Is eBay Worse Than Early Sears Catalogs?

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?"

Comments

eBay is not a catalog nor a retail outlet.

[bryanp]

The closest real life analogy would be the proprietor of an exhibition hall holding a flea market. If you buy something crappy at the flea market from Joe, the building's owners aren't the ones you have a problem with. All they did was rent space and maybe some tables to Joe so he could set up and sell his stuff.

If you can't deal with this, don't shop on ebay.

Re:eBay is not a catalog nor a retail outlet.

[Overzeetop]

Yes, you can. And if there are several complaints, action will probably be taken, depending on the venue. In an enclosed mall, you'd better believe that the mall management will have a talk with the vendor, and their lease will not be renewed unless things shape up.

Property owners who have high visibility leases, and depend on high visibility and positive consumer attitude are very careful about keeping the image up. One or two lousy stores can drag down the profits of an entire mall, and force good clients to look for retail space elsewhere. No leasees = no money for landlords. They do care.

Smaller places will be more tolerant as long as the rent checks don't bounce. The bigger the city, the less policing will go on in these "off-main" singles or low volume rentals. The smaller the city, the more careful everybody is. A few really bad trasactions, especially with the wrong people (tip: beware of grandma, she knows everybody in town), can spell doom for a business. If you run a shady business in a small town (say, less than 100,000pop) you can expect to only get leased space from an equally shady landlord, or you'll have to buy your own place.

Then, of course, there's the local licensing authority. You can always lodge a complaint with the board which grants business licneses. Depending on the rules, it may be possible to get a repeat offender banned form doing business in your town.

Re:eBay is not a catalog nor a retail outlet.

[bstone]

suffice to say money was returned and stall keepers dealt with.

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 ... got one with a small scratch in the corner that I can hardly see ... $600 less than buying it locally. New cook top ... customer return for a small scratch in the glass (like I'm not going to scratch it the first time I use it) ... $500 savings. Items like this are way too difficult to find without the marketplace that eBay provides.

And ... people have been happy with my junk, too.

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.

Can the business model be sustained?

[ites]

Yes.

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.

What can they do about it?

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who runs a large and successful (but non-commercial) auction site myself, I have to ask the following question:

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.

Re:What can they do about it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd also like to add that one way to deal with problem buyers and sellers is to leave bad feedback for them. If they screw you over, LEAVE THEM FEEDBACK. If they get enough bad feedback, nobody will deal with them anymore!

This system should be self-correcting, but the reason it isn't is that people are concerned that if they leave a bad feedback, the other person will retaliate. On my site, I've seen people with 2,500 feedbacks (ALL positive) freak out because one person left them one bad feedback. If nobody is willing to suck it up and leave appropriate feedback for a problem buyer or seller, then they're just passing the buck and letting more people get screwed over.

On my site, I ban people after their feedback ratio drops to a certain point in relation to the number of feedbacks they actually have. If more people would leave the bad feedback when it was deserved, more people would be banned. But since they don't, the system has no way of knowing the person needs to be banned. And without leaving the bad feedback, *I* certainly have no way of knowing that the user is a problem.

Really, if you're not willing to do your part - don't blame the auction site.

Re:After this long

[Mattcelt]

At the same time, however, Wall Street doesn't look at businesses in terms of natural progression - increase, plateau, decline. WS has an unrealistic expectation that companies will continue to have exponential (at at least unchanged linear) growth, which often causes companies to do things which hurt their long-term viability for the sake of short-term gains.

I liked Larry Page's (Google co-founder) take on it: "A management team distracted by a series of short-term targets is as pointless as a dieter stepping on a scale every half hour." Very nice.

However, there are a lot of things I (and many others like me, I'm sure) won't buy on eBay because of the lack of protection from the company. But I'm not sure that eBay should do this - the resources involved are purely losses; no revenue will be gained directly, only indirectly (hopefully) through increased traffic.

I think a better solution would be for a cottage industry to grow up (similar to Paypal or the escrow services already doing well b/c of eBay) offering transaction insurance or seller/buyer disputes for a reasonable price. If this business did well, eBay would probably purchase it the way it did Paypal.