"Industry Standard" Return Policies and the Death of the Small Vendor

I had an "urgent sounding" message from eBay in my mailbox this morning, with the title:

"Update your listings now to ensure they comply with recent security, policy and listing requirements updates!"

So I went and looked at this and the "update" basically amounted to letting my know that my listings offering 7-day and 14-day money back return options were no longer valid.

It's a long way up to daylight...

Then there was a long blah-blah-blah about the new "industry standards" (what industry would THAT be? Collectibles? Antiques? Ecommerce?) and how my options are now 30-day or 60-day money back options and I am expected to pay for the return shipping, as well.

It made me think about developments in the retail sales industry, in general... which has been trying to find ways to boost lackluster sales by offering ever more lax return options.

Makes me wonder whether we're going to end up with "Nah, it's not really a SALE, we're just LENDING you stuff, at OUR expense! Have a nice day!"

Perhaps it's all just part of the sales industry's struggle to gradually move from "thing-based" to "experience based" sales.

As younger generations come of age into a world where fewer and fewer can actually (for example) afford home ownership, their disposable income is more likely to go towards gaming, festivals, travel, concerts than towards ownership of objects.

The sun setting on the small trader?

But, as a small vendor of mostly things, the writing seems to be more and more on the wall for me.

I am now expected to be able to sell some $1000.00 antique, pay to ship it to France, then not be able to count that money as actually MINE for 60 days, AND expose myself to the risk of being out an additional $100 worth of return shipping.

Most individual operators simply can't afford to be perpetually "out" some 90 days' worth of cash flow, while waiting to see if a sale actually "sticks."

I need that money to immediately buy new inventory, or I don't have a business, at all.

As I contemplate this, it looks like yet another way in which the small operator is getting squeezed out of certain sales venues.

Of course, the alternative is decentralized peer-to-peer systems that work more or less like co-operatives. But those have their own drawbacks, including the tendency for decentralized to tip over the scales into the land of "fragmented," where each individual market size becomes so small that nobody can actually scrape a reasonable living together.

Sadly, the solution can also turn out to be the roadblock.

Cold...

Hence my frequent hope and suggestion that a peer-to-peer marketplace can be "piggybacked" onto a social network like Steemlandia, where there is already a large user base looking for "alternatives" to the mainstream... and a marketplace unencumbered by the need to enter the fiat money world would be well received.

The LeoShop market is a great idea, but for now it only included digital goods... but I feel hopeful that it (or something similar) might grow into an eBay/Craigslist-LIKE venue for us all to trade with each other.

And as a bonus: What a great use case to make our ecosystem more attractive and interesting to a wider audience!

Thanks for reading!

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(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for this platform.) Created at 20200220 17:56 PST 1205

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