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Melissa Schwab
 
 

Israelis told what to do
about online rip-offs

Jewishsightseeing.com, May 16, 2006

 

By Melissa Schwab

HAIFAWhat do you do if you sell something on line and don't get your money? Where do you turn if you paid for an original pink Chanel suit in an online purchase, and a cream-colored, made-in-Hong Kong knock-off is delivered to your door?

Colin Rule, Director of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) for eBay and Paypal, told a University of Haifa audience yesterday how eBay, the world's largest online market place, resolves such problems.  Paypal is an account-based system that allows anyone with an email address to securely send and receive online payments using a credit card or bank account. It is the most popular way to electronically pay for eBay purchases. 

Speaking from California, Rule was the keynote speaker in a videoconference devoted to this new field of dispute resolution and technology.  The event was sponsored by the Israeli institution's Faculty of Law.

ODR, Rule joked, was a terrible acronym. Nevertheless, this relatively new industry—it is only six to seven years old—is growing at a rate of 30% a year.  It developed out of face to face dispute resolution, where he had his own start.

As commerce hit the internet from 1995 to 1997, Rule realized there was no intersection of technology and conflict resolution. A system had to be created to redress disputes. The problem, he explained, was that courts were specifically bound by geography and jurisdiction. "There are no e-judges, e-policemen, or e-jails," he kidded, though indicating later that there might be a future with "robo-judges."

His initial attempts with ODR met with skepticism. "
You have to be in the room with them and look them in their eyes," he was told.  

But ODR offered certain advantages, like
archived communication. The entire interaction is text-based and the language is reusable, Rule pointed out.
For example, if someone originally asked a price of $1,000, and then reneged on the deal by demanding $2,000, the specific text can be shown to the seller. This is a very powerful and persuasive tool of ODR, Rule offered.

Another advantage is "asynchronous interaction."  The term implies that the parties to the dispute do not have to react immediately.   The sides have a chance to cool off.  This, Rule thought, was useful in preventing unnecessary escalation.

He acknowledged, though, that the lack of personal communication was a serious disadvantage to online conflict resolution.  Fifty percent of meaning we communicate through body language and non-verbal communication, Rule said, adding that an apology in an email is not the same as a warm, heart-felt, eye to eye apology.

It is also much easier to drop out of or simply stonewall the ODR process. In face to face resolution, he asserted, there were consequences to walking out of the room. In ODR, simply ignoring an email was much easier.  But that also meant there was less personal accountability.

The highly visited and highly utilized eBay has 185 million users. It is, he revealed, the largest used-auto dealer in the world, among other things.   eBay is a marketplace. It does not buy or sell anything. It holds no inventory, the ODR expert reminded his University of Haifa audience.  Still, it has to deal with disputes in some manner, he said, explaining that it often has to act as referee.

When Rule started working at eBay, he changed much of the way disputes were dealt with, as well as the terminology. Disputes were originally called "deadbeat buyer disputes." He changed this highly negative expression to "unpaid item dispute," which shifted the blame onto the actual problem, not the person.  Taking the same tack, he recast "fraud alert process" to a more neutral term, "item not received dispute."

Rule is proud of eBay's dispute resolution record for "items not received" and for items "received significantly different than described." He claims that 85% of the complaints are amicably resolved. In addition, 10% are complaints about items costing less than $20 and do not escalate. Only 5% actually make it to a claim, he stated.

No law suits have ever been filed against ODR companies, Rule said in answer to a student's question.

ODR, he feels, has a broad future. Rule mentioned that the Hague Conference on Private International Law is currently discussing where the jurisdiction lies in e-commerce, in relation to the location of the buyer or seller.

About those robo-judges, he suggested an online traffic court where the accident could be animated and traffic rules interpreted into computer code. 


Schwab is an intern in the external relations department of the University of Haifa