Customers vs. Users

This is a real simple topic – I will keep this post nice and short. Everyone should be able to grasp this concept (well, evreyone who does not work for eBay that is).

When you are in business, you have customers. Customers are easy to identify – they are the ones who pay you money.

Some businesses also have users – people who use your services but don’t actually pay you money for doing so. A person who uses a web page for their news or uses a free email account on Yahoo are users.

Here we go – very simply – people who sell on eBay are CUSTOMERS – they pay eBay money for eBay’s service. People who buy on eBay are USERS – they do not pay eBay one red cent for the privilege.

There is a time-honored business axiom that says ‘the customer is always right’. EBay takes the opposite approach with their new buyer protection policy – ‘the customer (i.e. the Seller) is always WRONG.

I realize that eBay could not survive without the users – the same way that a newspaper could not survive if no one ever read it and saw all the advertisements.

However, it should be up to the seller to manage customer satisfaction – not eBay. By inserting themselves in between their customers (the Sellers) and their Users (the Buyers) they have upset the normal dynamics of the buyer-seller relationship. And they have done so without thinking things out. Now, like a car stuck in the mud, they apply more and more pressure where it is least needed, and dig themselves deeper and deeper into a hole.

Will (or can) anyone stop this insanity?