Seeing another thread here, "Customers Always Right" but must be Reasonable", I decided to raise one more topic.

In this somewhat unregulated buying and selling market, without proper identification check, the buyers and sellers can be anyone. Since the buyer is the king, the seller will get punished if even one report is made against the seller, so how can we protect the seller in this case?

Case Study:

My experience selling in the highly competitive stuff for ladies (selling some branded goods), after initial success with plenty of sales, i start receiving interesting PM and dirty tactics from random people (competitors), and eventually thread closed down because of one complaint (or many complaints under table i am not sure).

Dirty Trick 1:
Competitors get a spare account, disguise as buyer, buy some cheap goods from the seller, and start creating trouble and make bad claims about the seller. This trick works well especially when it makes a well maintained thread flooded with all the all the nonsense and drive potential customers away.

Dirty Trick 2:
Competitors privately message one by one to the potential buyers who shows their interest on the thread, it works better together with trick 1. While this is already an unregulated marketplace, any "advice" from fellow "buyers" would deter any possible sales.

Dirty Trick 3:
I just found this out recently, not sure if it is organized by certain "interest group", but there is such passionate individual who is actively against certain threads, and call himself/herself activist of certain noble act. Fei Kei trying to fight CONMAN. While in this case, he is only against a few selected group.

Questions for thought

1. Since this is a quasi-unregulated marketplace, why buyers' right weight so much more than a seller?

2. If (1) is true that buyers right is more important, then what is the mechanism for sellers to explain himself/herself when dispute happens? Trade dispute not always been used to solve problem but instead shout and fight over the thread.

3. Shall we have a proper e-commerce site instead?

I think many people are missing the actual concept of customers are always right.

In companies like Petronas, all the employee who deals directly with customers are taught on this concept to ensure that the employee does not outright dismiss any complains from the consumers

Every customers has the right to raise a complain, and it is the companies job to investigate instead of saying you are wrong, now shut up please.

No matter how ridiculous the claim is, customer support must always raise a ticket or whatever system that is used, and the employees are trained to take each claim seriously no matter how ridiculous it is.

That is what "customers are always right" is about.

Its not about the customers always get their way. T&C must still be obeyed at the end of the day.

Its just about better customer relation, where you take everyone seriously instead of simply dismissing them if you think their claims are ridiculous. it doesn't mean you must let them have their way.

This post has been edited by Hornet: Apr 26 2011, 06:47 PM