aPazari

10 reasons to use aPazari instead of Ebay

aPazari is a new web platform where you can buy and sell your stuff. Currently, the leader in online trading is Ebay with more than 10 million registered customers worldwide. It is a very popular and stable e-marketplace but it has important weaknesses. In this document we have listed the 10 most popular weaknesses of Ebay and how aPazari can do better.

1. Ebay, as almost every online marketplace, after it became popular its community was poisoned by malicious sellers or fake buyers. They responded with several measures, most annoying of which was the credit card check during registration. In order for anyone to register in order to buy or sell on Ebay a credit card background-check had to be made. This disappointed many people because instead of trying to clean the community the smart way, by enforcing their own feedback system, they forced everyone to pass a background check by taking their credit card numbers. No matter how big a company you are, you cannot guarantee 100% safety for this huge online credit card database. That's why the best way to avoid this burden is to simply not store the credit card information of your members. That's what aPazari is doing. It is 100% FREE to register as a buyer or as a seller to our online marketplace. The only place where you submit personal bank information is at the registration page of our affiliate, Moneybookers, who contrary to PayPal is not sharing its credit card database with us. Our registration process is faster, safer and without any background checks. We keep our community safe by enforcing smart feedback/comment policies.
2. The second important weakness of Ebay is mainly a result of the first one. There are fees for almost every function you may decide to do other than just browsing the website. There is a registration fee for the sellers (PayPal); there is a monthly seller fee and many other unclear small charges everywhere. This would be fine if you could choose whether you want to pay or not. Because they have your credit card on file, they charge you whether you want it or not. Ebay even states in its Terms of Use that when you register you agree that in case you owe them money they can take it from you using all the financial data they have about you. In many cases where people use a debit card instead of a credit card they find themselves owing hundreds of dollars after their debit card has been juiced out of all the money it had and because it cannot go negative (debit cards are like e-money/e-wallets, you can spend only the money you have bought) Ebay cancels their registration and it puts them on a black list, so they cannot register with the same address/phone/nickname unless they pay the owing money. Ebay, plainly and simply, is ripping you off. It may be very good but is just expensive. aPazari is the exact opposite. aPazari is FREE to use. aPazari also does not keep black lists, or charges any kind of fees for using the service. And because we have no bank file about you, we cannot make you pay if you don't want to. We also let members cancel their account by a simple e-mail to support@apazari.com.
3. Ebay is an old platform. That's why their social networking (community) features seem to be incompatible with the rest of the service. They let you make an Ebay-hosted blog, or chat in the Ebay-hosted forums, or built an Ebay-hosted public profile (My World) etc. This approach is just unproductive because most people want to have their blog or social network as far away as possible from their shopping website. Most people also want to try new things such as micro-blogging, wikis, video-sharing etc. that an e-shop can simply not keep up with. aPazari does not bother to pretend it's cool to shop. You simply buy and sell stuff. We think that most people prefer to hang out with their friends in other places with social networking features, such as music, video-sharing, photo-sharing websites and not in cool-wannabe e-shops. That's why we only have simple social networking features that in no way are a mach for the ones that you can find in other, cooler websites. We keep it simple, fast and easy.
4. The multiplatform bet is the future. The future, as we see it, is going to evolve around the internet with all kinds of devices connected with it. They are all going to be with powerful processors inside them and with various form-factors. From simple audio-only, no-screen tiny devices that fit in your pocket to huge HDTV sets in the living room. From smart tables to smart cars etc. This is the place where natural interface comes in. A simple website is not going to be able to take advantage of every device's unique features. That's why it is imperative that new, more device-oriented apps are produced that can do most, if not all, of the things the website can do. Ebay bets on Adobe Air to bring you that experience, we bet on Microsoft WPF/Silverlight. aPazari Desktop is so much fun. It is a graphic-rich, always online, desktop application that you install with one click and you use to perform almost every function you do in the website. It does everything, and it does it in style because it knows it is sitting on a desktop and it uses your local processor and graphics card to blow your mind away. aPazari will continue to produce more device oriented software to bring the magic of trading to as many devices as possible.
5. The website is the core of our business. Our website in size is no much to Ebay's. We have though many interesting features. We use more AJAX, we use a more application-like instead of a page-like UI and we keep it as simple as possible. New features are going to be coming at a higher rate than our competitor.
6. Transferring your reputation from Ebay is illegal. It is clearly stated in their Terms of Use that the reputation system is not transferable. Selling a World of Warcraft account is also not allowed. You are not allowed to use Google Checkout for paying or receiving payments. They have very strict rules that in one hand keep a higher safety level in their community but on the other hand leave a weird "jailed" feeling to its members. Our platform is more open. Our rules are more relaxed and our policies are debatable with everyone of our members. We welcome new members and we reward loyal ones.
7. If you are an advertiser and search for the link advertisers in Ebay you will simply not find it. It is a very sad situation when you have no access to this entire customer base. We on the other hand offer open and simple access to our client base. 90% of our website is advertisers-friendly with reserved and prominent locations for your ads. For now it's all done through Google Adsense but in the future it may become even simpler and cheaper with a service of our own. We also offer the ability to create sponsored campaigns for those of you who need more. To see more about advertising, click here.
8. aPazari is an open platform. We offer an API, tools and many other opportunities to those of you who want to develop on top of our platform. You can build almost anything. From your own desktop application to a simple widget. All of this with our full support through our documentation and with your passion.
9. Ebay is so big that almost every customer gets the standard type response: "Your request will be reviewed and if it is considered important we will contact you in 5 to 10 days". And after your problem gets from position #100.000 to #1 in the row you get some pasted text from the FAQs. Being smaller and with a simpler and more automated platform helps us be quicker, more accurate and more efficient. We are maybe the biggest believers in automated software-based answers to almost every problem. That is the main reason why we also believe that human-treats-human. This means that real problems, made by real people, can never be addressed directly by a machine. The message must always be reviewed by somebody with the help and not the command of an algorithm.
10. This is the 21st century and slowly but steadily all the trading functions, except the packaging and shipping of the item, will be done electronically. This means that 21st century trading platforms have to be able to cope with increasingly more transactions, work faster, be safer and natural to use. aPazari is developed by passionate people who put their best self on it. aPazari is developed in a framework-style manner so that it can easily scale-up any time that is required. aPazari is a software master-piece because attention to detail is profound, simplicity is obvious, ergonomy is everywhere, and user experience is unique. Enjoy the aPazari Marketplace. The smartest way to buy and sell your stuff.