Baazee.com - as many of you know - has been sold to ebay for 50m $ about a month ago (June 04). This has prompted me to write a review on this auction site that claims to be no. 1 shopping / auction site of India.
It was started by two entrepreneurs - Avnish Bajaj (now Chairman and Co-CEO, Baazee.com) and Suvir Sujan (now Co-CEO, Baazee.co).
My First experience with Baazee was a bad one. I happened to join Baazee in the quest for selling my Mobile Phone. After listing it - I got some 3 or 4 offers - pretty good ones at that.
The winner of the auction had put up a very good price. When I did call up this guy - his mother spoke to me. She nicely told me that *my beta is no longer interested in your secondhand phone.* Wow! Why then did he participate in the auction then??? Since my exams were also coming up - I forgot that matter and went on to sell the phone through the regular brick-and-mortar shop. A month later I started getting mails from Baazee to pay up the commission for selling my phone on their site! After a lot of explaining and harrasing correspondence - they finally agreed to settle the dispute *just this one time SIR!*
Anyways, I did not go to this site for another 6 - 8 months after that.
However, as momentum of things go - I ended up going to this site again and now *buying* one of the products on sale (somewhere in Jan 04). I was pleasantly suprised to find that the order execution was smooth and that I did received the product on time. The product BTW was ’’Charlie Chaplin CD’s’’ bought under the ’’quick buy’’ scheme *methinks*
The next item I shopped (Jan 04 methinks) via Baazee.com was a weighing scale (againg thru *quick buy*) - which was also executed smoothly.
Just last month I ended up buying a fairly rare Movie VCD - ’’Lawrence of ARabia’’ for a very reasonable price of Rs. 235/- (shipping included). The VCD is of very good quality I must say.
All this experience has left an *overall* positive feeling towards the way Baazee.com works. However, this is strictly *from my perspective* Others are free to opinionate their bad feelings / experiences with this site and present their alternate points of view. I have already read some and do believe what they say, so I am still *cautious* about buying items from this site.
Baazee.com - had started as a pure *auction* site. Later it went on to buy BidOrBuyIndia.com which must have increased its crediblity by a few notches.
A majority of Baazee.com sellers are wholesalers and retailers. The average buyer like me rarely puts up anything up for sale - as packaging, shipping, paying commissions, etc. is simply not something the regular joe can spend his time on (or has enough experience with - to put it frankly)
On another note, I have found that the items for sale can *at times* be very mediocre. Pretty useless and bogus stuff. I still can’t understand how the site administrators / managers allow such leniency. For ex: Selling *x-ray device attachable to camcorders to see within objects (including Humans)!*
On payments site - my experience has been very satisfactory. All my payments have been through Internet Banking Facility (the *paisa pay* option) where I simply connect with my bank (thru this site) and pay the seller (with BAazee.com taking its share i.e. commission).
Other payment options include - Credit Cards, COD and DD / Cheque.
That’s how Baazee.com makes money - on commission. It’s sellers are wide and very much varying from the *excellent* to *very mediocre* To know if the product you want to buy from Baazee is being sold by a credible seller - check the *ratings section* of the seller - where previous customers of the seller put up their reviews / ratings. That can give you a fairly good indication of how the deal will turn out to be.
They have certain loyalty schemes like *Privilege Club* membership (which I got after buying just two products!). This does help and motivate people to buy more. At least I did.
Other schemes include *1 paisa auction* - where the auction starts from literally 1 paisa. The product in this scheme is kept under the hammer for *n* no. of days - as selected by the seller. Note: I have heard some pretty bad experiences about this scheme from MS reviewers. So please check their side of the story before trying this section.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Final comments: Either Baazee.com will sink or can lift itself up to greater heights. The trouble is - they have to get rid of many sellers who sell *dubious* items on their site. Dubious from my perspective - means - very mediocre (not worth the money) or simply bogus (just put up to fleece the customer).
Now that eBay.com has bought it - one can expect Baazee.com to reach greater heights after brushing out some of its mediocrities. Else, Baazee.com may find eBay.com trying to get rid of its shareholding and getting its money back.
Though, what will work to Baazee.com’s advantage is - the huge variety of items on sale - from Apparels to Books to Entertaiment to you name it. Meaning: They have built enough trust from sellers and have the momentum on their side (for now).
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Anyways, *Happy Shopping* to you all.
May all your money poured on e-commerce shopping get fruition! :)