I returned from a relaxing extended weekend in Carson City, NV, recently to discover an e-mail from a recent buyer in my inbox. According to him, the item he had purchased from me was missing a vital component—and would not work without it.
I politely offered to send my buyer an identical replacement ASAP, no questions asked. It would eat any profit I had made on the sale of the first item, but I wanted to do my best to make him happy, and to do what I could to prevent negative feedback. Maybe I should have asked him to return the item first, but I didn’t really see the point for this rather inexpensive item.
But part of me wondered if he was just looking for a refund to his PayPal account. Call me untrusting if you want, but after selling online for more than 10 years, I’ve come across a quite a few buyers who are just out to get something for free.
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After 10 days of frustration, anger and just plain confusion, I finally feel vindicated for a false accusation of violating eBay’s Verified Rights Owner Program.
The organization, which is supposed to protect the intellectual property rights of third parties on eBay, came knocking at my door recently and took down one of my listings without any real explanation. It simply stated that I had somehow violated its policies. I knew there was no violation. I even checked my saved listing on Auctiva and re-read every word. Nada. The wording was mine, the image was mine and I was stumped. Then out of curiosity, I checked my Sellathon stats.
Lo and behold, only three people had viewed my listing before it was ended: me, another eBay seller—who was selling the same product—and eBay, which viewed it immediately before the listing was removed.
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A few weeks back, I commented on a thread on our forums about how to spot “phishing” or “spoof” e-mails claiming to be from eBay, PayPal, Auctiva, etc.
Then over the weekend, I received a very legitimate-looking e-mail, claiming to be a message from another eBay member. The return address was member@ebay.com—which is the e-mail address you’ll see on legitimate “this member has a question for you” e-mails—and it looked exactly like the typical messages I’m so used to seeing.
But right off the bat, I knew this wasn’t a legitimate message because the title of the item in the subject line was of something I had never, ever sold. The second red flag was the fact that the e-mail was sent to “Rebecca Miller.”
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A mock funeral was held last week to honor an old friend to many, Internet Explorer 6. First released back in 2001, the browser was once highly regarded, but today users are less than enthusiastic about it. Funeral organizers think the browser should be officially laid to rest, and many Web developers couldn’t agree more. After all, Internet users have several other options for surfing the Web, including two more recent versions of Internet Explorer (IE7 and IE8).
But why does it matter what browser you use when you go online? There are several reasons: faster load times, getting pages to display the way they were intended to, and even added security are among the most obvious.
“If Internet users do not update their browsers, they miss out on the great improvements that make their browsing experience smoother and safer,” says Auctiva developer Ervi Bongso. “Browser developers have been improving their products by taking in consumers’ suggestions and comments, through testing and focus groups, etc., so they can provide you with something better. Some people dislike changing because they have to learn something new, but sometimes, changes are good.”
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Search engines continue to be a top resource for online shoppers. In fact, a recent study by Compete Online Shopper, a Web analytics company, found that 61 percent of online buyers use search engines when shopping around for products. The second most popular tool cited among these shoppers was coupon sites, with 35 percent of buyers saying they visit these. Retailer marketing e-mails came in third, with 29 percent of consumers reading them when deciding what to buy.
Buyer behavior does vary from niche to niche, but there’s no denying one thing: Search engines are very important to online shoppers.
This comes as no surprise to Auctiva Commerce Product Lead Chris Eckland.
“People utilize search engines, and Google Product Search in particular, to find the best deal on an item that they’re planning to buy,” he says. ”Often, this activity may be just to confirm a deal that’s available locally is in line with other offers, but in many cases a quick online search can reveal online stores with better deals or specials not available elsewhere.”
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