A couple of weeks ago, I ordered two similar items online, one from a company in Sydney and another from Philadelphia. To avoid any trouble at home, let me be vague and just say that both of these items can probably be found on the same shelf in a physical camera store. The item from Philly arrived at my desk in just under a week. Furthermore, I received timely updates about my order, an email from the supplier when the package was shipped and a follow-up message after it arrived. Meanwhile, the order status from the Sydney store went through several stages and got stuck at “ready soon”. When when I finally telephoned them, a customer service officer mumbled an excuse and said it would be shipped soon. The item finally arrived today, a total of 15 days from start to finish.

I have had similarly poor experiences ordering a variety of products online from mainstream Australian retailers. Their online presence is often just an afterthought, with high prices, weak product variety, clunky websites and unhelpful customer service. As a result of the strong Aussie dollar, shoppers are increasingly buying online and from overseas. Rather than complain about poor business conditions, Australian retailers need to buck up. I don’t believe it can’t be done because there is a category of Australian retailers that is already as efficient as those overseas: eBay-based Australian stores. These are small and medium sized entities that use eBay as a storefront. One reason they are responsive is that when searching eBay, overseas competitors’ offerings appear on the same page as theirs, so rivals are not even a mouse click away. A second reason is user feedback. Each time a transaction clears, buyers and sellers can leave feedback about each another and eBay reports a breakdown of ratings over time (see sample image below). This generates an incentive to continually maintain good customer service so as to avoid a fall in reputation. It generally seems to work pretty well. I would go further and argue that we should expect even better service from big-name Australian retailers than from these eBay based stores, but we aren’t receiving anything close to it right now.