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Author
Businesses that want to purchase over an internet auction site or sell excess inventory could be often uncomfortable over the financial process and do not want to use this medium because of this fear. The buyer can send the money and never receive his product or only one part. On this other hand, the seller can be afraid to send the product and never receive the money. The solution is the use of an escrow.
What is an escrow?
An escrow offers business buyers and sellers a secure way to purchase or sell merchandise online from unknown businesses by holding the payment in escrow until the buyer verifies the receipt of the desired product. The buyer will send his money to the escrow, which will hold it for a certain period of time after the product is received by the buyer. If the escrow receives no comment from the buyer during this period of time, the money is released to the seller. If the buyer is dissatisfied with the product, he notifies the escrow, which then waits until the product is returned and accepted by the seller before returning the funds to the original buyer.
Advantages of this system
The buyer and the seller don’t know each other and are not suppose to put trust on the other part. This lack of confidence is stirred up by the amount of the transaction, which is very often far more important than is the B to C auction. The escrow is the third part and independent. Furthermore, because of the lack of knowledge of the products that you can buy, the escrow is an easy way to cancel the deal if the products do not meet the expectations.
The drawback of this system is its price. A percentage of the transaction is pay by the two parties.
Actually, only ComAuction.com has its own escrow. The advantage is the cost is far less important than use another escrow like you can do on the other web sites. Some popular escrows are escrow.com, Iescrow.com, Tradedirect.com…
When you buy a new product, the buyer has a warranty. When you buy excess inventory through an auction web site you don’t see the product and this product is very often used. Buyers can have, sometimes, the feeling to do a good deal but if the product doesn’t work after a week, it is the opposite. In this case, the buyer can lose all his money or he decides to negotiate with the seller. This process could be long, so expensive and with no chance of result. If this problem arrives, this way to sell and buy excess inventory becomes the opposite of what it is in theory: simplicity and fair deal.
Actually only Zonetrader.com offers a 30 days warranty. The other web sites do not offer anything. Some, like tradeout.com, gives the tip to the seller to provide a warranty but this one is very often incomplete and risky because of the lack of trust into the seller.
A good way to increase the sell of excess inventory over the internet
could be to generalize this warranty. Like that the buyer feels completely
in secure and is ready to pay more for his product.
