was a way to filter out professional ebayers...
So? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:eBay is not a catalog nor a retail outlet. (Score:3, Insightful)
If someone else comes along at the end of the auction, sees the item and is prepared to pay $95, then you have to top that or lose the item.
It's the way it works. Just because something has been at $50 so far doesn't mean it'll sell for that.
If you think it's worth $50, then bid $50. If you think it's woth $50, but bid $100, and then someone else bids $95, you weren't 'trapped' into paying $95, you said you'd pay upto $100. You got it for less, so what's the fuss?
In other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Typical issue for me... (Score:4, Insightful)
I have the unfortunate ability to see both sides of an issue, leading to me losing every argument I've ever been in. So here's my take.
All of my transactions on eBay have been efficient and hassle free, even when buying big-ticket items (like a trombone). My dad, however, got burned once and will never use eBay again. So it is in eBay's best interest to make sure that sellers' and buyers' disputes are resolved amicably. And I can't see why they haven't been involved because they (and PayPal) have records of the transactions.
However, I can see that eBay is merely a vector for the transactions, and that they don't have any fault in letting asshats get money out of unsuspecting people. And eBay, being a publicly traded company, has an obligation to its investors to make as much money as possible. Enforcement or arbitration would seriously eat into profits
So a risk/benefit analysis is in order; see if it's more profitable to create a safe environment for both buyers and sellers, or to ignore it and avoid the cost of that service. Or wait for it to get so bad that the government regulates it and everyone ends up paying for their laziness and greed, like a lot of companies.
Big != bad (Score:1, Insightful)
Or not.
I've been a member of eBay since early 1998. I've seen the company grow beyond anything I'd ever expected... and it changes OFTEN. Even today, the terms and agreements are constantly being rewritten, because eBay seems to be a company that learns from its mistakes.
Does anyone else remember when the feedback forum used to be a free-for-all? Until a few years ago, you didn't even have to have proof of a completed auction before you could leave feedback for someone! That, of course, has been fixed, and better user verification has been implemented, and lots of other things have been fixed... and will surely continue to be fixed.
Some great insight can be found here - http://pages.ebay.com/community/boards/index.html -- You can read about scams that the community is aware of, sometimes you can read about interesting...idiots being scammed... it's a great way to learn how not to be by the example of others.
Remember, the best defense is knowledge. I still boast a 100% feedback rating, and I've bought and sold many high-dollar items. I'll be back here to eat my hat the day I get burned, but as long as I extensively research the sellers I'm buying stuff from (for example, looking at the seller's bidding and selling history, both past and present) I feel it may be a while.
Corruption will exist anywhere if you look hard enough. In a community with millions of users and tens of millions of auctions running at any given time, it won't be hard to find. Such is life.
Re:What can they do about it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously - what can ebay do about problem buyers and sellers?
Well, for starters they could offer an escrow service.
Seriously, I am amazed that they don't. When I first heard about ebay and its popularity I thought:
"Hmmm, they must have some sort of escrow service set up.....there's no way people would be stupid enough to send money to a random, semi-anonymous person on the internet and HOPE they get somthing back."
Turns out I was wrong and both ebay and paypal prove it.
On any given day you can go on ebay and find more fraudulent auctions than you can shake a stick at, and paypal, being expempt from banking regulations is a VERY risky place to keep or transfer money. By not being a bank they are exempt from rules about how much cash they must keep on hand to cover the "balances" in their accounts, making them the perfect target for a bank run the minute there is significant doubt about their stability.
If you want to be better than ebay, here's what you need to do:
I haven't touched on #1 before, but it's really important. Try going on ebay right now and searching for "RX-7" (the car I own). See all the keyword spamming that goes on? That makes it a real bitch for me to try and find ACTUAL PARTS FOR AN RX-7. Combine that with the lack of protection when I actually DO find something, and I just say "fuck it, I'll get my stuff elsewhere". So far, I have yet to buy a single thing off ebay.
What I would like to see, is a human moderated electronic aution site, with a built-in escrow service.
Yes, that would cost more, but I'd be willing to pay. Especially for an escrow service.
Here's how you do the escrow service:
There is a box I can check when I bid. When I check this box, you charge me an extra $5 for the service. If something goes wrong, you get an ACTUAL HUMAN involved and resolve things quickly.
trusty Sears (Score:3, Insightful)
eBay is driving users away with lack of policy (Score:3, Insightful)
It's been my experience, and I can see this in my friends who've used eBay that there's a lifespan to using eBay which pretty much follows the bell curve. The steps are basically:
1. Initial awe and amazement
2. Lots of impulse purchases
3. "Hey, I can make great money selling crap"
4. "Hey, I can make great money beating the system"
5. A couple bad experiences either buying or selling
7. Losing interest in buying
8. No items left to sell/effort too large for profits
9. Disillusionment with high eBay fees
10. One really bad experience buying (less so selling)
11. Beginning to hate eBay's policies
12. Realizing anything you want costs more on eBay
13. Almost never using eBay
It's pretty clear to me where the curve starts plunging downward - whenever there's a need to use eBay or PayPal feedback/protection/or dispute resolution.
Eventually eBay will run out of customers to cycle through and another competitor will snap them up. Likely they'll just target experienced eBayers and provide them with a dispute resolution service that introduces accountability. If eBay wants to fix the curve they should do the same for themselves and keep their users for the long term.
Re:eBay is not a catalog nor a retail outlet. (Score:2, Insightful)
A data-drive is not something I would buy at a "Psssst, wanna buy a drive?" place. If it croaks, you may lose your data, which is probably worth more than the $20 or so you save. If you are going into shady-land, then spend it something that does not drag your data down with it. It is almost as bad as:
"Psssst. You there. Wanna buy a parachute?"
Re:eBay versus New York Times (Score:2, Insightful)
In what way exactly?
Re:eBay is not a catalog nor a retail outlet. (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much like eBay deals with sellers who act irresponsibly.
Actually, with feedback and eBay policing both the buyers and sellers, it's a whole lot better buying on eBay than at a flea market, but the general business model is similar.
I've been burned a couple of times on eBay, and both of those sellers are now banned. It's a risk that I'm willing to take because I've saved tons of $$$$ and been able to easily buy products that are difficult to find elsewhere.
New oven
And
Trying to compare the service that eBay provides with that of a retailer like Sears is disingenuous. On eBay, I'm dealing with the actual seller, and eBay does provide lots of help if there is a problem.
Re:eBay is not a catalog nor a retail outlet. (Score:3, Insightful)
I do the same thing. It bit me in the ass once.
There was a nice 10" touchpanel for sale. I saw it right when it was listed, Buy It Now for $300. The panel was worth $600 easy, but I needed a question answered before I bought it.
So I placed a minimum bid of $1.00 to get the BIN option to go away. After the seller answered my question, I asked if he was still willing to sell it at the BIN price. He wasn't. Said he'd received too many questions and wanted to let the auction play out.
The thing sold for over $550. I should have bought it at $300. Oh well. Thinking back, I could have canceled my bid and BIN would have reappeared since I was the only bidder even after my question was answered. Morally I'm not sure that would have been acceptable, however.
Re:early Sears catalog? (Score:2, Insightful)
Uninformed writes, "No store in their right mind these days or a deep pockets will promise unconditional returns in case there is any dissatisfaction with the product even if the product behaves exactly as described."
Actually, that is NOT true. Most retailers WILL accept returns, usually up to 30 days after purchase, no questions asked. (Look at -- and keep! -- your receipt next time you go shopping.)
Why? Quite simple. They keep you as a customer.
The vast majority of customers are honest, and the stores know this. They accept the fact that there are always going to be people who abuse the system, and they also know that the abusers actually LOVE to play the game. The smart retailer tells the clerks to smile and give the customer their money back, so the abusive customer can't play the game.
There ARE some exceptions to this. Pretty much every store that sells big-screen TVs suspends the 30-day money-back guarantee a month before Super Bowl Sunday, for the obvious reason...