Hi Yardena – my name is Morgan Wright and I am the Director of Business Development for buySAFE. I must say I was a bit perplexed with your perspective in this review. It’s counter to virtually every other piece that has been written on the subject of online shopping safety, including several on PC World itself. I don’t want to clog this post with links, but whether one listens to 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 “all is well” is staggering. I could include literally hundreds of examples of colleagues and contemporaries in ecommerce, security, politics and technology that have the exact opposite view on the state of ecommerce today, and ample statistical evidence to support their positions.
But if we set aside 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 (Safe Web by Norton and Worry-Free™ Secure Site by Trend Micro). If shopping safety truly is no longer a concern, I think it’s an interesting question why four of the largest security companies in the world have aggressively moved to combat the problem.
Now, you do have a valid point regarding the existing inventory in the Shopping Portal. Although we just launched and are currently in beta, today we have partnerships with prominent merchants such as Panasonic and have over 3 million skus 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 search results and in the Shopping Portal, above the likes of Neiman Marcus, Overstock, Amazon and Nordstrom. My apologies we did not have any espadrilles at the time of your search, but you’ll be happy to know that one of our new merchants has a ton of espadrille inventory and they should be live and participating in the Bonded Shopping Network within a week or so (I’ll let you know when they are live). So yes, we do have gaps in our inventory, but it is incredibly easy for us to fill these gaps when we have specific buyer demand.
I did find the last article you cited (from 1999) very interesting. To me 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 that 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.
If you would find it helpful, I’d be happy to provide you with a number of the articles and studies referenced above which clearly outline the scope of the challenges facing ecommerce today. Alternatively, you can access a few of them from the most recent post on our blog (http://blog[.]buysafe[.]com). In addition, if there’s anything else you’re shopping for online that we do not currently have in our inventory, please let me know and I’m certain we can address your needs almost immediately.

Best,

Morgan Wright
Director, Business Development
buySAFE, Inc.

This article is extremely naive, and it shows a pretty obvious lack of understanding of the ecommerce industry. I have been a professional online retailer since 1998, and almost every retailer I know struggles with overcoming buyer confidence issues on a daily basis. If you aren't Amazon or Victoria's Secret, which tens of thousands of merchants aren't including myself, then consumer confidence is easily one of your top three issues along with inventory and advertising/marketing. Most poeple I know are more wary about buying online now than they were in 1999. Why? Because they know better now.

Chinese counterfeits are a virtual epidemic online today, and every time I listen to the news they are talking about a prominent retailer going out of business or losing their customer's credit card info. The reporter should pick up the phone and ask the executives at eBay and Amazon whether or not the issue of consumer confidence is important to their success or failure. I can guarantee you the CEOs won't be as whimisical about this critical ecommerce issue.

Do I like this? No. It is a reality for my business. Yes. Shopping online is fun and convenient, but for the folks that try to make a living online, overcoming consumer concerns is a daily struggle. I say "yippe" for anything that helps my customers feel more confident buying online. We will all be better off if it works!