eBay® PowerSeller Business Practices FOR DUMMIES®

Chapter 46. Bonding Your Business

In This Practice

• Learning about bonding

• Bonding your eBay sales

• Bonding your Web-site sales

In the past, high-dollar transactions on eBay were a bit more complex; the only security a seller could provide for the buyer was to throw in an escrow — an agreement to turn the item over to a third party for safekeeping until the transaction was complete. Escrow is a great way to protect the buyer, but it ties up the seller's money for considerably longer than necessary. The best legitimate company currently for escrow on eBay is escrow.com.

Lately there have been many scandals in the online-escrow arena. Fraudsters have put up bogus Web sites, offered expensive items for sale online, and then run the escrow through their bogus sites. Buyers have sent their money (lots of it), thinking everything to be legit — but when the money arrives, the bad guys take down the Web site and make off with the loot.

That happened often enough that escrow got a bad reputation with buyers. As a matter of fact, the issue is so serious that if you go to the escrow.com Web site (at https://escrow.com/fic/), you'll find a very helpful zone that gives you the lowdown on recognizing escrow fraud.

There's a viable alternative to escrow, something that will make the customer feel good about spending buckets of money on your site: Bonding. It's all about potato chips, beer, and Monday Night Football. (No, wait, that's male bonding . . . just kidding.) The bonding I'm talking about here ...