The largest Online Dispute Resolution platform in the world, the eBay and PayPal Resolution Center, is up for an award from the Dutch Innovating Justice competition. The final three candidates will be selected by online popular vote, so If you’ve got time, please visit the program site and vote for “Modria: The eBay/PayPal Dispute Resolution Center.”
Voting requires simple registration, intended to combat fraudulent votes, which takes a maximum of one minute. (A direct link to the eBay page to vote is http://www.innovatingjusticeawards.com/View-Idea/165?idea=1265.)
The eBay and PayPal Resolution Centers resolve more than 60 million disputes per year in more than a dozen different languages around the world. It is the largest Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) system in the world, resolving disputes in areas as diverse as item payment, item receipt, and item condition. Buyers and sellers who have never met each other face to face can use the Resolution Center process to reach amicable agreements that are enforced immediately. More than 90% of the disputes filed are resolved without requiring the intervention of a third party to render a decision. This system saves time, money, and increases customer satisfaction and trust in transactions.
eBay and PayPal are uniquely positioned in global commerce. eBay sells nothing, and holds no inventory – its job is to keep the marketplace running smoothly. As such, it is a very effective neutral third party – it has relationships with both the buyer and the seller, and has no interest other than ensuring issues are handled quickly and painlessly. This positions eBay perfectly to appreciate the value of online dispute resolution, and as such eBay has been the leader among high tech companies in ODR ever since. The Resolution Center is by far the largest ODR system ever constructed, and it is the only system to handle more than a million disputes in a year. It is also the only system that has automated so successfully, which enables faster and more effective resolutions that can scale down to very low value disputes.
This process offers a free resolution option to hundreds of millions of users around the world that is completely impartial, fully disclosed, easy to understand, and which provides a level playing field. The process is used successfully tens of thousands of times every day, receiving very positive feedback through our customer service surveys and phone support lines. Almost none of these outcomes are ever appealed in a court. It’s impossible to make every user happy in a justice system like the Resolution Center, because in every case where a resolution by mutual agreement is impossible, one party is going to win and the other is going to lose. But even within those constraints, we are very proud of the system we have put together.
We believe many organizations could benefit from a Resolution Center – from government agencies to ecommerce sites to search engines to hospitals to courts. That is why we launched a new company (Modria.com) to build these systems – they will live at resolutioncenter.com, which is still in development. But we hope that one day billions of people around the world will look to Resolution Center and tools like it as their primary means for getting access to justice, either over the computer or over their cell phones.
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