Buy.com Marketplace Getting a Little Pushy!

The Buy.com marketplace is the young gun of the bunch when it comes to online marketplaces.  It was developed to be like Amazon with same like fee structure and uploads for retailers.  While the Amazon marketplace dominates the industry, Buy.com has been growing in size and has kept retailers happy with the service.  As Buy.com gets older in age, they realize that they want to start keeping the relationship of the Buyer with them, eventhough the buyer is purchasing from another retailer.

Buy.com allows the customer to contact the retailer if there are any issues with shipping or the product, and the retailer is supposed to respond to those emails as Buy.com does not have an in house email function like Amazon does.  Amazon keeps the relationship with customer because everything comes from Amazon and there are no links to the retailers website in any emails.  Amazon understands this and the retailers understand when they sign on.  Well, it looks like Buy.com has finally caught on to it and they want to make some changes, but not in the best way.

Here is an email excerpt from Buy.com to its sellers asking them to stop from using links in their emails to their website or asking people to go to their website for any answers to their questions.

Hello from Buy.com Marketplace.

Buy.com Marketplace automatically sends emails to buyers to confirm orders, shipment and cancellation/refunds as well as request buyer feedback. In an effort to keep all communication with Buy.com customers consistent, we are requiring that all sellers remove their order confirmation, shipment confirmation, and feedback follow up emails. Buy.com Marketplace will send these emails to customers in all cases. Please ensure that these emails are removed by Monday, February 1, 2010.

As stated Buy.com Marketplace will send all shipping emails, but do ask that all sellers work directly with buyers to resolve any issues. Please review all direct emails you send to Buyers and ensure that you there are no links to your website or requests to visit your website in your customer service communication.

Thanks for a successful holiday season. We look forward to a great 2010!

Buy.com Marketplace

Now this may seem a little strange to some as Buy.com does not provide sellers with a way to email from within their marketplace platform.  How do they expect retailers to change the way that their whole system is setup to be in compliance with an outlandish request.  It seems that Buy.com doesn’t want the retailers to use their standard email program to send responses to customers, but some generic response with no images or signatures.  I hope Buy.com realizes that they will probably feel some backlash with this as large retailers are not going to change their systems to meet the requirements of a young marketplace such as Buy.com.  If they want this to work, they need to develop a email function within the marketplace and until they do so, they need to leave this request behind.  Good luck Buy.com with asking retailers to stop doing what they have been doing for many years.  Lets see how it pans out!

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