Put your online auction customers at ease with a service
guarantee for your on-sale items.
Recently, lots of online auction buyers have been purchasing
more from sellers who offer surety bonds for their items.
These savvy shoppers know what they're looking for and
want some sort of guarantee before sending their hard-earned
money to some small e-business they've never heard of.
By searching for bonded sellers, buyers can get a guarantee
of up to $25,000 per transaction.
Bonding is basically a three-party agreement where the
third party (the surety company) guarantees to a second
party (the buyer) the successful performance of the first
party (the seller). A bonded seller offers a guarantee that
they'll follow through with the transaction exactly "as
advertised."
The purveyor of surety bonds for eBay is a company called
buySAFE, and they have a more warm-and-fuzzy explanation
of the bonding process on their website:
"The concept began as a simple agreement between
a king, a young farmer and a local spice merchant. When
the farmer, who was not from the kingdom, wanted to care
for a piece of the king's land in exchange for seven gold
coins, the king was uneasy and declined the farmer's offer.
To give the king peace of mind, the farmer had a well-respected
spice merchant vouch for the farmer and personally guarantee
his performance. With this promise, the king hired the young
farmer, and the surety bond concept was born."
BuySAFE was founded in late 2003 by Steven Woda, an avid
eBay shopper who got ripped off by a seller in a transaction
for a handheld computer. He knew that shopping online with
an unknown seller could be risky and that there were many
people leery of it, so he melded his background in surety
bond underwriting with eBay auctions to help make online
shopping a much safer proposition.
Today, buySAFE issues surety bonds through Liberty Mutual,
one of the top U.S. surety bond writers. Once buyers make
a bonded purchase, they can actually view a PDF file version
of their "insurance policy" online, one that lists
their name, the item they purchased and the selling price
of the item. This visual goes a long way toward instilling
confidence in the purchase. As a matter of fact, buySAFE's
recent buyer survey revealed that approximately 96 percent
of online buyers prefer to buy from a bonded seller if terms
and price are the same--even if the competing seller had
higher feedback ratings.
As an eBay Power Seller, this all seemed pretty good to
me, so I decided to investigate buySAFE a bit more by taking
a look at their website. BuySAFE charges sellers a fee only
on the items they bond and not necessarily on everything
they list. Sounds like a pretty fair deal, so I decided
to give it a try and sign up.
On the buySAFE site, there's a "brief, 3 step application" to
fill out to sign up for the service. This is a bit of an
understatement. The application may be brief, but it asks
some pretty darn personal questions. After starting my application,
I left the site twice and went back--lucky they have a special
link for those who have partially filled out an application.
I returned to the application the second time only after
calling buySAFE support to find out why they needed all
this data.
The bottom line is, it's like buying an insurance policy.
These people--buySAFE and Liberty Mutual--are going to vouch
for you and vouch that the items you sell are just what
you say they are. I guess for that kind of assurance, they
need to be sure you're an upstanding member of the community,
feedback ratings aside.
Once buySAFE receives your completed application, they
conduct a rigorous review of you or your company. Experience,
reputation, financial stability, verifiable identity and
a successful track record for meeting obligations are all
considered during the review process. If you pass the review,
you can then have the buySAFE seal posted on your eBay items.
I've found that my buyers really appreciate the fact that
I bond my items, so now I bond everything I list since I've
found that my higher sell-through rate easily pays for my
bonds.
eBay Power seller Clarissa Parashar (AKA eBay user ID
Perpetual-Vogue) says that her business has substantially
increased since she began bonding her auctions just over
a year ago. In fact, she says her business has increased
more than 300 percent, which she partially attributes to
buySAFE. "I bond everything through buySAFE's auto-bonding
feature, and I think it makes a difference even on low cost
items. My items sell over the competition's because of it."
As a bonded seller, there's a secondary benefit, too.
Your eBay listings will also appear on buySAFE's safe shopping
site, where all buySAFE bonded items are listed. This is
a huge benefit, as more and more shoppers find out about
buySAFE every day.
