I have a question, how will you deal with refunds and scams?
I sell someone a box of dirt under the guise of a laptop or conversely I buy a laptop and claim I only received a box of dirt demanding my money back. How will p2p build the same kind of trust we have from ebay, craigslist and who knows how many or what local apps exist that charge no fees.
Great question. As a former Ebay and Amazon seller, I stopped because it is a scammer paradise now from the buying side. Ebay will almost always take their word, even if what you shipped them weighed 22 lbs and what they whipped back weighed 3.
Paypal can be just as bad despite severing their ties officially with Ebay. If Dcommerce demonstrates they can handle this tug between buyer/seller more fairly than Ebay and bring buyers to the site, I figure their biggest issue will be handling the server load from growth. Many gave up on Ebay (as I did) and many more learn the hard way as evidenced by their seller forums which I still peruse sometimes to see if anything got better.
@practicalthought - I sell on eBay with PayPal constantly and there are 99% positives to the 1% negative you're highlighting. I've sold and shipped thousands & thousands of items/packages (usually 4-8 a day) and have had your scenario happen twice at most ever in 5 years. In those rare cases of a deliberate scammer, either eBay or PayPal made it right after I spoke with the proper people. The last time I had an issue over an eBay policy, I wrote to the CEO, who responded in 20 minutes, and was invited into their office for lunch with the global head of seller engagement who gave me all sorts of perks (after all types of other proactive calls from other staff). The head of seller engagement told me he used my email company-wide and also said they'd be making changes to what impacted me in the upcoming Q2/Q3. Doesn't sound so bad to me...
What you say happens, but it's rare and not something weighty enough in % of transactions to frame them as bad options as a whole.
Congratulations on your great success on Ebay. Unfortunately, that has not been the case for myself or many others. One can see this by visiting their seller forums, where the old timers who still frequent there have the motto, "don't list it unless you can afford to give it away"
You can also see this from many of the older sellers who ran good volume who quit because they found themselves in the same scenario.
I'm unsure what part category may have to do with this, as I have seen that suggested on those boards as well. But the fact is, when a buyer decides they want your item for free, Ebay will usually bend over backwards to ensure they get their wish. Having remained in sales in the real world via live auctions and swap meets over the years since I quit Ebay, I have sold to many regulars who were pickers that still sold on Ebay. So I do know it's possible and happens, but I have little patience for thieves and it takes more balls to steal something when the owner is right in front of you.
Congratulations especially for this. I would say this is even rarer than selling with virtually no scammers, as I have never met nor encountered anyone before now that was a normal seller on Ebay that had access to the CEO, got through and was rewarded with lunch and other unspecified perks. I think you will agree that is not a common response for the head of a large corporation such as Ebay to have with the sellers on their venue, unless we are talking a large corporation such as when ToysRus was briefly there getting their negatives and metrics scrubbed daily so they wouldn't be punished as a normal seller would be.
I have to admit to being excited at the idea of a competitor to Ebay (and Amazon since they have been gating so many categories). Especially one that will allow alternate forms of payment to be able to bypass Paypal. I am not currently in a position to go to auctions, nor do I have a good flea market nearby to funnel items through. But I still have some of the collectibles I shipped when I moved to resell at some point, and will be moving hopefully this summer to an area that does have a good flea market. This venue would be a perfect compliment, and who knows, maybe one that would allow for a decent living.
i sell someone a bar of soap instead of laptop or I buy a laptop and claim I only received bar of soap demanding my money back. How will they build the same kind of trust we have from ebay, craigslist and who knows how many or what local apps exist that charge no fees.
Hi @steemmatt;
dCommerce believes that further incentivising buyers and sellers through crypto token rewards that can be spent for upvotes or bought and sold on exchanges can add significant boost for repeats.
It goes beyond the ebay bucks, usual loyalty points...have you tried selling airmiles? If caught, that airline will destroy the account. dCommerce's reward tokens also hold a convertible option to exchange into the ICO token. At sustainable $1 Mil to $5 Mil total transactions per month, dCommerce will initiate the ICO launch process.
BTW, I hope you consider setting up a storefront on dCommerce!
Thanks for your response. I'm not opposed to anything that helps my business and also grows cryptocurrency utilization. I'm not sure how my operations could adapt to a storefront at the moment. Are there tutorials or is that documentation a few months out as things are being developed?
Hi @steemmatt,
The site will have the lowest learning curve possible....this is because the layout and process of listing and buying will be very similar to other established online platforms.
We have a new, very cool domain name coming out...our Devs are working hard to complete the back end and the UI will be established shortly. Much more to come!
Thank you for your thoughtful inputs.
dCommerce will be as unbiased as possible. EVEN if paypal and Visa rule against dCommerce's decision; we will rely on our reward distribution mechanism to right any "wrongs".
For instance, let's say a seller was "forced" by Visa to take return and resulted in a loss. dCommerce will take steps within discretion to reduce the damages with a larger token allowance. Please bear in mind, that the direction could go the other way for the seller's benefit.
In future features, smart contracts could also be actively utilized as well as multi-sig options as effective de-risking tactics. This is the beauty of blockchain based payment mechanisms.
Good question, @baah and thanks!
For transactions using STEEM/SBD; the built in escrow feature will be utilized. For established merchants, funds will be release upon tracking info availability. For new merchants, funds will be held for 3 days post tracking info availability and then released. For transactions paid via Paypal or Visa, scams can be resourced directly to them for resolution.
For antiscam actions, we will first profile out any users contained in the Global Black list. Second, any IP from known suspicious sources will be blocked.
For outright scams, our function will be to investigate, mediate and block proven scammers.
The buyer/merchant will each also be rated per number of successful transaction and feedback scoring. Known scammers will obviously be at the bottom of such a scale. Sellers can also be able to block out unwanted buyers, but this feature will be a Phase II.
At the end of the day, reputation score will play the biggest role. In fact, the reputation score of buyer and seller will have calculation component in the distribution of reward tokens.
At the end of the day, we are a match maker of willing buyers and sellers. We admit, that all scams won't be detectable nor preventable. So, the scenario you profile can occur. Merchant/Seller reputation scores will have the strongest preventative role.
In other words, if you're buying from a low scoring merchant....the risk is pretty much on you and vice versa for seller. The seller can block out a threshold level of low rep scoring buyers.
Yes, on launch, all will have same starting rep scores. However, the growth process will enable the development of established sellers and reputable buyers.
One of our goals is to populate the marketplace with established Merchants from ebay, Etsy, Shopify as this would mitigate the "risk" perception.
This is great to hear. I actually have a shop on Etsy now. I’ll be using the dcommerce site upon launch to see how the whole experience is. I like that reputation will play a key role because trusted sellers/buyers will rise above shady business dealers.
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Great to know and soon, we will be taking early signups for merchants. More to come!
In my mind, this question was coming to the same which you picked up @baah