Purchasing safely online – Amazon.com – great customer service

As systems and technology improve, purchasing online has become more convenient and even entertaining experience. The real “fun” starts when there is a problem with your order….

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I visited Amazon.com to purchase two Billy Blanks Tae Bo VHS tapes for my girlfriend.

Navigating the site and making the purchase was easy. It took approximately 5 minutes from start

to finish. Please keep in mind I knew exactly what I wanted and did not get influenced by the “online point-of-sale” suggestions.

Two days later the tapes arrived… Smashed! They arrived broken.

I thought “Great. Here is comes. eCommerce Nightmare. How many calls is it going to take to resolve this?”

I called Amazon.com. I got a great service rep. She said “No problem. You will have new tapes by tomorrow and we’ll send you an envelope to return the broken tapes.”

As promised, the next day I had new tapes and a return envelope. (The return envelope was regular USPS postage so I could drop it in any mailbox).

Thank you Amazon.com. Great customer service. They took a problem and created a customer for life. Even if an item costs more on Amazon.com than another site (within reason), I will purchase it from them.

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Note: In all fairness to Amazon.com, they do not get enough credit for influencing the entire ecommerce community. For years other sites have copied formats and design techniques used by Amazon. Millions of users are already accustomed to their designs. Amazon.com has already done all the testing.

Why not copy something you know your users already know how to navigate?

photo (unarco.com)

eBay seller ratings – a diluted commodity (Purchasing safely online)

Purchasing on eBay should not simply be searching for products and looking at the seller’s ratings.

Unfortunately eBay’s online ratings (endorsements) are more and more becoming a diluted commodity as eBay had decided to ”push” users to provide ratings.

Let’s take a look at eBay comments:

Thank you for an easy, pleasant transaction. Excellent seller

Excellent buyer to deal with. Would highly recommend.

Good buyer

Excellent seller A++++++++

Hope to deal with you again. Thank you.

Great communication. A pleasure to do business with.

What kind of crap is this?

A standard buyer-seller deal should be well done. It used to be that comments were “voluntarily” posted from buyers and sellers. Now eBay sends you messages, reminding you to leave comments. It ends up in the “My eBay” section.

Does every transaction warrant a comment? eBay thinks so!

The truly good transactions are diluted because most (good and average) transactions are put up as good transactions. The bad transactions are disproportionately overweighed because there are too many good transaction comments!

So today I get 100 comments on 105 transactions. 98 of the comments are positive and 2 are bad. My 98% positive rating is a positive with regards to people bidding on my items.

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How many of those positive ratings would have occurred if eBay didn’t notify us about leaving comments? 50? (Let’s use 48 for easier math.)

How many of those negative ratings would have occurred if eBay didn’t notify us about leaving comments? 2. The negative comments would still be there.

So 48 positive and 2 negative ratings create a 96% positive rating. The 96% is less diluted with “pressured” positive ratings and the entire system is more legit.

The only thing people would need to change is their thought pattern regarding the reference number. “I would never do business with a seller who has less than a X% positive rating…”

Simple. Done. Good, top sellers should want this process. The average and less than average vendors benefit from the diluted ratings.

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photo (unarco.com)