E-Bay Sellers, I need your help!!

[andrewfu1]

Hello,

I'm a student from Georgia Tech and I am working on a research project. If you have a good amount of experience selling on E-Bay (like at least 20 things sold), could you please help me out? I need some pre-test data on a survey that we're working on. The survey is at: http://itm_phd.mgt.gatech.edu/survey/quest.asp

If you a minute, could you fill out this form and give any comments (theres a comment box at the very bottom) on suggestions, complaints, etc.? Thanks for ANY help you can offer, and god bless!

- Andrew

 

[Hossenfeffer]

<< At your option, please enter your eBay User ID, Address, and e-mail address information. >>

IMHO, you should make the "Optional" note much bolder. My first impression when popping over to the site and seeing fields for my name, address, ebay id, etc. didn't have me feeling all warm and gooshy.



<< Often, a buyer would like to physically examine a product, before paying for it. >>

Before paying for it? On ebay? If you're meaning they want more detailed pictures before bidding, yeah, but holding off on payment? I've been using ebay since it started and I've never heard of somebody refusing to pay until they've inspected the goods.

 

[RGN]

Done.

 

[burnedout]

Completed

 

[Smolek]

<< Completed >>

 

[Stifko]

Completed

 

[b0mbrman]

Sure...I'llfill it out

 

[amdskip]

completed

 

[kranky]

Free bump for you.

 

[vegetation]

<<


<< Often, a buyer would like to physically examine a product, before paying for it. >>

Before paying for it? On ebay? If you're meaning they want more detailed pictures before bidding, yeah, but holding off on payment? I've been using ebay since it started and I've never heard of somebody refusing to pay until they've inspected the goods. >>



Actually I'm sure you've heard of online escrow, which basically achieves this. However, it was never really popular, often introducing more problems than solving it. Even ebay believed escrow was such a failure that they sold off their i-escrow division.

 

[Jfur]

Provider error '80020005'

Type mismatch.

/survey/tu.asp, line 53

 

[andrewfu1]

Wow thanks guys for your help. I'll inform the professors that I'm working with about your comments. Basically, they want to study the security of on-line transactions. Why? Well, according to the Internet Fraud Watch operated by the National Consumers League, online auction sales remained the number one Internet fraud for the first ten months of 2001. About 63% of the frauds reported to the Internet fraud watch are online auction frauds. The average loss per person rose from $310 in 1999 to $427 in 2000, and to $478 in the first ten months of 2001 (Internet Fraud Watch 2002).

They tell me that many people are still reluctant to use on-line auction services because of this type of potential fraud of like either buyers sending money and not getting anything back/or getting junk or sellers not getting paid, etc. I think Information Week did an article or something on how E-Bay and Yahoo! and others we're also concerned with this issue.

So hopefully this research project will contribute something. You know, one professor tried posting this questionairre on the E-Bay forums on the E-bay's web site and got ZERO replies. I knew if I came these forums, there are actually decent people here so I could actually get SOME response. Thanks again!