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Technology Stocks : OnSale Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Miguel M. de la O who wrote (920)	3/17/1998 7:12:00 PM
From: William Vu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4903

Whether you bid from ONSALE of any other auction, there is always a risk in online business, because, as a rule, online auction companies such as ONSALE or EBAY do not take titles of products but work like brokers that bring buyers and sellers together, and earn a percentage fee (from 1% to 5%, depending on price). They clearly warn you in their webpages that they are NOT responsible for the quality of products, shipments,etc. If you win, but no product available, then they just say "sorry", and no any compensation to you for your time, etc. If you receive a defective product, you can negotiate with the seller for return, but not with ONSALE or EBAY. Everything depends on honesty of the sellers, and, unfortunately, not all of them are honest. You have practically no means of effective complaining or sueing, and just have to admit it. You have sometimes great bargains, but there is a risk and stress associated with it. This fact, of course, keeps many people from buying through online auctions. Some are repeated customers in the sense that they resell in a local market. The point is that since they are repeated buyers, the bargains they get will offset the losses due to occasional bad deals. But there is a great probability that these resellers will eventually contact the sources of products, or, the other way around, the sources will contact the resellers directly instead of going through the auctions -to avoid paying fees. ONSALE ,EBAY, and the like just help them to find each other, to know each other, and very likely that they will eventually deal directly. This is just a plain common sense. Online e-commerce has a great future, I have no doubt. But this means "a litle bit for everybody", and there is absolutely no absolute or relative monopoly. When people see that there is a benefit, they will jum in. ONSALE in several years will be just one of thousands of online stores. William