Last posts on eBay

Don't Buy Tiffany On eBay Until You've Seen This!

2008-05-09T07:48:15+02:00

I won an auction for a Tiffany bracelet. But before I even bid, I emailed the seller, asking her if this was authentic, even though in the auction details, she stated that it was.

I know there are A LOT of fakes on eBay, but with 100% feedback from 65 people, I thought they were legitimate. I was wrong.

Anyone who's bought/received Tiffany's jewelry from Tiffany's website KNOWS what to expect in the mail. A heavy polishing cloth/carrying case, a turquoise box, and an authentic piece.

I knew IMMEDIATELY when I opened the box that I had been duped. The lime green box had Tiffany & Co. smudged on top. The polishing cloth/carrying case was hollow inside and made of some hardened material. Again, the logo was printed and smudged. To make it worse, the bracelet didn't even say Tiffany & Co.

I contacted the seller, and she denied it was a fake. Owning several rings and bracelets, I know what tiffany jewelry is supposed to look like. She refused a refund, and I was out $80.00!!!

Apparently this seller bought a fake box (lime green!)and cleaning cloth/carrying case off of eBay - and was passing off a fake bracelet as authentic.

I contacted PayPal - they asked that I return the package to her so that my refund was processed. I did exactly that, and added delivery confirmation to "cover myself". She then tells PayPal the package was empty, and no ring was shipped back. I contacted eBay, and thought they would cancel the auction, absolving me from responsibility. I was wrong again. I had already paid and received the bracelet so I was basically stuck with a fake bracelet and nothing else.

I was out $80.00 PLUS $4.00 to ship the item back. The seller received the bracelet & my money.

Be sure to read all of the fine print of a auction. She stated at the bottom of the auction that the buyer had to pay for shipping it back!! I buy something I think is authentic, and when I find out it's not, I'm out the return shipping charges!!!

As Buyer, you must protect yourself.

While there are some people selling their Tiffany & Co. jewelry (tiffany necklaces, tiffany pendants, tiffany bracelets, tiffany earrings, tiffany rings), be careful. You could end up with a fake peice like I did, and have to pay to ship it back, and STILL not get refunded.

Tiffany Mall is discount tiffany jewelry online store. We have added about 200 Tiffany & Co Sliver Jewelry and Diamonds to the site for our customers. Our mission is to provide the best products and service to our customers at the lowest prices possible.

What will change tomorrow in e-commerce?

2007-01-19T11:00:00+01:00

The Wal-Mart type large big retailers built up their amazing success mastering three key functions: sourcing, merchandising and logistics. This combination of factors allowed them to crush down traditional mum and dad retailers and to impose a new model. The first generation of e-commerce sites adapted this wining model on line. After a difficult start in the late 90’s learning the specificities of the Internet channel, large on line retailers today successfully master the three key area of expertise: sourcing, logistics and merchandising. Thanks to a critical mass of increasingly mature buyers, most of them now experience high volumes and attractive profitability. With a 30% growth per annum which does not seem to slow down, e-commerce has a bright future. However, this nice picture is likely to break into pieces in the coming years. First of all, in the flat world of the Internet, the fortress of sourcing is disaggregating with an amazing speed. The most obscure manufacturers are increasingly easy to spot on line. With little work and a good vertical specialization, almost anyone can source the best product in the most remote place of the virtual world. Regarding logistics, the growth of Fedex, UPS and other large shipping companies also makes it easy for any individual to send anything anywhere, being as reliable as any big corporation. Furthermore, the growing maturity of many Internet technologies (which belongs to the Web 2.0 wave) is combining with the collapse of band-width and storage costs. This opens the door to an exponential growth of innovative e-merchandising concepts. New tools make it possible to create on line shops are indeed becoming so simple and powerful. Any single individual entrepreneur can unleash his marketing creativity for a very low investment. As a result, new innovative merchandising concepts are launched every day on the web at a extremely rapid pace. Without saying that price comparisons are so easy on Internet. This makes it is much more difficult for an e-merchant to replicate a classical tactic of brick and mortar retailers: lure customers with some huge discounts on a couple of very visible products, and generate fat margins derived from impulse purchases. The combination of these strong trends has a crucial consequence: selling on the Internet has become a commodity. We see the rise of a huge world ecosystem of small entrepreneurs who invest into all possible e-commerce niches. This army of anonymous Joes whose cost structures are close to zero, represents a very serious threat for the large e-retailers. This had made the fortune of an eBay, but the phenomenon goes today well beyond auctions. Nevertheless, in this second e-commerce revolution, the large e-retailers have a very smart card to play. I will get back to this in my next post.

What is behind eBay and Google partnership?

2006-09-07T19:30:00+02:00

Following the announcement of the partnership between eBay and Google at the end of last August, eBay stock has gained a steady 1.86%. However, on second thoughts, this giant deal seems rather surprising. What is really behind this deal? As with Yahoo! for the United States, the king of auctions chose Google to fill its international sites with ads. This astonishing decision will create a new form of competition for all the small sellers on eBay. While seeking for a new revenue stream, eBay takes the risk to angry its most valuable asset: those thousands of small eBay sellers. It is likely that the recent pressure on eBay bottom line has push toward this delicate choice. The other part of the agreement is also symptomatic. The deal consists in developing with Google a common click-to-call offer on its site, by leveraging on Skype. The trouble is that most click-to-call experts say that the vast majority of customers (almost 85%) prefer to use landlines rather than computers to call. Thus Skype ends up to be rather a barrier than anything else for the deal. This seems to illustrate the difficult integration of Skype into eBay. Skype is a formidable telephone operator. Its economic model of voice over IP is very strong. On the other hand, synergies with eBay are far from obvious. That is for two reasons. First able, a large part of Skype customer base is located in Brazil and India, that is to say very far from eBay customer base. The second reason is that allowing buyers to call sellers (which was the main rational of Skype takeover in the first place) was not welcome by those very precious sellers. Indeed, sellers are already having a hard time to cope with all the emails from buyers. The idea of having to answer buyer queries by phone gives them nightmares. The future of eBay seems rather in pushing quickly towards Web 2.0 and smart collaborative filtering, as is doing Amazon. By offering a much more systematic usage of its fabulous “Long Tail”, eBay will greatly boost its powerful community of sellers. And as a result, securing its long term bottom line.