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A long time ago, when eBay opened a representative office in the Russian Federation and launched delivery to our country, many media published large articles with an overview of the service, an explanation of the auction mechanism and a detailed explanation of what a purchase protection program is. Then in 2010 the purchase protection program delighted me: the site took all the risks and returned the money if something was wrong with the purchased product. It was a piece of civilization that came to the young Runet.
Importantly, eBay then only launched delivery to the Russian Federation. Russian sellers could not trade anything on the site. A very convincing explanation was given for this: eBay, entering the country, concludes agreements with law enforcement agencies that the police will search for the fraudsters, whose victims eBay returned money at its own expense, in cooperation with the company's security service. Simple cooperation – a direct channel of communication for prompt excitation and control, so that the snoopers do not phile. Otherwise, eBay's fraud losses would be too unpredictable. Our gentlemen, the police, naturally, were not ready for such cooperation. Therefore, the answer was that in Russia everything is according to the law, and everyone is equal before the law – there will be no special conditions for anyone. Therefore, in order to avoid the situation when individual entrepreneur Badrov from Uryupinsk sold 100,500 counterfeit iPhones and washed away with the money, Russian sellers were not allowed out of harm's way on eBay.
I remember that then I traditionally complained about the low quality of our state institutions, from which we all suffer, and began to live on. Years passed, eBay completely passed Russia Avito, where no one gave any guarantees to anyone. In my heart I sympathized a little with myself and my compatriots, that we are all forced to use the worst service due to the circumstances of an irresistible force for the citizens of the country.
One funny incident made me reconsider my view of the state of affairs. The Chinese store JD, at the start of its arrival in Russia, spoiled Russians with very tempting offers. Here are very tempting! And, naturally, such depraved actions against Russians could not go unpunished by Russian officials. Customs began to wrap all parcels with telephones due to the lack of notification (permission) of the FSB at the telephones. Tens of thousands of people suffered. I was among them. I was among these unfortunates. The ZUK Z1 smartphone, which I ordered to give my mother for the New Year, never reached me. But the key event happened later, when hopes for a happy outcome were dispelled and it became clear that the border was locked and the enemy would not pass. I understood that JD's support team is now inundated with tens of thousands of complaints, questions, claims and refund requests. Therefore, in order to save time, I decided to apply for a refund to the payment system. And I paid through Yandex.Money. The troubles started right from the door: first, the YAD call center answered me that they can only tell about the system, they have no support function – they cannot see the transaction or see the account. For all questions you need to write through the feedback form. I'm not proud – I wrote. I was told that Poison does not care about my problems, they do not give any guarantees, for a refund you need to contact the seller or the police. Okay, to the police, so to the police. I asked them for the name of the legal entity of the seller to whom my money was transferred. Renouncement. Long swearing and the demand to call the elder did not lead to anything. Different support and call center employees sent me with varying degrees of rudeness. In the end, I decided to take the problem out to public – I started writing ony on public platforms. On the same day smm YAD contacted me, and after a couple of days the money was returned to the card. That is, they had the technical and legal opportunity to help the client all this time, they simply did not want to help until it began to slightly threaten the public image of the brand.
Having received my money back, I then thought for a long time: “Why did I decide to pay with Yandex at all?”, Because at that time I had a PayPal account with a linked card, but somehow I did not use it. Most importantly, I knew that PayPal had a customer protection program, while Yandex did not. Why did I unknowingly choose the worst, but better known and most popular Yandex for payment?
The world is full of stories when, in all respects, the best product loses to the worst. And this is not always the fault of administrative barriers. Yes, eBay was forced to limit some of its functionality and naturally lost to the irresponsible Avito. But PayPal is losing a share of the Russian market to YAD, even though it offers the best service and great opportunities. It turns out that the crowd effect works despite rational arguments. Even though we know which is best, we still tend to follow the majority. And this is very bad, because компаниям становится выгоднее вкладываться в маркетинг и PR, чем в продукт и R&D. This greatly harms the entire market, that is, we all suffer from it.
Here's another example: Avito vs AliExpress. Not so long ago I met with a salesperson who was selling “new” appliances on Avito (corporate account) after the bankruptcy of the store. The technique was declared as Rostest one, with an official manufacturer's guarantee. The printer that I wanted to buy was brought out to me with ink already filled in and explained that it was a display case, therefore, a little used. The warranty card turned out to be not only for this model, but it was directly written on it that it was for the EU. They explained to me that “we have a bunch of these guarantors, now we will find a Russian one”. Naturally, I refused the purchase and on the same day wrote in support of Avito about the fraud. I was told that my claims to the seller are fair, but Avito cannot verify their reliability, so I have to go through the forest. For comparison, when I bought very expensive bluetooth headphones on Ali, I received new ears in the factory film, to which there were no complaints, but I was confused by the lack of a proprietary warranty card. I created a dispute stating that the lack of a branded guarantee makes me suspect that it might be a fake. Arbitrator Ali requested from the seller “the authorization file from the brand owner or the purchase invoice” (translated from English). The seller replied that he sells only original goods, and as proof provided photos and videos of unpacking the new headphones to show that the warranty card was not included. As soon as 3 days, which were allotted to the seller for the answer, expired, the arbiter ruled in my favor, since the seller did not provide the evidence of the originality of the goods that was required by the procedure. As you can see, there are two worlds – two Shapiros.
Or another example – Yandex Money launched a purchase protection program only in March 2017. That is, 5 years since the arrival of PayPal in Russia, Yandex has not noticed any change in user preferences. It’s scary to imagine that it took all of us 5 years to appreciate the beauty of secure payment and generate a noticeable demand for this service. A refund request in Yandex can be sent within 90 days after purchase, and not 180 days, as in PayPal.
What is the conclusion from all this? You need to be conscious, not to let inert habits take over, try to make a rational choice in favor of a better and more profitable product. As economics teaches us, the more elastic the demand of buyers, the more active the competition among sellers.