Antique Deals on the Internet: Do You Dare to Buy It

Every online business will face integrity issues. A piece of clothing, a pair of shoes, a bag, and so on, not to mention antiques with a history of hundreds of thousands of years.

Antiques are a very special category, including thousands of years of splendid Chinese culture and thousands of years of counterfeiting technology. If you don't know how to buy an antique, do you dare to buy it based on a few pictures on the Internet?

Most of the old antique lovers probably don't know much about the Internet. They are still more willing to go to antique stores or street markets, see real objects, measure them in their hands, and then take a closer look with a magnifying glass or flashlight, and then buy them with confidence.

Offline transactions are still the most mainstream transaction methods in the traditional category of antiques. But offline trading also has many deep-rooted drawbacks. For example, now more and more people like to buy things at street stalls, so almost all the antique shops across the country are running out of business. The street market is often an open space at the gate of the Antique City. why? The stalls are cheap!

The stalls are cheap, but there are more fakes. After buying them, please go back and ask someone to take a closer look. It’s fake! I want to go back quickly, but there is no way. Either no one can find it, or they ignore you. The rules of the antique shop are that there is no counterfeiting here. After the money and goods are cleared, the buyer and the seller will not matter. If you come to me again, I don't need to know you at all.

Gradually, people suddenly realized that there is at least one advantage to online transactions: you can return goods! Whether it is Taobao or some professional antique websites, there is a third party. Buyers can put 10,000 hearts and return within seven days. What if the seller insists on not returning it? Customer service intervention, one evaluation, 100% support for the buyer's request. What if the seller still insists on not returning it? Give you a bad review, give you a bad credit record, or even close your online store.

Closing an online store for a business? I believe that all online merchants will not be so stupid and will return the goods obediently.

I don't know about other people, I can only talk about myself responsibly. After the baby is delivered to the buyer, I will unconditionally return it regardless of whether the buyer thinks the item is fake, or even if the buyer thinks it just "doesn't like it".

In the era of "One Billion People's Network [0.00% Fund Research Report] (603000, shares)" (Ma Weidu), buyers are no longer vulnerable groups, on the contrary, they have become strong.

Once, a buyer traded with me a redwood pallet from the Republic of China. First, he cut the price to the point where I could barely make any money, and then asked me for free shipping. After receiving the goods, he refused to confirm the receipt for a long time, but after tossing the baby for half a month, he suddenly applied for a return. The treasure was returned to my hands, and I was surprised to find that he tried his best to wash off the old pulp of the treasure for more than half a century, and also used a knife to cut a small hole in the side (want to see the color inside).

Face to face with the unfamiliar baby, I gritted my teeth and refunded him the money. But I didn't expect that the next day he even complained to me online, saying that he wanted me to compensate him for the 14 yuan postage for the return!

Then again, to survive online, you have to play by the rules of the game. It is fortunate that there are rules to follow, even if the opponent is not in the game at all. For example, as a seller, some buyers simply ignore your Taobao and any website transactions, ask you to ship the goods directly, and then pay you if they think the item is ok. Or as a buyer, the other party asks you to make money before shipping. Faced with this kind of business, do you do it or not?

Antique transactions in the Internet age may be more complicated and weirder than offline transactions, but they also provide more possibilities and choices.

[This article was published by "Internet + Antique Value Research", May 29, 2017],