We are at the Golden Age of consumer-to-consumer or C2C E-Commerce. 44.4% of respondents in a study had experience buying online and 53.9% of these respondents said that they had bought or sold something on their mobiles.
However, there are difficulties in bringing up and resolving disputes arising from C2C E-commerce. These difficulties include: the costly expenses associated with litigation, the length of time involved before a dispute may be resolved and the venue where the dispute will be brought especially in cross-border transactions.
Thus, sometimes, the buyer resorts to publicly shaming or bashing the seller online if the buyer is not able to secure a resolution from the seller himself with respect to a product that is not as advertised.
This is where our proposed platform, ADReS, comes into play. ADReS aims to provide a convenient, efficient, effective and inexpensive solution to certain issues that may arise when a buyer purchases items through C2C E-commerce. It is an alternative dispute resolution platform that digitally enforces the performance of a contract and automates the resolution of a select list of issues arising from a C2C online transaction. ADReS will also allow the buyer to negotiate the terms in the contract of sale prior to finalizing the transaction with the seller.
For a dispute to fall under the jurisdiction of ADReS, the value of the dispute must be at least 200 US dollars per item.
The specific types of disputes that ADReS is able to resolve by itself are those involving the distortion of the external features of the product, the product having a missing external component, a difference in the external features of the product being sold and the product received by the buyer, the product received by the buyer being counterfeit and the failure of the buyer to receive the item purchased.
For this purpose, ADReS utilizes 3D imaging to detect product condition upon receipt by the buyer of the item and verifies the external features of the item as advertisedby the seller. ADReS also integrates courier systems into its platform to utilize shipment data in the resolution of disputes.
The business model is commission-based, where e-commerce sites pay a portion of their profit based on the total amount of products sold covered by ADReS. There will be no direct costs to C2C seller/buyer.