Aug 10, 2010 Posted by BoxCycle on Aug 10, 2010 in Inside the Box, Site Updates | 0 comments

Adjustments to Auto-Confirm

Summary: Sellers who want to enable Auto-Confirm now need to be authorized by BoxCycle.   To get authorized please call us so we can make sure your situation is appropriate for Auto-Confirm.  Some of the sellers who had Auto-Confirm enabled will now find it disabled and will need to request authorization.

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Auto-Confirm allows sellers to bypass the confirmation step of the BoxCycle Order Process.  When used properly, it benefits both buyers and sellers.

Buyers get to pickup boxes quicker, sometimes much quicker, since they get the seller’s location immediately after order.  Sellers save a bit of time on order processing and get additional business since buyers often want to pickup boxes yesterday and Auto-Confirm is the only way to achieve a high level of certainty that you’ll get boxes fast.

Of course, this means the seller must always be available during their working hours and must always have boxes on hand.  There are many sellers who meet these requirements, primarily businesses who always have staff on location and always have boxes in storage.

However, despite stern warnings when selecting the option, some sellers appear to not understand the full significance of selecting Auto-Confirm.  Although we notify sellers upon Auto-Confirm orders, buyers can show up less than an hour after order placement, possibly before the seller received a notification.  It’s clearly not appropriate for casual sellers who might not be home or might forget to update their listing.

I’ve been mulling various options for managing Auto-Confirm for a while.  We’ve already added language to our Terms of Service.  We’ve also already limited casual sellers from selecting Auto-Confirm (and other advanced options), by moving them out of the initial Preferences screen.   Most casual sellers do not Show All Preferences.

However, an issue with an Auto-Confirm order last night made me refocus on the problem.  Unfortunately, it does not seem that sellers can be trusted with properly using a dangerous option like this, warnings and all.  So, we’ve added a requirement of an authorization step.  Before authorizing the seller for Auto-Confirm we’ll make sure their situation is appropriate and/or they have sufficient order history to be trusted to properly manage Auto-Confirm orders.

Hopefully this step will be sufficient.  We’ll keep reviewing how it performs and making adjustments.