The e-Bay Principle
If you have not heard of e-Bay you have been too long in the remote, sandy  Kalahari! Or Wherever.
When e-Bay was conceived, in the minds of the founders, as a Global marketplace many very well respected observers and sceptics said it would never work.
Why?  Simply because these non-believers could not conceive of a trading platform where the traders exhibit an exceptionaly high level of honesty and integrity in regard to their trading behaviour.  The sceptics thought that everyone would be trying to 'screw' everyone else.
Which means exactly what?
We, as a trading community, are conditioned to being 'ripped off'. Your bank, boss, landlord, plumber, mechanic, lawyer, insurance company, government, product vendor ... the list just goes on ... seems always to be looking for a way to extract just a little more money from you for services rendered. And even some NOT rendered. It's either in the small print that is too fine to read or  ignorance concerning what makes the service or product happen... which is the immediate focus of your grief. That leaves you wide open to plucking by fast and loose operators. Ignorance can  truly be a very expensive state of being.
Meanwhile the traders are spending more than they can usually afford to thwart the freeloaders, 'alternative shoppers' and  'asset re-distributers'  who are the architects of a gentle word used in Retail: shrinkage.
Yet e-Bay as you may know is a roaring success with over 100 million active trading customers.
Last quarter revenues for e-Bay were around 10 billion dollars ... not bad for a company that has no stock, sells no products, and employs just a handful of people and has no debtors list.  And, in the opinion of some heavy duty minds,  was not supposed to work.
How do they do it?
Simple. They provide a global trading platform, in the form of a time defined auction, where anyone anywhere in the world who has something to sell can trade with anyone else in the world who may be looking to buy that particular item......for a small consideration.
This trading platform simply puts a buyer and a seller together using a platform made possible by technology rather than bricks and mortar. It exists in cyberspace which by all accounts is pretty spacious and the cost per square meter is for nothing compared to shopping malls in the city..
Instead of expensive real estate and huge warehouses with shelves full of goods it is made up essentially of computers with product search sofware  and e-mail links.  Much of the operation is completely automated ... unsullied by the hands of man.
Wal Mart, an existing 100 billion dollar bricks and mortar company, owned by the wealthiest family on earth (five Waltons worth around 20 billion dollars each), could easily have set up this new business platform with some of its small change but were hide-bound by their traditional real world concepts of retail business.
Of course the possibility of sharp traders on e-bay ripping off customers was a very real possibility, even probability.
And that is where and why the e-Bay principle was born.
The way it works is this: To become a trader you get a trading handle (name). Whenever you trade with a customer, the customer is encouraged to submit a 'trading profile' of the transaction to e-Bay. Was the item correctly described? Was it delivered timeously and in good condition?  If not was there reasonable settlement or recourse....etc.
These submissions are used to build a 'Trader profile' which translates into the degrees of 'trading comfort' or TRUST for the customer. If the trader has a high score you can rest in peace concerning your dealings with that merchant. If it is low or there have been few transactions you take your chances ... just be a little more vigilant. Ask to contact previous clients. Just be aware that there are some sharpies who spoil the tranquility of this scene. As an added measure of security you can effect payment through a payment platform such as PayPal which acts as an itermediary between you and the merchant,
Why are we sharing all this with you?  Because, even though it's early days,  we plan to adopt the same 'rating' system with merchants and service providers invited to offer their services to members of WWCTN..
"It is bettter to suffer wrong than to do it,
and
happier to be sometimes cheated
  than
never to trust."
                                                                                             Samuel Johnson
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