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eBay to Drop Negative Feedback on Buyers
Trip Ericson writes "ArsTechnica is reporting that eBay plans to drop negative feedback on buyers. It's just one of a number of changes eBay will be making in the near future. 'eBay's data shows that sellers are eight times more likely to retaliate in kind against negative feedback, a figure that has grown dramatically over the years. In an attempt to mollify sellers, eBay will initiate a handful of seller protections to offset the inability to speak ill of a buyer. Negative and neutral feedback will be removed if a buyer bails on a transaction or if the buyer has his or her account suspended. Buyers will have less time to leave feedback, and won't be able to do so until three days after the auction ends. eBay is also pledging to step up monitoring and enforcement of its policies around buyers who behave very badly.'"
I wish 2 feedback an eBay, plz send codes.
Will code for new sig.
Was there any doubt in people's minds that eBay cares at all about the buyers? They aren't the consumers from eBay's eyes as they are not the ones that pay the fees, that's the sellers.
Keep both parties feedback hidden, until both have left feedback. Zero chance for retaliation. Problem solved.
You can never really be sure about who you're buying from as long as sellers can hold this Sword of Damocles over buyers' heads. They need to at least put a time limit on sellers' window to leave negative feedback, so they can't still be holding it over a buyer's head long after the buyer has paid.
I can understand why power sellers would be upset by this. But there are so many scammer sellers on ebay today, relative to just a few years ago, that something like this was probably necessary. The primary purpose of feedback is for buyers to judge the trustworthiness of the seller. And while it also lets a seller judge a buyer as well, this isn't nearly as important, IMHO.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Why not allow both buyer and seller to leave feedback, but neither party is able to read the other person's feedback for, say, a week? In other words, you give feedback before seeing what feedback is left for you. Wouldn't that solve all of these retaliation-feedback problems?
Wow, I really thought this article was going to have some real meat to it. Unfortunately it left me wanting more.
Def not want anymore from Zonk.
I always hated leaving feedback because the sellers made you leave feedback first. This led to things occurring like, a seller not having items to ship and having to either refund you, or in many cases, send you a similar item without any notification. When you leave negative feedback (as you should) they'd leave negative feedback as well.
If sellers are going to act like stores, then they should have customer service like one and be willing to suck up the bad comments like normal retailers do. Leaving negative feedback was a childish tit for tat response and actually discouraged me from leaving any feedback whatsoever for a long time.
Don't non-paying buyers deserve negative feedback? It sounds as if their plan would eliminate this type of feedback as a consequence. The solution I had always thought of would be to require that sellers, once prompt payment is received, post feedback before a buyer can leave feedback for them. Of course, this would create the same situation where a slow-paying buyer could leave retaliatory feedback for a neutral or negative piece of seller feedback, but I believe this would be much less prevalent than it is now.
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Why should a seller need to leave feedback EXCEPT when the customer doesn't pay or there is an unnecessary return (all of which can be factually documented)?
Is there some kind of "Customer was a doodoohead" thing going on?
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I think it's obvious the data about the vindictive nature of many sellers may be accurate. However, being able to leave negative feedback for buyers is important and I think they need to find a way to make it work better. If you're selling a high priced item (or really any item for that matter) and you get some bozo that bids with no intention of paying, this can be pretty detrimental to a sale - especially if it's time sensitive (tickets, special event going on, motivated to sell, etc.). Sometimes these same people that are selling these items time sensitive or not, want to be able to look at their top bidders and know if they're serious. You might have a guy with 25 positive feedback, but when you see he has 35 feedback total with 10 negatives for not following through on his last 10 transactions, it's good to be able to cancel/block this guy.
There are obviously some flaws with the system (human flaws right?), but there should be a good remedy to make this work a little better.
I don't leave negative feedback for sellers either. It just doesn't seem worth it. So the seller gets a negative feedback from me and his score goes from 99.99 to 99.98 positive, due to the sheer amount of feedback an active seller has. Then he leaves a negative feedback for me (tit-for-tat is standard practice), and my feedback score drops by one or two percent. Is that a good trade? Hell no! So I just leave a neutral if I'm really feeling vindictive. Sure you can argue that I would be helping others avoid a scammer, but I'd say the price of having a bad feedback rating is still higher than my desire to do that.
I've had issues with two sellers like this. One sent me a game without a CD key and then furnished me with the first quick google search for one. The other sent me an item that wasn't what I bought. Neither would return my emails until I left negative feedback and of course I got negative feedback and a withdrawal request the same day. The bad sellers were using negative feedback on a buyer to push for a withdrawal to keep their record clean. I have quit purchasing from ebay for other reasons but it is a good change.
From my point of view, this is a good thing to remove negative feedback for buyers. My personal experience three years ago is when I gave a 'neutral' feedback to a seller that inflated the shipping price after the bid's closing, with no mention at all of the extra fees in the item description, that seller gave me my only negative feedback. I fought for a long while, and realized eBay support sucks and they're not really helping, and then, disgusted, stopped shopping on eBay except on rare occasions (prices are generally higher on eBay than elsewhere and the purchase is somehow riskier, but sometimes you find things hard to find anywhere else).
It's hard to be a "bad buyer", either you pay the amount, either you don't. No?
Animoog.org
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
These days most sellers are using paypal so you don't have to "slow" buyers.
A few years ago I bought a motherboard on EBay. I paid for insurance and waited. It never came we tried to contact the seller and nothing. We contacted paypal and they said that the seller claimed to have shipped it and we had waited too long. So I contacted my bank and they reversed the charge.
All the time the seller protested that he had sent it. We mentioned that we did pay for it to be insured but that didn't seem to make any real difference.
My wife wouldn't post negative feedback because when she check this guy had a bunch of new negative feedback about not shipping stuff.
Every buyer that gave him negative feed back got negative feedback from him!
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I couldn't agree more.
There are times where I've wanted to leave negative or neutral feedback, but won't because I know I'll get retaliated and the negative feedback hurts me a lot more than it hurts a power seller with 10,000 transactions.
It seems standard practice these days that a seller won't even leave feedback until they see what you've written.
Way back in the day, E-Bay used to be a great place to find and buy some pretty neat stuff. I bought several Sega GameGears, a complete C64 with original TV "monitor" (all in the original boxes), several "vintage" PC games and other odds and ends you couldn't easily find in other places.
Unfortunately, for the last several years, E-Bay has become a haven for scam artists and people who try to sell crap in bulk. It feels more like a cheap flea-market than an actual auction.
I hope E-Bay can turn things around by focusing a bit more on the individual buyer, but I'm not optimistic.
I've lost hundreds of dollars hanging onto my 100% because of obnoxious buyers. I had one insist on overnighting a camera back to me after he couldn't figure out how to use it. I wound up refunding everything including the overnight charges. As part of that same sale two buyers in a row bailed out on me and Ebay tried to charge me both times. The first buyer didn't even respond after running up the sale price. The second guy claimed he didn't mean to bid eventhough he bid in the last 20 seconds of the sale. When I said I'd have to leave negative feedback he agreed to pay for it but then I wound up eating the overnight shipping when he whined about not being able to use the camera. I've had other problems with buyers as well as sellers but most of the trouble I've had was with buyers. Too many people get caught up in the excitement of bidding then don't want to go through with the purchase. It's not just odd collectables that get run up beyond what people are willing to pay it's often common items that aren't common to see on Ebay. I stopped selling through Ebay because it was too hard to keep my 100% and I hate dealing with Paypal. Also when Ebay made errors and overcharged me it took three months to get them to respond and refund the money.
That since eBay was losing the social aspect of the site to mySpace and Facebook that it had in the great long ago. It was going back to the core of it's business and that was to make sellers happy to move more stuff and generate more clicks. If people don't know they're buying from a troll they're more likely to try to buy from them and this would fit with the business of eBay... to make the Seller happy and get ad revenue.
Or am I thinking eBay is just being an evil corporation or no reason?
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
They take away the only thing keeping people honest - the threat of negative feedback? What's the point of even having feedback then?
Paypal used to be useful - you could contest the charge and do a chargeback if seller was trying to screw you. But now they're the same faceless corporation, in it for the commission.
The joy that is 2008 continues. First we'll lose Yahoo, then AOL gets some more nails in their coffin and NOW...
...eBay is committing corporate suicide!
While admittedly this is a change that has needed to happen for a very long time -- eBay is overrun by crooked sellers -- this is sure to drive away yet more honest sellers away from eBay. You have to be really determined to sell there. You have to really need to - it's far from fun already, and it's hard to make money if you're honest.
eBay is run by marketing droids, the majority of whom never use their product themselves -- and it shows. But maybe with this change at least we'll see the end of $1 item, $10 shipping -- something it would have been easy for eBay to deal with years ago if they cared.
Again, it shows how far search needs to come to be truly useful. If search met people's needs, companies like eBay would never need to exist.
We maintain multiple powerseller accounts with positive feedback totaling almost a combined 20,000 unique positive feedbacks. This is the worst thing imaginable for sellers. There will no longer be a balanced system, and sellers will have no way of protecting themselves from poor buyers because they will simply have 100% positive feedback. Sellers depend on other sellers to leave legitimate feedback as a guide for the integrity of the bidder. eBay has begun shifting (under a new CEO) to a format of mainly new inventory with the focus entirely on the buyer. What they do not realize is that sellers are their employees, and they are consistently ignoring the needs of sellers to provide them with revenue (i.e. increasing final value fees, listing fees, removing negative feedback). I am extremely frustrated with eBay, and along with many others, will be participating in a powerseller boycott in the following week.
Just make sure that I can still leave feedback after I've actually received an item, including the possibility that I may have to work with the seller for a while to get it delivered. For instance, buying a car or a boat in another state drastically increases the length of time between the end of the auction and the time at which I know enough to leave informed feedback. Also, if a seller ships an item to the wrong address or if he can't get around to shipping it for a week, sometimes I am willing to forgive him and work with him to get my purchase into my hands, but I don't want to give up the ability to leave feedback for him in the event that the item does turn out to be a bobcat.
I still have an e-mail from a seller in which he threatened to leave me negative feedback if I left him negative feedback, after I e-mailed him 2 weeks into a transaction asking where my merchandise was. eBay is right to make this move--I didn't touch their site for a year after that experience. I'm sure there are bad buyers out there and that this will correspondingly anger sellers, but as an occasional seller myself, I simply do not ship merchandise until I receive payment. The seller does have more power due to this option.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
The solution is to allow arbitrary feedback, but not allow buyers or sellers to see the other party's feedback before submitting feedback themselves. The buyer or seller would be told that they received feedback, but would not get to see it until they either submitted their own feedback or clicked a box that they will forgo the right to submit feedback (the system might also have a time-limit on submitting feedback). That way, no "revenge" feedback is possible. Ebay could also tweak the ratings so that participants that refuse to submit feedback have slightly lower ratings.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I think the system can be easily fixed by making the sellers post feedback first, before the buyer is able to provide feedback. Think about it: the buyer's obligation is fully satisfied when he/she pays; only subsequently is the seller's obligation (delivering the purchased goods to the satisfaction of the buyer) satisfied. Assuming that the seller would not ship the product unless the buyer had fulfilled their obligation, they have all information they need to post feedback prior to the time of shipping.
There is a very large number of posts in ebay's forums from sellers complaining about this.
If I was a larger seller I'd be trying to get together with other big sellers to create a private system to share information about scamming/deadbeat/irrational/insane buyers and hijacked accounts.
On another note, ebay UK has announced that all prices must included VAT (value added tax) if it is going to be charged. In typical ebay fashion until now their help pages said that VAT would be included but they refused to enforce it so lots of people have had the irritating experiance of being unexpectedly asked to pay 17.5% more. People should have read the small print in the auction saying VAT would be added but it's easily done when you are tryign to grab a bargain.
I look at a seller's negatives, skip the ones which seem dumb, then check the comments of buyers who gave negatives that sound reasonable. If they get negatives from the seller, I label the seller "vengeful asshole" and pick a different one.
Once I took the risk and got screwed by such one. He never got a comment from me. He paid up by court order, 1x the sales value for me, and 20x to a charity of the jury's choice.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
You can pretty much tell if the person leaving a negative feedback is a TOOL or not.
The solution would be to allow for a "middle of the road" feedback, or a dispute feedback option.
That would take care of the "He didn't give me what I wanted." type entries.
Instead, let the buyer be a little more descriptive of the situation (not the 60 character limit they give you).
The people with 20,000 feedback are the hardest to deal with anyway. They always have the crazy descriptions that are borderline unreadable, take minutes to load, and have the shipping price buried in something that looks like a legal document.
You won't be missed by the buyers during your silly little boycott.
The only time I've gotten a bad deal on E-Bay was some "power seller" that sent me a radio with a bad tape player and then tried to take me to arbitration over the bad feedback!
Google's Froogle shopping search filter should rate eBay sellers just like it rates other "stores". Not rate just eBay itself, but per seller. Google should allow reviewers posting reviews from their eBay account to have weighted review points, or their own rating, and discard reviews posted from someone who received a negative review from their target in the past month or so.
eBay is a market monopoly that needs balancing. If eBay is stopping its own users from being that counterbalance to its own users, then someone like Google, which exists to just connect users together with each other's content, is a great counterbalance.
--
make install -not war
eBay has always been "buyers beware" and recently I've had some bad experiences from sellers. Usually, it's from sellers who are unwilling to send an item that I've snagged at a low cost (no, I don't use sniping software). The last one I let get away, as it's becoming so commonplace. Problems with counterfeit merchandise are also common I've heard, though I don't think that I've been a victim of it (though I once thought I had). But when has a seller been burnt by a buyer? I have to assume that is a lot less common, with the exception of credit card fraud, and that is a) a felony and b) easier to recover.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Reducing any of the time periods is a bad idea...
Sometimes buying from international sources takes a significant amount of time to ship, and yet paypal only give you a limited time to make a claim...
Also some unscrupulous sellers will try to keep you waiting around for the claim or feedback period to expire.
The only 2 negative feedbacks i have on my ebay account were retaliatory, one seller sold me bad goods (google for fastmemoryman - he does it a lot), and another didn't like the fact i won a no reserve auction for less than he wanted, so he started making ridiculous demands (we had arranged a weekend collection in advance, but when i won at a low price he said i could only collect during working hours, and when i arranged to have someone else collect he started coming up with other excuses, like saying the item was at his company warehouse and he cant get in during the week, and he doesn't have access to a car to bring it home so i can collect it from him at the weekend - and then the next time i called him, his girlfriend answered and said he cant come on the phone because he's driving).
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Ah, cry me a river.
The number of times I've had sellers screw me over (by doing things like charging twice as much postage as actually ends up on the package - funny that, where's the rest of the money going? Into your pocket? That's NOT SHIPPING, retard) have just put me off buying things on ebay anymore.
The GP's solution allows bad sellers to avoid negative feedback by simply not posting any feedback themselves. To prevent that, eBay should also, after a period of time, display any feedback left by either party and disallow anymore feedback for the transaction.
Also, just so we're clear, neither party's feedback should figure into the other party's overall rating until that feedback is displayed. It doesn't take a genius to figure out who left negative feedback about you when your rating falls.
The problem is that when sellers get negative feedback, they retaliate against the buyers. So eBay's solution is to prevent negative feedback? Why doesn't eBay prevent seller retaliation? Prevent a seller from posting negative feedback against any buyer who posted negative feedback to that seller in the past month. Investigate claims from buyers of mere retaliation, and stop sellers from posting any negative feedback for a month on the first violation, stop for six months on the second, suspend their account for a month on the third, suspend for six months on the fourth, and shut them down on the fifth confirmed retaliation. Or some other aggressive policy that shows everyone that mere retaliation isn't worth it.
Instead, eBay will stop all negative feedback. Which is the only feedback that I ever look at, to see what will go wrong (things going right is the expected default, until I look at feedback). That will turn all eBay transactions into uncertainty, which is bad for the entire market.
But I guess eBay can rely on its monopoly (look it up, it means "market controller", not "sole marketer") to keep business roaring. Remember that eBay also controls PayPal, the unregulated Internet global banking monopoly, and Skype, the unregulated Internet global telco (not yet a monopoly, but gaining...). While eBay was protecting the consumer, those global market dominances in retail, banking and telephony were not such a threat. But now that they're showing the corporate bias towards secrecy to "solve" problems of abuse, they need a hard look.
Someone's got to protect the consumer, even if it means just forcing eBay to allow consumers to inform each other what sellers and eBay are working against them. It doesn't have to be a government. Something like Froogle's reviews could harness people power around the world to do it even better.
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make install -not war
This is not the right thing to be complaining about, another change that goes along with this is that final value fees are increasing from 5.25% to 8.75%. That makes items ending for $25.00 fees equal $2.19 instead of the current $1.31.
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I don't live in the USA, although about 80% of the stuff I've purchased through ebay has come from the States. Typically, I have to wait between 3 to 5 weeks for an item to get to me from the USA from the date it's been delivered... if they don't leave time for me to leave feedback, I'll be more than a bit choked.
Also, of course, there's the issue of how to deal with sellers who delay in shipping in the first place... which adds even further to the amount of time it takes until the buyer can completely fairly evaluate the transaction.
Then of course there's the fact that cutting out sellers leaving feedback for buyers makes it orders of magnitude more difficult for new sellers to get established, as many buyers (myself included) will not buy from sellers who has not yet received any feedback.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I sold full time on eBay for about two years - I quit because I moved on to a better job, but my father still sells on eBay part time. From my perspective this is a good change. There is no way to leave "honest" negative feedback because of fear of retaliation, so one way or another the system had to change. Buyers need to be able to see negative feedback far more than sellers do - sellers have all the power, not buyers. The buyer sends the money, then the seller sends the goods. There is no point where the seller has neither money nor goods - but during the entire shipping process, the buyer is without his money and without his goods. So, unless you're a complete idiot seller, there's simply no way to get scammed on eBay. It's very easy, on the other hand, for buyers to get scammed. The worst thing that can happen to you as a seller is to have the buyer just not pay - but if that happens, you can file a non-paying bidder report to eBay and they will refund your final value fees, so even there you really don't lose out (they don't refund the listing fees, but considering they just lowered listing fees, this is even less of an issue now than it used to be - and you're also allowed to offer the item to the underbidder if the first bidder didn't work out, or relist the item). The other difficulty you may have as a seller is that if your buyer pays with PayPal or a credit card, he or she may file a fraudulent chargeback against you. This may be something you can use feedback to protect yourself against, but it's really an imperfect system. It's always been difficult to censor buyers based on feedback anyway - what are you going to do if the buyer bids at the very last minute, and you don't have time to cancel their bid and block them? eBay did allow you to set conditions for buyers and back out of the sale if the buyer didn't meat them, but it was always a difficult thing to enforce, anyway. As a seller you simply have to realize that there are a few small risks that come with retail (such as chargebacks, returns, and the occasional cranky buyer).
Brick and mortar retailers are just as exposed (or even more exposed) to these problems. If eBay sellers want to be taken seriously, they just need to accept the there will occasionally be issues. The mantra of all successful retail businesses is that "the customer is always right". Whatever losses you take from the occasional return or other problem are more than made up for by the boost to your reputation you get by having customers view you as a fair and flexible retailer. If you want to be in retail, you've just got to have thick skin. I'm sure eBay has made the decision that if sellers can't accept selling by the terms of the normal retail environment, then they really don't need to be selling on eBay. All they will do is lower buyer's confidence and hurt the site's reputation
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I think it would be much better to have separate buyer/seller feedback. If I'm buying something, I don't care if the seller has lousy buyer feedback. And vice versa. Having the two sets of feedback in one pool is what makes retaliation really serious -- one bad seller retaliating against you can affect your reputation as a seller.
Not showing the feedback until both parties have commented is another good idea. That would help even more.
-Esme
As someone who sells things on ebay those bad feed back markings are helpful. I don't want to waste my time selling something I'm making a tiny profit on bickering with a crappy customer who is just looking for something for free...
I'm more concerned about protecting the buyers more. My company bought a generator last year for a decent chunk of change and literly did not get any in turn for my money. Neither E-Bay or PayPal cared. 4 months later and 3 canceled ebay accounts later [mine] they finaly banned the company from selling and we got out money back...
THAT'S why I stopped using Ebay, not some stupid feedback issue.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Either you pay or you don't. If you don't, what does a rating do? prevent me from bidding on other items? NO. so it's useless.
I purchased an item for my son a few years ago, won the auction and paid within a couple minutes of winning.
I was sent a completely different item, and it wasn't worth returning, making good, etc. So I left a negative rating due to what happened. and stated exactly why I did so.
the seller went nuts of course, and I was given a "bad customer" rating (with the comment something like "customer bad, downfall of ebay" ) give me a break.
Bottom line I paid immediately, I did what I was supposed to do, bid and pay. and my behavior was deemed to be the beginning of the end of ebay.
with that and other trivial reasons, I have to say ebay isn't on my radar anymore, if I want to visit a trailer-trash swap meet, I'll head down to the local outdoor drive-in this summer to inspect the trinkets.
I made my living off eBay for 2 years and trust me when I say there are at least as many crooked buyers as there are sellers. Arguably more in fact because the way eBay is set up its easier to be a crooked buyer than a crooked seller. Yes, we left retaliatory feedback for buyers who gave us unjustified negative feedback. Nobody is perfect but there are way too many people who will try to screw sellers over if the sellers have no means of redress. Want to get something for free of eBay? Buy with PayPal and use the magic words "not as described". Send back an empty box (for proof of return) and PayPal will automatically give the money back. Happened to us multiple times. Oh, and "not as described" works for cases of buyers remorse too, even if it was completely accurately described and you have a no return policy. After all, eBay doesn't know and doesn't give a shit.
In disclosure I'm quite bitter against eBay. They raise rates every six months like clockwork. Some of their (and especially PayPals) dispute resolution policies are insane. They screw honest sellers in a variety of ways (I'll enumerate if anyone's interested) and basically make it nearly impossible to make any money selling on eBay. Being a Power Seller is nearly worthless. We sold literally millions of dollars of products on eBay, they made hundreds of thousands of dollars on our work, had a 99.6% positive feedback and eBay treated us like garbage the whole time.
Some folks have suggested that feedback not appear until both parties have left feedback. Not a bad idea but unlikely to be a panacea either. High volume sellers simply don't have time to leave honest and accurate feedback for every transaction. There just aren't enough hours in the day and the cost/benefit just doesn't justify spending the time. Plus I guarantee that some people will leave negative feedback no matter what (think "feedback trolls") without any redress if it is unjustified. At least until recently sellers could make a case that they were being unfairly treated.
Have a time limit of 60 days to leave feedback. If you haven't left any by that point, all feedback left will show up and you can't retaliate.
If I'm running bogus auctions to rake in money before anyone notices, this could give me an extra 80 days before new victims get any warning.
- http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/listing-shipping.html
Unfortunately, this policy is commonly ignored. It is quite common to find an item which is $1, shipped by first class mail for under $1, in an envelope costing under $1, which took under 2 minutes to pack, but which the seller wants to charge $12 or more for shipping/handling on. $10 for stuffing an envelope is excessive.
What it is, is a scam by sellers to significantly reduce their "final value fees" by moving dollars from item cost to shipping. The "shipping and handling" is a profit maker for them, in direct violation of eBay policy.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
so make eBay responsible for it.
Where eBay has removed or hidden negative feedback, eBay insure the sale.
eBay can see if there has been enough sales to have the number of feedback incidents given and can put up their own indication of the overall quality or lack thereof and thereby, because they have now informed potential sellers, avoid having to pay for the insurance.
in my opinion, one of the biggest problems with feedback is the sheer difficulty in getting negative feedback REMOVED. ebay is [almost] completely unwilling to remove feedback, even if it's obvious that the feedback was unmerited.
if you have ever done any amount of selling on ebay you know that many people don't even read the auction and therefore don't really know the details of it -- some don't even know what they are bidding on! also, many people don't keep their contact and shipping information up to date, therefore there is no way to contact them or get them their item. and unfortunately many of these buyers will often give negative feedback -- but due to their own mistakes, not due to anything the seller did.
and, just as there are bad sellers who use negative feedback is a weapon, there are bad buyers who do the same. in fact there are people who are solicited (by friends, family, etc.) just to bid on an item for the sole purpose of leaving negative feedback and never paying for the item. this move will increase that negative aspect.
i don't believe this is an improvement... it's just shifting the abuse from one side to another.
And this is exactly what I'm going to do:
If you have ever left negative feedback for a seller, I will cancel your bid. Thanks!
You're right, that's not shipping, that's handling. You're also paying for the box, the packing material, the gas to get to the post office, and a bit for the seller's time and effort. Except for maybe the time and effort, the rest of that stuff isn't free.
http://crummysocks.com
I am an eBay buyer and I always found the feedback system unbalanced in favor of the seller, so I welcome this change. But your case is a good example of how a buyer can be "not good" even if he pays valid money within minutes from the end of the auction. If you receive the wrong item, you should contact the seller anyway, even if you think it's not worth the hassle of returning and reshipping. I think you deserved at least a neutral feedback, if not negative, and it was not retaliation. What happened to you on eBay happened to me on DealExtreme two months ago. I told them, I sent them a picture of the wrong item and told them what happened (similar SKU numbers). They just sent me the right item without asking to return the wrong one. One should always at least try to settle things in a friendly way before concluding it _went bad_.
I recently had a horrible experience with a seller with only positive feedback. Bought and paid for a book, sent them a message. Sent them another email. And another, and another. A month passed. They responded that they didn't know anything about it, adding "LOL". They offered to ship expedited or issue a refund. I sent 2 more messages asking them to ship expedited. Another couple weeks went by, I sent another message asking to ship expedited, and they immediately canceled the order and refunded with no explanation.
As this was the worst experience I've encountered on eBay, I left negative feedback: "1 month later said they didnt ship it, offered to ship exped., then refunded!?!?"
They immediately left negative feedback on me: "Communicated poorly; did not express what he wanted."
I decided the best thing would be to save my perfect feedback record and mutually withdraw the feedback. They immediately agreed.
Now if only they would have been as quick to respond with my shipment as they were with the negative feedback...
What I really wish ebay would do, is make it easy to just see negative feedback. I only care about a sellers negative feedback when trying to figure out the quality of their service. Instead, I can set the number per page to 200, but on power sellers, I still have to click through many pages and hunt down the negative ones.
Admittedly I haven't even looked at E-bay for a couple of years now, but I'm assuming that it's still the case that E-bay and PayPal will do nothing to help buyers who have been scammed.
One experience with a seller that never delivered showed me that E-bay buyers are entirely on their own. A good first step for E-bay would have been to build in an escrow service - at no extra cost - so that buyers at least could feel protected against outright non-delivery.
E-bay could build in a lot of protections, or at least mediate disputes in a timely and professional manner, but they refuse to do so. Crooked buyers and sellers know that E-bay won't touch them, so they just carry on their merry way. Feedback problems are just a symptom, not the root problem.
Three Squirrels
Now then - I could live with the change if eBay would improve the trade rules and their enforcement in addition to "automating" seller feedback (essentially what they are doing - the deadbeat buyer gets flagged by the system not by the seller). It sort of looks like that may be what they're doing but it might be too early to tell.
Too many buyers (and sellers for that matter) are far too casual about communicating after an auction closes. When I buy or sell something at a live auction, the deal is closed before I leave the property. Yet on eBay, depending on the nature of the auction, there could be a lengthy delay between auction end and any enforcement actions taken or permitted by the system. Thigs I'd like to see:
Bottom line is that the feedback system, despite it's blemishes, is the one thing that lends a tiny bit of integrity when dealing with unknown buyers or sellers. As long as the improvements come with balance it's probably going to be a good thing. Personally, I take the feedback in context when I read it. If someone has one or two bad remarks you can usually see from the comments if it's some sort of extraordinary issue or not. Ditto for tit-for-tat nastiness. More than that shows a pattern and I avoid.
There are no cats in America and the streets are paved with cheese!
From a seller's perspective, if a buyer doesn't pay, you don't ship the item. From a buyer's perspective, I win the auction and send money. I take it on faith (and feedback) that the seller is legit and will ship my item. I've been burned by sellers before, but if a buyer doesn't pay, I just submit a NPB to recoup my listing fees and relist the item. I can't control who wins my items, and I think eBay has a policy that you're out after 3 NPBs. I guess the only loss for the seller in this case is that you can't retaliate against a buyer who leaves you a negative feedback, but in terms of your seller rating...it doesn't do you any good to do that anyway. It doesn't get rid of your negative feedback. I don't think this policy is a huge deal. Kinda makes sense to me.
of course they could adopt slashdot's ratings system.
+1 Informative
-1 TrollDoll
etc.
The real problem with the old ebay feedback system is that the buyer cannot really tell the difference between the good sellers and the bad sellers.
The buyer and seller have very different responsibilities. The buyers only responsibilities are to pay for the item and provide a valid shipping address. The seller must represent the item truthfully, provision it, pack it so that it will not get damaged, and then ship promptly after receiving payment.
Most sellers, in my experience, do not leave feedback until after the buyer leaves feedback. Retaliation for non-positive feedback is completely routine. The bad sellers use threats of bad feedback to extort good feedback from buyers. If the seller misrepresents the item, packs it badly, or waits several weeks to ship it, then the seller has earned a poor mark, and the buyer should be able to leave negative feedback without retaliation.
The seller has no risk if he/she just waits for payment before shipping. All of the risk is assumed by the buyer. The buyer is out the money and must wait for the goods to arrive. Hence, the purpose of the reputation system must be to help the buyers distinguish the good sellers from the bad sellers. The old system is just not serving that purpose.
eBay just revised their costs. They advertise reduced insertion fees (which were minimal reductions at best) and free gallery pics (even though there are many free image hosts out there such as imageshack ). The problem is that they didn't advertise that they increased the final value fees. This is a disservice to the seller and is the reason why many add a large handling fee to recoup costs by overvalued shipping. Additionally, I'm under the impression that eBay owns PayPal. For an eBay Transaction paid through PayPal, you get hit for an insertion fee, a final value fee, and a money transfer fee. Understandably, the credit card processors charge this, but if the money is coming from someone's bank account, there shouldn't be as much of a fee from PayPal, yet it's still there.
Paypal and eBay should revise their stances on eBay transactions; there should be a discounted value or a reduced final value fee from eBay (or a reduced money transfer cost from PayPal) if the payer is paying expressly for an eBay auction. I think this would push more sellers to focus on PayPal as their payment processor.
Meanwhile, getting back on topic...
I've received 3 bad feedbacks as a buyer.
- Negative Feedback 1
- Negative Feedback 2
- Neutral Feedback
There is a way to indicate the handling charges separate from the actual shipping charges in the bill. If the handling charges are necessary (i.e. packaging and the trip to the post office) then that should just be listed on its on with the actual postage separate. There is no reason that a DVD should have $10 worth of shipping costs associated with it if you are shipping media mail.
The reason they can retaliate is that the have unlimited negatives.
If they were limited to the greater of 5% of their sales or 1 per month, then they would have to pick who they would hit negatively.
I've never gotten a negative mark on ebay myself. I've been ripped off one time in about 50 transactions for roughly $30.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Happily, I was eventually able to get it reversed, but how would you recommend buyers point out bad sellers when the process is slanted toward the sellers?
Why not only display As a Seller feedback on auctions? You can still keep both feedback categories visible on that person's profile page, for those who are curious to know someone's As a Buyer feedback.
...eBay is dying.
Craigslist is the best way of online buy/sell/trade since the potential buyer can make actual contact with the seller before committing to the deal.
I've tried buying stuff on eBay three times and was burned all three 100% failure rate. One, theseller took my money and disappeared. Second one took my money, sent me a Sun Sparcstation SCSI card when I bought and needed a video card (already had two SCSI cards), then he disappeared too. The third time I won an auction for a radio and the seller refused to give it up for the auction price, sold it to a private buyer for more money and told me to fuck off.
So, the whole entirety of eBay can just go shrivel up and die for all I care.
This clown shipped me a dead GE VCR from the 1980's instead of the Yamaha Motif Synthesizer module I purchased through Ebay on January 12th. I'm not sure of his real name -- he used Chad Landley on the box but his ebay/paypal account says Christopher Irvine. Is that his alias?
His wife didn't seem to recognize that name either, and he was real rude to me on the phone when I asked him why he shipped me a piece of junk non-working vcr on ebay instead of the $300 synthesizer I paid for on January 12th of this year. Funny thing is, he used the USPS shipping & tracking information so now we can prove that he's committing mail fraud.
I'd like to put him away in jail because I'm tired of jerks like him screwing up Ebay, but the police in his hometown say that they aren't interested in taking action. So I guess I have to part with this evidence. I'm hoping bidding can reach over $300 so I can get my money back. And hey, not ONCE have I ever shipped a customer a piece of crap that wasn't the item in the photo, so you know you can bid early, bid often and actually RECEIVE the items you purchase from me.
Last week I contacted my local police department and filed a report, case number 08-0174 with the Lake Villa, IL Police department.
I also sent information about this case to the US Postal Inspector, because mail fraud and intrastate trade fraud are federal crimes.
Of course I'm pursuing a resolution through ebay/paypal, but they say that since the guy used a tracking number, he must have shipped me the item from this order:
Yamaha Motif Rack Like New!!!! No Reserve!!!
Item number: 260202141068
I'm so tired of getting ripped off, I just want Ebay/Paypal to start defending their customers against criminals like Chad/Christopher.
Of course, you could just call him to ask if he still has the Motif Rack I paid him for. He had emailed me thru Ebay before the end of the auction and said he had three!
**
Non-receipt - Case ID: PP-410-188-491
Status:
Being Reviewed By Paypal
Transaction ID: 9LB37444H8028383Y
Seller Name & Email: Christopher Irvine, irvine1972@live.com
Transaction Amount: -$307.77 USD
eBay Item#: 260202141068
Transaction Date: Jan. 12, 2008
Package Status: USPS tracking # 03071790000433006481
Ebay User ID: mitalianbelle
Name: Christopher S. Irvine / Chad Landley
Address: 237 South Main Street
City: Richmond
State: VA
Zip: 24523
Country: United States
Phone: (804) 750-2255
Registered Since: Monday, Mar 12, 2001 13:34:28 PST
** after further conversations with others who this guy has ripped off, it's a big question as to why ebay hasn't cancelled this guy's account. over the past month he's gotten 9 negative feedbacks, which is pretty lousy compared to his previous feedback (100% positive). it's possible his account was hacked, or maybe he just built up the good feedback in order to lure people to screw over later on, like me. in any case, i've turned in my report to the US Postal Inspector, and if we can get enough people to contact the Postal Inspector about this guy, perhaps they'll go knocking on his door, and bring along some shiny new handcuffs to give him a free ride in a police car! ** february 1 update -- finally paypal changes the complaint to "item not as described". here's their message to me: A claim has been filed against this transaction. The seller's deadline for responding to this claim is Feb. 10, 2008. The seller has the option to provide a full refund for the amount of the transaction, offer a full refund if the item is returned in its original condition, offer a partial refund in an amount you agree to, provide proof that a refund was already issued to you, or disagree with your claim. If the seller does not respond by the deadline, the claim will be decided in your favor. You may cancel this case at any time by clicking "Cancel" below.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
$11 handling? Pack a large china set safely sometime and tell me how much it cost you. $11 handling is nothing weird at all. Hell I've shipped large artwork where the box alone cost $50 or even $100. (extreme example but not unusual)
Hard to argue that this is a change designed to present an accurate record of all members' experiences. If eBay would just be honest and say, "We want to empower buyers to give honest feedback on sellers," some of the controversy goes away (not all of it by any means). eBay has done about as poor of a job describing and selling this change to its members as it possibly could. The failure to accurately describe and sell all the recent changes bothers me more than the change itself. eBay needs to lead its members and using smoke and mirror tactics to describe the changes only undermines what authority it has.
Shoestring Theory
I guess we'll see you later then, scumbag. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
I've been both a buyer and seller, and I agree that the fee change is bigger news. Most of the items I sell come in around $25, and now eBay will take a bigger piece of each of those transactions. Were I doing this professionally, that means my margins either just shrunk or I would have to raise prices going forward.
On the buyer feedback thing, I've only ever received one negative. A seller marketed a product as new and unopened. I purchased the item, but when I received it, it was clear that the seals were broken and the box was opened. When I contacted the seller, s/he indicated that s/he had to do it to make sure I was receiving a working product, so there would be no need for a return. It was a hand-held game device and I had no cartridges with which to test it, and it was six weeks before Christmas (so it would have been too late for a return by the time we could test it). I asked if I should return it for a refund, or if the seller would consider a small price adjustment. The seller's next email message told me to torque off, and he left me negative feedback.
I was planning on leaving positive or neutral feedback, depending on the outcome of my request, but this seller would not admit the misrepresentation and left me no choice but to post negative feedback.
Needless to say, that was about 15 months ago. I've neither bought nor sold anything on eBay in the past year. I don't think I will be going back.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Ebay just needs to not let you see the feedback left by the other party until you have left feedback yourself.
As far as discussion here of scamming sellers - that is what the feedback system is for. If someone has little or often negative feedback, then they might be a rip-off seller. The problem is two-fold: one, people who are new to eBay and don't understand checking someone's feedback and two, people who are cheap and will buy something for $39 from someone with little feedback, much of it negative, rather than $40 from someone who has been around for years, had thousands of sales and has almost all positive feedback. I don't really understand this talk of ripoff sellers - if the last 99 people have been happy with a sellers transaction, odds are yours will go good as well, and even if there is a problem you can get a refund (a policy which you can look for ahead of time).
Also, eBay is raising rates - there are some small cosmetic lower rates so their press release can say rates are belong lowered, but actually they're being raised for almost everyone including myself. So now more of the few pennies I'm making that is not going to Paypal (which eBay owns), the post office, shipping supplies or my product distributor is going to eBay. A lot of people on Power Sellers Unite are talking about moving to non-eBay methods of selling. Since I heard about the rates I have signed up with Amazon, and have been working on my web site as well as web site related stuff (Google Ads, Google Base, Shopzilla/Bizrate etc.) And on my web site I am not forking over $2.15 of the first $25 of my sale, plus the rest of the final value fee, plus the listing fee of $1 to $2. That's an extra dollar off for my customers and an extra dollar for me. I've been selling from my web site for a while, now I just have to work on it some more.
Your approach is similar to mine. The points or percentage scores are too easy to game and therefore are useless. I read the actual comments with a critical eye. The credibility of the feedback comments vary by a factor of 1000 to 1, so focus on the credible comments, and follow the links to see if the buyer is a whiner or not. This points up the reform Ebay should be making: Increase the permissible length of feedback comments. 80 characters is so 1996.
The gun auction sites have a built-in resistance to many of Ebay's problems. You can ship a gun only to a federally licensed dealer, so that automatically puts an identifiable escrow agent into the transaction as a witness. Legally, he is there to see the ID, but also he obviously sees the gun actually delivered to the buyer's possession. EBay might take a lesson from this and open a counter at every Kinko's where you show can show a claim code and get the stuff. Or see the benefit of real meatspace ID's and offer a type of account verified by a notary.
Maybe someone can come up with a web-of-trust scheme to rate buyers & sellers more effectively. I doubt Ebay ever will. The most likely result is Ebay will continue to flounder about, the alternatives will never gain traction, and the world will revert to how it was before Ebay came about. Only now classifieds are free on Craig's list and middlemen are easy to find on Google.
So then add a 'scam alert' button to the auction that adds a counter to a seller's auctions that only lasts for the length of time you have to add feedback. If you see the scam counter higher than 1 or 2, you don't buy from them.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
Message to sellers: don't fsck up in the first place and you won't get negative feedback. If that's too harsh, well, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
But since it was my first buy, it utterly and completely turned me off from eBay. In other word they definitively lost a business opportunity due to their broken system allowing retaliation. As another poster pointed out the brazilian mercadlio system looks much sounder if described accurately
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Some people have long descriptions, but mine isn't. I have two paragraphs of product description, and then eight sentences with everything else, three of those sentences being eBay required boilerplate. The third sentence is how many days a shipment may be postponed due to checks clearing. Yet people complain that the items were not shipped the day they mailed their check, never mind getting to you and clearing. Of course, I could disallow checks, but then I might being losing money on auctions, shelling out $1-2 for an item someone didn't buy, but might have bought if I accepted checks. I'm sure my shipping time will be marked as low for this person.
Good point, but if you're getting significant amounts of negative feedback, plus didn't-send-item reports, then, as long as the system works properly, you should still get hauled up. 60 days is probably far too long though.
im in ur
Many eBay sellers are upset about these new changes, and they're not taking it lying down. They've formed a Boycott Feb 18th-25th. I say, if you don't like eBay why give them your business at all?
This policy will to nothing more than allow eBay to remain hands-off in handling disputes.
As far as I'm concerned as a buyer, if I win and item and pay for it right away, I deserve positive feedback. I do not like sellers that do not leave feedback until I do. And if I leave legitimate negative feedback, I should be able to protest a retaliatory feedback -- but that requires eBay to get involved.
As a seller, if you follow the terms of my auction, you get positive feedback. Period. If you do not comply to the terms, you get negative. And the eBay involvement here is the same as me as a buyer -- it requires that eBay get involved to handle disputes.
So, congratulations eBay. You have effectively turned your system into a haven for fraudsters.
It's hard to be a "bad buyer", either you pay the amount, either you don't. No?
Well, no. I haven't sold much on ebay, but here's a few gems I ran into:
1. Item shipped, buyer not home, package is held at post office. Buyer leaves negative feedback saying he never received the item, while it sits waiting for him three blocks away, and when I eventually get ahold of the carrier that handles his route, he confirms that there are three delivery attempt notes still stuck to the guy's door.
2. USPS loses package. Buyer leaves negative without contacting me. Refuses to withdraw negative even after refund and USPS shipment proof.
3. Buyer receives package. Complains item is "not in new condition," when the auction was for a used item, described as having scratches, with clear pictures of the scratches.
In all of these cases, the buyer was lousy even though they paid.
i agree that its hard to leave negative feedback on sellers and most people just dont bother becouse they know the seller can rarely speaka any ingrish and usually doesnt even understand your complaint or they just leave you negative responses out of spite what ebay really needs to do is put more effort in to having moderators who actually give a flying fark about the situation if someone leaves me negative feedback in response to me leaving it for a seller who has completely ripped me off i know ebay wouldnt do a damned thing about it if they did get staff involved to moderate it that would help and it would put off bad sellers who leave obligatory bad feedback when the buyer leaves it.
I Predict A Riot
I consider myself to be a good eBay buyer and seller. I always leave honest feedback. Most has been positive, but some has been negative.
I've received no negative feedback as a seller, despite several disputes that I eventually resolved with the buyers.
The biggest problem I've had with eBay is that they don't enforce their policies on the seller. I've won several no reserve auctions for high value items at a fraction of the items' value. Just as a winning bidder has an obligation to pay, a seller has an obligation to sell to the winning bidder. Lame excuses abound when the seller finds that the item didn't fetch what they were expecting. I've heard "my apartment was robbed, sorry" or "I can't sell for such a low price" despite winning auctions.
Aside from sellers to bid up their own auctions, sellers who refuse to sell at the close of the auction are the worst part of eBay. I've filed complaints with eBay in each instance, and then nothing. eBay won't discuss the complaint with me for privacy reasons. I doubt the seller even got a slap on the wrist. I've never won an auction and refused to pay, but my guess is that there are much more serious consequences for buyers in this situation than for sellers who refuse to sell.
But maybe with this change at least we'll see the end of $1 item, $10 shipping
Why? What's wrong with that? I sold an old copper heatsink for a few bucks, and shipping was something like $15. I didn't make up the shipping costs-- that's what the post office charged me to ship a couple of pounds of copper.
You're either okay with the shipping charge when you bid, or you're not. If you're not, don't bid and then whine that the seller screwed you. If the seller charges what the auction stated, you have no legitimate complaint.
I used to do split auction/Buy-It-Nows. I think those are good - if someone needs it NOW, not a week from now, they can get it. If they can wait a week and want a chance at a good price, they can bid on the auction. The best of both worlds. I sometimes had the auction start at my exact cost, so anything over that was profit. Sometimes someone got a good deal, sometimes I had a bunch of bidders bid it up to something ridiculous.
I am amazed this hasn't been referenced yet. http://xkcd.com/325/
If you read the article, or even just the summary, you would see that you've got it completely ass-backwards. Ebay is stopping Sellers leaving feedback, but not buyers - in other words, this is exactly what you want...
I can think of a simple thing that can be done to help out some sellers and buyers. A buyer is done when he pays or an item. Most sellers take Paypal because it's easy to use. Paypal and Ebay are one now, and they should be very obligated. Why not have it when a buyer pays with Paypal, there is something that marks that the seller did pay, and it could have and average of how long it took him to pay. This could be left as the buyers feedback. I wouldn't mind if this info was marked for me. Maybe there is a security issue involved with this. Maybe it's makes Paypal too much of a monopoly, but it's pretty much all I use on Ebay. Woody
Make feedback invisible until both sides have left feedback?
Retaliation is impossible.
If someone's out there just giving bad feedback all the time, it'd be extremely easy to spot.
I read lots of the comments above, and think I have a good solution. The problem is that eBay only keeps very limited information on a transaction and only gives you a very small summary (#positive, #negative, %positive, etc). It's in eBay's interest to make things look as positive as possible, they're in the business of collecting listing fees after all. I think a good solution would be a series of questions: Did the pay promptly, Did the seller ship promptly, Is the item as promised, lot's of other questions. And then make all the data public with no summaries at all. Then you let people analyze it however they want. Of course this will be hard for most of the people so someone like a Google can come around and apply their own algorithm to the data to give you a rating for the seller and buyer, etc. This way since there are multiple sources of ranking it makes it hard for a scammer because they would have to do the equivalent of SEO but if there are more than one ranking algorithm, they couldn't scam them all. It all comes down to transparency. If eBay is to beat the scammers, they need more transparency in the whole process.
If you sell and ship regularly, then getting surprised at FedEx is no excuse. You should know how to price things by now as an experienced merchant, so #1 & #2 are no excuse.
#3 & #4 are nothing less than sleazy used car salesman scamming. You are using deceptive practices to hide the real cost of a product you're selling from a customer. You are not negotiating your sale in good faith.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
They actually are LOWERING listing fees if you would take a look. Sellers have the option to reply to feedback (this should maybe be upgraded to a more robust contest system where a moderator has the option to mark it as null after it has been addressed). They also have the option to report bad buyers. I think you are over reacting.
However, I had an interesting situation a few months ago having purchased three CDs from a seller in Germany. (I'm in the UK.) The seller stated discounted postage for multiple items in his listings but the Paypal invoice from him (which I couldn't change) didn't reflect the postage discount. I emailed him daily for 5 days asking for a correct invoice, on the 5th day I asked either for a correct invoice or his Paypal ID so I could just pay him directly.
He responded to the 5th email, gave me his Paypal ID and I paid him - in the Comments box in the Paypal payment I put in there it was payment for the 3 CDs.
One month went by and I hadn't received the CDs. Since this was last October in the UK, when there was a postal strike, I didn't see any point in chasing the seller sooner. Once the strike was over, I emailed him asking him politely where the CDs were, he responded by raising 3 non-paying bidder alerts against me. So I sent him a screen capture of the Paypal payment to him and asked him to remove the alerts. He promptly refunded my payment, told me that my payment was not acceptable as I had not put the item listing numbers in the Paypal message to him and left the alerts on.
At this point, I decided to try and outwit the seller. Forgoing the postage discount, I paid the original Paypal invoice to him which removed the Non-paying bidder alerts and then raised a complaint to eBay about not receiving the items. He then emailed me telling me that he would not sell to me as he refused to deal with "Polish crooks" and refunded my payment again.
At this point I realised that when I'd made my original Paypal payment to him, he'd seen that despite being in the UK I have an obviously Slavic surname and decided he wasn't going to sell to me on the basis of his belief that I was Polish. I did email him back, said it was none of his business anyway but that I am actually Ukrainian, not Polish - at which point he backtracked a little, said he had nothing personal against Ukrainians but I'd decided by this point enough was enough, told him he was a rascist and complained to eBay.
eBay removed the non-paying bidder alerts but I'd had a gutfull of the seller, went through his feedback history and saw some very rascist bad feedback he'd left for other buyers in the past - as well as a large number of mutually withdrawn bad feedbacks. I left him bad feedback stating he was a rascist, he responded in kind but with feedback stating I had sold HIM some dodgy copied Polish DVDs!!!
I complained to eBay about his totally irrelevant feedback, they did nothing about it as you'd expect, about a week later I got an email from the seller asking to do a mutual feedback withdrawal. Suffice it to say, I told him to shove it, realised bad feedback as a seller is worse than bad feedback as a buyer and that was the last I heard from him.
However, it's the first time I've heard of a seller refusing money on the basis of a buyer's heritage - what an idiot!
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I feel this change is for the worse, I've been selling (and buying) a fair volume on eBay for the past 9 years and been a Power Seller off and on for a good bit of that time. I've had the occasional flake buyer and retaliatory feedback (7 of my 8 negatives out of 1190 feedbacks were from deadbeats I reported and left bad feedback for), but recently, it seems that the majority of my buyers are bad. They either don't bother paying or responding to emails in the first place, or even worse, they file disputes with Paypal demanding refunds, even though the product is exactly as described. They're now using that service as a vehicle to force sellers to accept returns due to buyer's remorse. Over the past 6 months, I've had:
It doesn't appear to me that eBay is any more concerned with that sort of "buyer" and what they cost sellers in real dollars than they've ever been. They're just more concerned with buyers feeling "secure", even if that security comes at the expense of those who pay eBay's bills-- the sellers. Perhaps they either need to get rid of all seller fees and charge buyer premiums on sales, but this nonsense is the last straw. These low-feedback buyers don't care if their accounts get suspended due to not paying for items. They can hide behind Paypal's "arbitration", which almost always sides with the buyer and won't defend the seller against even the most ridiculous chargebacks.
Goodbye, eBay.
As far as I know sellers right now have the option to reply to feedback. Explaining themselves/their side, etc. Suggestions: This should maybe be upgraded to a more robust contest system where a moderator has the option to mark it as null after it has been addressed. Best case would be the person who left the feedback gets to reverse it, but that doesn't happen if the feed back leaver is an idiot. Take a look at how the www.bbb.org works. You can file a complaint. The seller/merchant is expected to respond to the complaint. After their response/action the complaint is listed as resolved and they still have a good rating. A robust system to report bad buyers. Have it reviewed, and have it show up on their account in a separate area.
This is a great plan, except there probably needs to be some kind of time-frame, after which a feedback becomes visible again, if the other party never bothers to leave feedback....
I don't think you necessarily want to try to force, or even encourage, a situation where each transaction needs to have feedback left for it. Some people do so much buying/selling on eBay, the feedback system becomes quite time-consuming. These people would rather not leave feedback at all on most "normal" transactions, only commenting on an especially good or bad one.
I think adding at least a 30-day "delay" before an invisible feedback turns visible would discourage a lot of "retaliation" feedback, because the "cooling off" period would cause a lot of people to just move on and not bother with it.
I have never been able to see how reducing transparency will increase safety. The reason that open source security solutions are so secure is due to the inherent transparency in the applied algorithms.
I think it is also worth noting one of the other changes that seems to have gotten buried under the comments on feedback and fee structure:
"In a small number of cases (fewer than 5% of all payments on eBay), PayPal will hold payment funds until either the buyer has left positive Feedback or 21 days have passed without a claim."
This essentially creates an escrow account in which funds will be held until eBay (or more specifically PayPal) decides to release them.
Let's put that in perspective. Based on a few assumptions:
1. EBay moves approximately $90M merchandise per day
2. Three quarters of all payments that eBay puts a hold on go the entire 21 days, due to buyers not leaving feedback in a timely manner (which happens all the time)
3. The weighted average interest rate on eBay's investment portfolio is approximately 4.3% (from 3Q07 10Q)
4. Per the PayPal user agreement, eBay, and not the receiving party, is privy to any and all interest generated on monies in a given PayPal account
With these assumptions in mind, this "small" percentage of payments being held has the potential to be, on average, somewhere around $4.5M dollars/day. After the initial 21 day period, eBay will have a steady $70M in perpetual escrow. Applying the non-recoverable investment interest (that pathetic 4.3%) that eBay generates, on hijacked money mind you, over the course of a year eBay will have bilked sellers out of well over $3M in aggregate. Considering that eBay made somewhere in the neighborhood of $130-140M in interest income last year, the 2% increase that this $3M represents seems like this is going to hurt sellers a whole lot more than it will help eBay.
All in the name of making eBay a safer place...?
it was too easy for a seller to intimidate the buyer as it was. Once I complained to my seller about something really unacceptable, he basically told me to pizz off, so I left him negative feedback. Lo-and-behold he retaliated, ugh, even though I had paid him right away and made an honest effort to resolve it. Ever since then I have never left negative feedback for a seller even when they deserved it. And many times, most of the time actually, the seller waits until you leave him feedback to then leave you feedback, like a tit-for-tat, and they even email you telling that they'll leave you the same feedback you leave them so it really was broken. Ebay is correct to favor the buyer here, I mean, where else does the seller get to malign your good name if you complain?
:)
I sell from time to time, and I always leave feedback as soon as I get paid, before I even ship out the item and I've never had a problem, not once. I guess I'm lucky, knock on wood
>Keep feedback hidden until both parties leave feedback (or some period of time has passed, so if one party suspects he will get negative feedback, he can't just not leave feedback to keep the other feedback hidden forever.)
Pary-A screws Party-B and then obscures the evidence by simply not leaving feedback.
That's some might fine Police work you've doing there Lou.
Back when this started happening I received a negative from a seller because I left a negative for them; that seller wanted me to pay additional "fees" that weren't disclosed in the auction listing. When I tried to discuss this with the seller he continued to insist that I pay a "paypal fee" and a "packaging fee". After he left his retaliatory negative feedback I complained to eBay - this was a clear violation of their "no retaliatory feedback" rule. Back then, eBay did claim to investigate and correct feedback that was not in compliance with their rules.
eBay sent a form letter email saying that they received my complaint - and I haven't heard anything more about it since. They did change their rules shortly afterward; now they insist that it's between the buyer and seller and they won't investigate or change any feedback. That eliminated most of the value in the feedback system and created the problem that they're trying to deal with now. Since giving honest feedback about a seller can and does result in retaliation, it's no surprise that there's so many sellers with high ratings.
It's been going along for long enough now that you can't tell anything about a seller by looking at their feedback. Even a truly awful seller can maintain a %100 positive rating. This new "no negatives for buyers" rule will not fix the problem - all it'll do is create a new class of awful buyers with %100 positive ratings.
Net result: the one tool that buyers and sellers had to evaluate each other is almost totally useless now.
Below is the exact quote from my auction pages:
* FEEDBACK *
Buyers have only three main responsibilities in an auction transaction:
1) Pay for the item in a timely manner.
2) Try to work out any problems with the seller BEFORE leaving negative feedback.
3) When returning an item, ensure that it is in the same condition as when it arrived.
There are a lot of things you can do to be considered an excellent ebayer, but the three things listed above are all you need to do in order to obtain positive feedback.
Some sellers only give positive feedback if the buyer gives them positive feedback first. I never buy from sellers with that policy and neither should you.
I'm always willing to leave feedback first, but I can't leave feedback until the transaction is complete. The transaction is complete when the item has been delivered and any problems have been resolved. This may involve the buyer notifying me that the item has been delivered and if there are any problems to be resolved. If you are kind enough to leave me feedback before I leave feedback, I will consider that as an indication that the transaction is complete.
Cube On! (http://stores.ebay.com/PuzzleProz)
One simple way to fix the feed back system: 1) The ONLY thing a buyer can do wrong is not pay. Sellers should be able to leave a "no pay" feedback after two weeks of the time the auction closes. If not two weeks then some other fixed period. This could even be made automatic if PayPal is used 2) Buyers should not be able to leave any feedback at all until they have paid for the item and then allowed reasonable shipping time. All feedback needs to be date stamped with the date of payment. The other problem is that it is easy to have many eBay accounts. Feedback and history needs to follow the person not the acount(s)
1) Announce reduction in insertion fees. And a 15% reduction in FVF (for powersellers only, and only if they have an impossible to reach rating of 4.8) 2) Announce change to feedback that will get people all worked up. 3) Announce increase in final value fees and other changes that are going to put a lot of people out of business. 4) Profit. The whole thing is designed to make it look like they are dealing with bad sellers, when in reality the big not so good sellers can survive this but the smaller sellers cannot. eBay cannot get rid of these guys, they need them like the US needs Saudi Arabia. They cannot get rid of the bad buyers either, they need them too. So you get these insane changes that won't do what eBay says they will, but will screw a lot of people. You have eBay telling buyers that a rating of 4 is good but sellers that anything under 4.5 is bad. Yeah that's not going to cause any problems.
The primary reason for this is not improving the service. Their primary intention is to make more people be less hesitant about buying from someone who has negative feedback. This means that eBay will be making more money.
You can probably actually deal with the problem of dishonest or inaccurate feedback fairly easily. The first step is making feedback appear only once both parties have left it (or after some time limit has elapsed, after which feedback can no longer be given). After that, eBay should be able to tell if, say, a buyer is leaving unjustified negative feedback. eBay really just has to look if that person has left a disproportionately large number of negatives for sellers (compared to the eBay population at large).
If they want to get a little fancier they can look at the correlation of the buyers feedback with that of others (i.e., does this person tend to leave negative feedback for people that are judged to be good by everyone else). If someone leaves negative feedback one for a seller that has otherwise excellent feedback, that could be a fluke. If a buyer consistently leaves negative feedback for otherwise good sellers that's a pattern. It quickly becomes quite improbable that the buyer just has bad luck.
This actually would weed out not just dishonest buyers but also those with unreasonably high standards. So anyway, eBay would have to crunch the data and make a rating about the honesty of the buyer (or seller) that would be listed along with feedback totals. If they just restricted themselves to comparing proportion of negatives given to the eBay average that would be a very simple calculation (and to give a score on honesty they have to compare this to the overall statistical distribution to figure out how reasonable that value is). I think that the blind feedback system I mentioned at the beginning is an important part of this, though, because in that system people would be much more likely to actually leave neutrals or negatives. In the current system where people almost always leave positives, it wouldn't work as well (because the differentiation would be smaller and more likely to be buried in statistical noise).
Anyway, that would weed out habitually dishonest or unreasonable sellers. I don't think that there's much eBay can do in individual cases, especially regarding condition of merchandise, since I don't see how they could know. However, as long as you sell a fair amount of stuff, a system like they one I'm talking about should ensure that such dishonesty is quite rare.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
I don't really see how the new system is going to be any different then Amazon, other then they charge you ridiculous rates for listing an item an opening a store. Since amazon doesn't charge a listing fee, I'm going to take all my business there. They charge a higher closing fee, but you can offset this because you don't pay anything if your item "doesn't sell". After the amount of bullshit that I've put up with from ebay over the last seven years, now that ebay has thrown me over a barrel, I'm really not sure why I shouldn't just cash out my ebay profile and screw a bunch of buyers over with shady deals. My feedback rating is so good that I can take about 300 negatives before I even hit 98%, I imagine I can cash around $30,000 dollars at $100 an auction by selling broken refurb crap as "New in box" and telling all the buyer to go screw themselves when they complain. In short, the value of a buyer's feedback against the seller, has just been usurped. At first glance it would appear the opposite, that sellers now have lost something, but it's really the buyer's that are going to get goatsed' on this one in the long run.
Simplest scheme is the obvious one. The buyer has kept his end of the bargain the moment money has been paid. Why should he have to wait until the item is received, and feedback left for the seller before they can expect their own feedback?
Seller should leave feedback within 2 days of payment being received. Their right to leave feedback is then withdrawn unless the buyer agrees to late feedback being left.
Negative feedback left *for* the seller should be taken to arbitration, if they so choose. If no evidence of unfair description, damaged goods, or being lost in the post, then the buyer receives an automatic public strike against their username.
that 3 weeks of coding cannot substitute for 3 hours of planning. Instead of creating a smart solution they decided to just handicapp the old bad solution. How about this: if the buyer made a payment through ebay (pay now option is usually available), then the "positive" ranking would not be available until the merchant has left a feedback for the buyer? This would make the retalitory negative ratings almost impossible and would actually ensure that the positive ratings were genuine. An argument could be made that it would force some merchants to use alternative payment systems, but they live and die by their reputation. And those that didn't accept "pay now" option would be treated with suspicion right away. Instead, they now limit the merchants ability to cut off rude customers and customers ability to wait for a while to see if the merchant honors warranties (with the neg rating hanging over them as the demoscles' sword). Quite remarkable really. They are running a trully state of the art operation from a technical stand point and yet they allow their marketing people to make these sorts of silly decisions.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Buyers have problems with the sellers.
Sellers have problems with the buyers.
Wow! No shit!
I've been a casual member for 7 or 8 years and this is the stupidest thing they've ever done.
I only ever used ebay to buy things for the first 4 years, slowly building up a small amount of decent feedback (50 maybe)
I've begun selling in the past couple of years and I can assure you as a seller, you need SOMETHING over some of these idiot buyers.
Even with the situation as it is now, you STILL get people bidding for something/ winning and changing their mind, OFTEN.
I would estimate at least 10% of my transactions have problems on ebay and I've only left negative feedback twice - both times it was well deserved.
I will admit I have been stung by the blackmailers too though, I won an item, paid instantly and 21 days later my item arrived, neutral feedback was left and I received a negative for being "HORRIBLE BUYER, OMG AVOID" if I recall.
Yes I do know that sucks and yes it was abused, however removing all forms of feedback for buyers is just silly.
Also how does a buyer build up a good reputation on the system, if I have someone bidding on my items, I want someone experienced - specifically on the high value items.
I just sold a nintendo wii, to a guy with a feedback of 1, he hasn't paid yet and I've got one 'mumbly' email - I'm almost certain I'm going to be leaving negative feedback in a week or two.
I agree with eBay that sellers have too much power in the feedback system but censoring the sellers isn't the right solution. Censoring only the sellers puts too much power in the hands of buyers. Buyers have the upper hand already. I like the idea of blind feedback but I'm not sure it's enough. The system should be able to identify bad transactions. Either player in a bad transaction should be able to request neutral mediation from eBay. A result of last resort in this mediation should be negating the transaction.
The most chilling thing about this solution is that it only provides recourse for sellers when the buyer doesn't pay. From what I see the only time you can prove that a buyer didn't pay is if your sole method of payment is PayPal. So this looks like a way for eBay to lock sellers into using PayPal as their sole method of payment. For buyers this is great but for sellers it sucks.
-- Ecks
Umm, "eight times more likely" than what? Than buyers are to retaliate against sellers? Than they were at some point in the past? Than they are to retaliate against positive feedback? It's kind of a common compositional sin to drop the "than what" part of a "more likely than" statement, but usually you can figure it out from context. In this case, I can't even imagine a way to complete the sentence that makes any sense whatsoever - which leads me to believe that someone pulled this figure out of thin air.
But that's the fallacy. Not all sellers - maybe not even a majority - want to "act like stores". I just want to sell the occasional piece of technology that I don't need any more to someone who does - at a fair price. I didn't mind paying Ebay 5-8% of the take for being the conduit that made that possible.
Even though I've been registered with Ebay for 12+ years, and have 250+ feedback (all positive, btw), I'm going to be using them a whole lot less (and Craigslist a whole lot more) because of these feedback changes and their new, much higher fees.
Ebay wants to be a strip mall with big sellers all hawking the same boring junk that you can already get on Amazon - with free shipping and better customer service to boot. What's the point?
I sell about 3 or 4 items a year on EBay. No one has left feedback for me for the last 5 transactions. Lately, a couple of the buyers even removed their accounts after the sale was complete, making it impossible to reach them - a tad scary. I'm not about to leave (probably neutral) feedback on noncommunicative buyers for fear of retaliation either, since the process heavily favors buyers jerking sellers around for bogus reasons. Although I've only been jerked around once, by a buyer who wanted a "rebate" on his item. I told him no, and he threatened me with negative feedback if I said anything, and the whole matter was dropped.
That tactic might work with a high volume Ebay junk store, but for individual sellers, the intimidation, ever increasing fees, and shipping costs mean EBay's hardly worth the trouble anymore.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
It occasionally takes that long for items to get through the post to Australia from the US. Usually, it's quicker, but I can't blame the seller if it isn't.
I think this is wonderful. I've bought and sold on eBay since 1999, but I don't think I've used it since I bought a scientific calculator for a class a year or so ago. It was listed "ships next day with manual;" it took weeks to show up, packed with no padding at all, with a home-burned CD-R copy of the manual with a "sleeve" of a piece of paper kind of crumpled around it. I left feedback to that effect, and the cow turned around and left me feedback saying "Awful communicator! NASTY ATTITUDE about payment. Will NEVER DO BUSINESS AGAIN!!"
TOTAL bullshit; that transaction was paid via PayPal 30 seconds after the auction ended. I mean, a flat-out lie. But she has 100+ feedbacks. I have 14. With both of us having 1 negative, my percentage rating is considerably lower than hers. So, like, awesome, this shady person who lists dozens of used calculators all described as "I bought this for a class I dropped" has a better rating than I do.
I note now that "allyae" hasn't sold any calculators since October '07. I hope her ass got busted stealing them out of backpacks at the community college around the corner from your basement meth lab, and got hauled off to federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
reducing the time buyers have to leave feedback has to be the DUMBEST part of these changes. I've bought a number of items from the USA that have taken more than 60 days to arrive here in Australia when it's been something unimportant and I've picked the cheapest mail option. If my window for feedback is running out and I haven't got the item yet what type of feedback do you expect I'll be leaving?
If there's a window that needed changing it's the time the seller had to leave feedback after the buyer had paid. if they said "sellers must leave feedback for the buyer within 7 days of payment, otherwise positive feedback left by the buyer will not add to the sellers feedback rating" I dont think they'd need to abolish negative feedback for the buyer at all. If I've paid for the item my interactions with the seller are over. I hate they way they hold off leaving feedback until you leave them positive feedback as much as the next guy, but removing negative buyer feedback isnt the solution.
TIAEAE!
I don't know. I once bought a cheap replica sword on an auction. There were several similar items, and it was pretty low quality, so I actually ended up being the only bidder at a whopping $0.99. (Yes, that's 99 cents.) I was fully aware of the "quality" of the sword, and it was exactly what I was looking for. However, the thing was still several pounds, and more than four feet long. The seller put it in a reasonably well packaged box, and it arrived quickly and without any problems. The auction clearly listed a shipping price of $15, so I wasn't at all surprised to have to pay that amount. Yea, the shipping was 1500% of the selling price. Sounds ridiculous, but given the situation, I think it was reasonable. Now, paying $12 to ship a single computer peripheral card (such as a video card) seems like the seller is really trying to gouge an extra few bucks out of the buyer, but again, as long as it's clearly marked on the auction, I'm not going to whine about it. Shipping prices *DO* affect which auctions I bid on!!
Your Servant, B. Baggins
It's meaningless noise. Report the total number transactions and the number of problem transactions. Let either the buyer or the seller report a transaction as a problem that goes on both parties' records. Let them argue about it in public as long as they want.
Instead of office chair package contained bobcat.. would not buy again
I can see how this can help but it's a risky move. My 100% rating was tarnished by a retaliating seller so I'm in favor of this but it also means that sellers will be even less likely to sell to users with imperfect or no feedback. New users may have to look harder for sellers that will deal with them and may end up paying more.
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
TFA also has this interesting stat: "eBay's data shows that sellers are eight times more likely to retaliate in kind against negative feedback, a figure that has grown dramatically over the years."
I mean, if that doesn't prove the sleaziness of regular "for a living" ebay sellers, I don't know what would.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
If they leave negative, and your leaving feedback will finalize it, retalitory or not, no one in their right mind would leave feedback.
You might as well remove all negative feedback.
I am not accusing you of anything, but the feedback system is what it is. If you made him feel bad, he has every right to speak his mind. In fact, you left him a neautral. It could be he genuinly wanted to leave you negative regardless of your feedback, but just waited for you to post your feedback to prevent you from retaliating with a negative.
He had every right to leave you a negative as did you.
I've been on eBay a number of years, both as a buyer and a seller. As a musician, I deal primarily in relatively high priced items. The feedback system is very important to me as a seller, as should be obvious to anyone who deals on eBay. I am a honest person and a never misrepresent the condition of an item, but I have been burned several times as a buyer by relatively dishonest sellers. That said, I have never left negative feedback for anyone on eBay until recently (more about this below). As feedback is much more important for sellers than for buyers, I feel it is incumbent upon a seller to leave feedback first (and to always leave it for buyers), and I feel it is equally incumbent upon buyers not to leave negative feedback if they are dissatisfied with a purchase until and unless they have attempted to resolve the situation with the seller. I my self have never left negative feedback as a buyer, even though I've been burned, because I elected not to contact the seller and return the items, even in a case where I received a $1000 amp and speaker cabinet combination damaged and in much worse condition than was represented that cost me over $100 in shipping from California.
I do charge a reasonable handling fee above the actual shipping charges, as I pack fragile items well and good packaging materials are expensive and constructing a good package is time consuming, not to mention the time and trouble I have to go through in order to ship an item. For instance I recently sold a bass guitar to a buyer in France. I charged a $20 packaging and handling fee in addition to the approximately $115 USPS shipping costs, on an item that sold for $800 (which was unfortunately much less than I would have hoped). The instrument was packaged in a sturdy carton with proper cushioning material on all six sides, and closed with the most expensive fiberglass reinforced 3M packaging tape available. This is typical of my sales.
In December, I listed another bass guitar, with a starting price of $800, a reserve of $850, and a Buy It Now price of $1000. One bidder insisted on pestering me to sell the bass at a vastly reduced price (with free shipping, to boot), a practice which I find repugnant. This bidder eventually bid up to the reserve price, but another bidder came in and bid more. The winning bidder had placed his bid almost exactly 72 hours prior to the end of the auction. Come the end of the auction, the winning bidder refused to honor his bid. An email exchange ensued in which I politely requested four times that the bidder complete the transaction, but was refused each time, first claiming not to understand how he had won the auction, then claiming an inability to pay for emergency reasons.
Now, this bidder had been registered with eBay for over a year, and had operated as both a buyer and a seller. It is certain that he understood the terms of his bid when he placed it, and for three days, neither retracted his bid, nor contacted me to request bid cancellation. Although I am a reasonable and compassionate person, I simply have no way of verifying that his bid was not fraudulent or that his situation is actually as he claimed. Bear in mind that this all took place just before Christmas. I explained to the winning bidder that if he did not honor his bid, my only option was to relist the item and file a claim with eBay. While eBay would obviously refund my Final Value Fee, given the circumstances, the still would not refund my listing fees (which is understandable, because eBay provided their service, and deserves to be paid). The trouble is, eBay will not allow me to file an Unpaid Item dispute until eight days had passed, and still requires that the buyer and seller attepmt to resolve the transaction. This means I would not have been able to relist the item until at least eight days had passed, even if the dispute was resolved almost immediately. After all, I cannot in all honesty relist an item and still allow the original winning bidder to resolve the transaction. That would not be fair to new bidders.
Hey. I'm the guy you recently thanked for friending, and then posted AC about it. (That should be enough to ID me. Since you were AC, I don't know for sure if you're that guy, but I only friended you recently. This should also be vague enough that others can't easily figure out who I am.)
Why is a hate machine after me? Did you check my journal history, where I link to an example of me in my less-nice days? In that one, I criticized a certain OS. If you look at my posting history, the end of the first page should have my last post in a discussion where I criticize a different OS from the first one. Also sort of a flamewar. So, making enemies of two major OSes probably set off the hate machine.
Complain to the admins? This has happened before, where I keep getting modded down for no reason, but when I emailed the admins, they refused to do anything. I'll try again, but not optimistic about it.
Btw, you asked a question about Ron Paul. I answered it, but I replied to the person you asked, even though my answer was also relevant to you. You should be able to find it in my recent history, and I hope you find the answer helpful.
Thanks for your support, and for friending me back. Let's hope I can get back to regular posting.
Slashdot you owe me KARMA for not posting it then!!
... I think they should only show the last 10 or so feedback's given on a rolling basis--
I won't read any post beyond the first misplaced "loose" Maybe you should pay as much attention to your own grammar as to other people's?
"What reason does a seller have for charging more than the actual shipping costs, other than making up for the too small selling price? (And therefore showing up more positively in the search results)"
One other reason is to avoid some of the costs from eBays/Paypals final sales price percentage calculation. I would agree with many that this practice is disingenuous though the steady route of increases in the costs to sellers by eBay/Paypal is not exactly a positive practice either. Many of the sellers already work on a low margin and there are a finite number of sales possible for a item class, so increases in the percentage costs either have to be passed on or circumvented somehow if they are to simply maintain income. I think the levels of this, especially from SE Asia sellers, that I see on eBay are indicative of a very basic problem that eBay is going to have to fix before someone else replaces them in this market.
The combination of upfront store/listing fees and final sales costs also inhibit the hobbiest/casual seller like myself. I recently closed my eBay store as my sales volume/profit was just enough that I was essentially doing it for nothing after all the fees were totaled. I never expected to make more than chump change for the junk I had laying around. I just hate to see neat stuff go to the dump when someone somewhere can make use of it. Indeed my prime motive for the store was to get rid of this stuff without sending it to the landfill. However it sure would have been nice if I could have kept some loose change for the effort, money that I would have likely spent on eBay anyway. I am not a eBay hater, I still love the concept. In fact it is one I had about the same time as the founders of eBay, I just failed to implement my version it in a timely manner. Still I had a lot of fun writing the perl cgi scripts for my Or Best Offer Classifieds. You know I have as of yet to see where eBay or anyone else is implementing a true "Yankee" type of auction, it beats the dickens out of "Dutch" auctions.
Wabi-Sabi
matthew
I hear what you are saying. But the rating system isn't worth anything if it's not a true record.
I thought it best to simply rate the experience as I experienced it. I left a comment about why. Seems I did him a service of sorts.
Or at least his next potential customer.
I appreciate your comment, thanks.