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Comment by kube-system | Hacker News Reader

> Too over simplified??

Probably. These shipping services don't really have any expertise to accurately judge the quality of many of the items they ship. They just move boxes around.

Some rando at FexEx Office doesn't really know how to determine that your DSLR has the advertised shutter count, nor do they know how to verify the SMART status of those hard drives you shipped, nor would they be able to validate the authenticity of your designer handbag.

There are specialized consignors popping up online that do have the ability to do these things, though.

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I am copy pasting my comment from the same thread here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22388197

The UPS or something can take a photo of the product or item they received. They are not verifying what's inside. They are just verifying the weight, a photo from few angles, available only in case of dispute. Seller can also do that, but a third party doing it with no horse in the race can act like a notary. We are verifying what we saw. A camera "box" with X pounds of weight.

If seller wants them to verify the inside contents, he needs to Show them the inside contents. Then UPS will be confirming by photos that yes, an item with this serial number is there inside and we packed it. No guarantee of shutter count or working or not. Just what they see & record in a photo.

Its kind of slippery slope. What if its just a empty camera body? What is its a junk camera? What if buyer says these above falsely?

Please do not copy and paste comments, only link to them instead, if on HN. See this comment by @dang: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22122334 (and similar comments - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... )

* I know I don't have the authority to say this, I just want to be helpful.

To save you a click, what @dang says in the first link is:

Please don't copy/paste comments on HN. It lowers the signal/noise ratio and makes for pain when we go to merge duplicate threads. If you want to refer to something you posted elsewhere, please use a link. Better still, when you see a split discussion, email hn@ycombinator.com so we can merge them. We'll make sure your comment ends up in the winning thread.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

This one is more appropriate:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21668637

Please don't copy/paste comments here. It lowers signal/noise ratio and isn't good for conversation. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

> makes for pain when we go to merge duplicate threads

This was interesting. Would it only be an issue if the copied comment was a root comment of the article? Otherwise the copied comment would be under a different branch without possibility of collision with the copy under a different branch. If that the case?

Okay. Who is going to pay for this service? I'm not going to pay for it as a buyer. If I file a claim on eBay or Amazon, they'll almost always side with me.

The seller is going to pay as they are the most likely to lose the money if the sale goes south. The smarter ones would increase the price to account for it (if possible).

Yes, agreed, it could be just another cost like shipping material, shipping charges etc. Seller pays and recoups it from the profit margin, just like any other expenses.

Sellers already pay for insurance/signature/etc. when shipping high value items, this would be just an additional form of insurance that if a seller was going to use they'd roll the cost into the price of the item or shipping fee.

> ...someone at FedEx doesn't really know how to...

Yes, this is true. I think a basic service offering might just record the weight and photo of each item being packaged up.

Even a low tech photo record weeds out a lot of fraud. Oh you aren't returning a thing that resembles the photo that was shipped to you? This won't eliminate fraud, but it will move the bar in a non trivial way. Combine this with a photo ID check at the store for the person doing the shipping and your halfway there.

Lots of objects have serial numbers or model numbers visible on the outside too. That would raise the bar even higher.

Maybe for return fraud that’s an issue. But for buyers, the issue is usually more subtle problems with quality. (DOA, poor quality, counterfeit)

The question is, can a platform protect sellers in this way and still afford to compete with other services? Most buyers like buying from Amazon/eBay where they always get their money back. It’ll be a tough sell to get them to use a platform with higher barriers to making a return and higher overhead costs.

I think that you need to address the concerns that buyers have in order to be successful in attracting buyers.

that should not be a problem in this case.

the seller is selling a used item and the buyer is searching for a deal. if lets say ebay offers this protection for sellers and other don't.and lets say all sellers jump to ebay. all other platforms would lack good deals on used cameras so the buyer if he wants a deal would have to go to ebay and follow the process.

That's not how the dynamics of online selling works, unfortunately. Sellers have to go to where the buyers are, not the other way around. If you list your item on a site with no traffic and more overhead costs, then you're not going to be selling much.

That doesn’t really work as on if the common scams is to take a real box, apparently sealed, but with a brick or whatever in it with the right weight

They would take pictures of items before packing.

SEALED

For many items opening the packing reduces value

and then not pack them...

The Fedex takes the packing resposibility for a fee in this scenario...

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