Guest Writer, Morgan Wright, Director of Business Development, buySAFE, Inc
You may have noticed an article on PC World this week regarding buySAFE and the current state of safety in e-commerce. It’s safe to say we’re a bit perplexed with the author’s point of view, which you can find here :http://www.pcworld.com/article/149504/still_nervous_about_online_shopping_really.html. It’s completely counter to the point of view of virtually every other piece that has been written on the subject, including several on her own website. Whether it be PC World, the presidential candidates, the FBI, New York Times, Wall Street Journal or the Today Show, the amount of data and commentary that is directly opposite to her perspective is significant:
- PC World – McCain Promotes Online Security Policies
- Advertising Age – The Changing Face of the US Consumer
- Today Show – Designer Duds: Fake vs. Real
- NY Times – Beyond Grades: Business Students Put Their Start-Up Ideas to the Test
- Wall Street Journal – Ensuring that your Cartier Really Is a Cartier
- The FBI’s 2007 Internet Crime Report
I could include literally hundreds of other examples of her colleagues and contemporaries in e-commerce, the press, information security, politics and technology that have the exact opposite view on the state of e-commerce today, and ample statistical evidence to support their positions. But if we set aside the experts and pundits for a moment what’s most telling is the behavior of the marketplace around these issues. McAfee and AVG have spent roughly $75 million each on SiteAdvisor and LinkScanner, respectively, and both Symantec and Trend Micro have recently launched new consumer facing products dealing directly with online shopping safety (Norton Safe Web and Trend Micro’s Worry-Free™ Secure Site). I think it would be a fair follow-up question to her why four of the largest security companies in the world have aggressively moved to combat the problem of online shopping safety if it truly is no longer a concern.
While she’s an accomplished journalist, her comments the article indicate she doesn’t she fully understand the risks prevalent today. For example, her explanation of SSL (“a way to tell if a manufacturer sells their own products on their site”) belies a clear misunderstanding of the purpose of the technology. That has nothing to do with SSL. The article she cited at the end was great reading as it showed that despite the incredible growth in ecommerce, the market has barely progressed in addressing buyer concerns. A lot of what was said in the article is still prevalent today, and even ten years later the only way a consumer can truly be confident that they’ll get what they pay for online is to shop from a buySAFE Bonded Merchant.
Now, she does have a fair piece of constructive criticism for us, regarding our existing inventory in the Shopping Portal. However, although we just launched the Shopping Advisor and are currently in beta, today we have partnerships with “non-obscure” merchants such as Panasonic and have over 3 million SKUs of inventory with particular strength in certain categories such as home and garden, jewelry and watches, and certain segments of consumer electronics. For example, if you do a search for “Gucci watch” on Google, you will notice that there are at least four buySAFE Merchants on the first page of Google search results and in the Shopping Portal, above the likes of Neiman Marcus, Overstock, Amazon and Nordstrom. To be fair, we did not have any espadrilles at the time of her search. However, after her interview we called a great merchant that sells espadrilles and they are now implementing buySAFE on their site. This merchant has a ton of espadrille inventory and they will be participating in the Bonded Shopping Network within the next week or so. So yes, we do still have some gaps in our inventory, but it is incredibly easy for us to fill these gaps when we have specific buyer demand.
In summary, while she has fair questions around certain niches within our current product inventory, we’re working hard to immediately address and it’s clear her opinion that “all is well” is counter to the opinion of every expert, statistic, government agency and media outlet, and most certainly doesn’t reflect generic consumer concerns. If there’s anything you’re shopping for online that we do not currently have in our inventory, please let us know and I’m certain we can address your needs almost immediately. Email us at customersupport@buysafe.com with any suggestions. Thank you.
