I see no reason why we should discuss this in private, as this might be of interest for other people. If you're concern is about me being really the same "grondilu" as the one on your site, then I sign this message.
Now, please explain me why I should use you as a third party, when so far my auction went fine by giving directly a bitcoin address to the buyer.
The Short answer1) There is no need to use us as a third party
2) Your method is still valid and works very well
3) Protection to the sellers reputation
4) Additional optional features in the future will require this
Our Questions1) What do you believe would be a better alternative?*
2) Would you prefer an opt-in service in which you either get access to the extra features or not?**
*We do not like the idea of allowing the seller to enter any address in the payment address field. As there is nothing preventing a scammer to state that they did not provide an address and it is a biddingpond.com generated address(a Bitcoin peculiarity in inability to determine destination). Yes, we do understand that there is nothing preventing a scammer from saying they they never received payment from us. But, that will come down to trust (if you chose to use the optional feature).
** This option we believe works well. But, understand that if we implement this feature those who chose it will not be able to provide some features to their buyers.
The Long AnswerThere is no obligation for the seller to require the users to use the payment address listed in the auction.
We agree to the working nature of the following transaction process that you are currently using:
1) Buyer Wins Auction
2) Seller / Buyer make contact
3) Payment information provided
4) Payment Sent + Shipping information sent
5) Payment Receipt confirmed by buyer
6) Item shipped
This is also the reason why we would never prohibit any seller from accepting payment in an alternative way.
To simplify the transaction process our current system is as follows:
1) Buyer wins auction
2) Payment Sent
3) Seller notified of shipping address
4) Item shipped
We also plan on shortening this process one more step by allowing the buyers to include shipping information that is automatically forwarded to the sender after payment is sent(optional). This will further streamline the process and make it easier for less tech savvy individuals to purchase items.
We also will be implementing the following optional features which will require us to handle transactions:
1) Escrow and Arbitration
2) "Trusted Sellers" Program
3) Ability to purchase items in USD and send payment in BTC to Seller (for the less tech savvy)
4) Other features which we do not wish to reveal at this time to keep us competitive
There is also a very real and very important benefit that we chose to include last. By publicly posting a Bitcoin address that is generated by BiddingPond.com and is unique to each auction we can protect both the sites reputation as well as the seller's reputation as others can in fact see if the buyer did send payment. This provided with proper tracking information from the seller can effectively prevent Feedback Extortion.
I would just like to reiterate that these features are optional and the old BiddingPond.com is not going anywhere. BiddingPond.com prefers giving the sellers and buyers a "hands-off" approach with their transactions but, we do understand there are buyers and sellers who wish otherwise and we will cater to those individuals through our additional, completely optional, services.
One way our "hands-off" approach can be seen in practice is our failure to require payment of selling fees before we forward payment to the seller. This allows the seller the choice to pay us, not the requirement to pay us.
