Undoubtedly Amazon is a great brand name with an excellent reputation and the criticism in BBC's Watchdog was specifically aimed at their marketplace offerings rather than their traditional retail site. The Amazon Marketplace is where shoppers get offered alternative "new and used" offers when they search the site. These transactions are, like eBay, hosted by Amazon who act simply as a venue to enable trades between Amazon shoppers and third party sellers.

Watchdog, correctly in my view, acknowledged that eBay has made significant improvements to their site users safety in the past couple of years. So to now hear reports of Amazon buyers falling victim to the same, simple scams and rip offs that eBayers were experiencing years ago has me worried. Has Amazon been complacent about user safety these past couple of years? Have they been sitting back enjoying the hammering eBay was getting on trust issues while overlooking the need to continually improve user safety on their own site? As the BBC illustrated there have been woeful lapses in screening the Amazon Marketplace for products which are completely illegal to sell in the UK. But, perhaps even more worrying to me, hearing that the most basic "money order" scams appear alive and well on Amazon today makes me wonder if they are now the venue of choice for the scammers eBay has been successfully ridding itself of?

To witness Nicky Campbell, the host of Watchdog, handing Amazon UK's Managing Director copies of eBay security practices and procedures as if this is what he obviously needs to take on board was not just embarrassing for him but extremely damaging to the great brand reputation Amazon has painstakingly built since the early Internet era.

Personally I have only had good experiences from whenever I've used Amazon as a buyer although I have only ever purchased books from the Amazon Marketplace part of the business. Personally I've suffered no problems whatsoever but must acknowledge that, to merit such a heavyweight report by the BBC, there must have presumably been a significant number of complaints made.

eBay took too long to get their act together and start improving their policing of their auction website. As a result eBay is still wrestling to shrug off the negative reports and impressions people see, hear and repeat despite, in my opinion, the website being much cleaner and safer to use thesedays. So perhaps the most important lesson for Amazon to take from eBay's past experiences is that decisive action needs to be taken quickly and effectively. Much more prominence must be given to the dangers of the payment methods scammers use and improve the measures taken to help buyers identify spoof Amazon emails which are often employed to solicit payments by unsafe methods. Most importantly I would like to see Amazon get very vocal and go on the attack on the whole safety issue.

In my view ignoring this kind of problem, hoping it will quieten down, is not the answer for any business. Waging war, and telling crooks you are coming after them will play much better with people and possibly act as a significant deterrant. When a scam is reported it isn't good for any business to immediately accept no legal liability on their part as their only apparent response and priority. Rightly or wrongly, this can leave customers with the impression that the scammer has not only got away with it but they are going to be able to carry on scamming people in future. In the long run it will probably be cheaper to make sure customers don't suffer losses whenever possible - while systems and procedures are tightened up - than the cost of repairing a damaged brand in the longer term.

In conclusion I have to say I was surprised to see this high profile report. Until now I had long believed Amazon were miles ahead of eBay in screening sellers and managing a safe trading venue but in the space of ten minutes my opinion was undermined to such an extent that I'm tending to agree with Watchdog who appear to think that eBay is now a safer place to buy and sell than Amazon's Marketplace.

Read about the Watchdog investigation at BBC.co.uk/Watchdog.

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