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CNNfn Digital Jam Featuring SquareTrade
GUESTS: Steve Abernethy
BYLINE: Bruce Francis, Steve Young
March 29, 2000; Wednesday 8:13 PM EDT. - BRUCE FRANCIS, CNNfn ANCHOR, DIGITAL JAM: Well, CNET news says that eBay is closing some member accounts and calling in Federal investigators after the online auction company received more than 150 complaints about fraudulent auctions. Some eBay buyers said they paid for items they either didn't get or they received something other than what they ordered. To help resolve these and other types of disputes, eBay has teamed up with SquareTrade, an online dispute resolution company. SquareTrade CEO Steve Abernethy joins us now from San Francisco to explain how the process works and Steve, that's a great place to start. How does this work?
STEVE ABERNETHY, CEO, SQUARETRADE: Great, well, thanks for having me here. SquareTrade really resolves disputes across all e-commerce. Just take it a step back. Disputes happen offline and online and what we do is we have an online delivered solution to first of all deliver trust up front of all transactions and that's one of the powerful things that eBay is adding to its marketplace, add values (ph) to its buyers and sellers.
FRANCIS: Steve, I'm on your website now. I'm going to self-demo here, so walk me through it. I'm now on your site. I'm going to file a complaint.
ABERNETHY: Excellent. So what you would do is, in the event of a transaction that didn't go well, you'd actually find SquareTrade through eBay safe harbor or through another market place like eBay and you would register the amount of the dispute and what would happen is, once you enter the value there…
FRANCIS: All right. We'll put in $1,000
ABERNETHY: OK. Then you'd put in a date that would happen within the last month within eBay so why don't you put down say the 4th of this month? So put down a four and then drag over to the…
FRANCIS: There's March, OK, got it.
ABERNETHY: OK, excellent and then let's say you're a buyer.
FRANCIS: OK.
ABERNETHY: And then hit enter. And what we do now here and this is a part you're not going to be able to do live. Essentially what SquareTrade is about, is about security and it's about confidence. So what we do is we assign you a password and what that does is it ensures all the information about your case is stored within a case page. So what you would do then at this point is you actually file a dispute and what our solution does is break down the issues. So it might be something about you didn't receive the item on time. It might be that it was damaged and what the solutions does is break down emotions from the actual issues.
FRANCIS: Now do you have online caseworkers who do this or do you have some sophisticated language recognition software that can actually automate some of that?
ABERNETHY: Well, actually the answer to that is both. We actually have over 100 mediators that are highly skilled online today, delivering real human services to people who are involved in dispute. And we also have a technology, a web based technology that actually helps buyers and sellers get together and actually work a solution out amongst themselves which what we've seen is a very powerful tool.
FRANCIS: Now we get to the good part. How do you get your money?
ABERNETHY: Well, the process today within eBay is an experimental phase and we're offering this free to users. In time, we will be charging users to access this service because…
FRANCIS: Will that be based on the size of the transaction say, this was, Steve was selling me one of his old cat collars (ph), charged me $500. I didn't get t. Do you take a piece of that action?
ABERNETHY: Really it will be based on the value of the transaction. Effectively we're there to provide a solution where no other solution really is accessible today for some of these medium and lower value transactions. And will also be accessible to much higher value, more intensive types of mediations.
FRANCIS: All right. Well, thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate it.
ABERNETHY: Thank you. |
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