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02-09-2008, 02:16 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-09-2008, 02:17 AM by Taem.)
It seems eBay plans on ridding itself of a prominent feature of its feedback utility: to leave negative feedback! To me, this is outrageous! As a seller, I rely on a users negative commentary and feedback: when a new user has three+ negatives saying they do not buy and no positives, its a pretty clear indication of whats to come. Every transaction that "sells" costs the seller money, rather the recipient pays you or not! As a buyer, I want to know if a business sometimes doesn't deliver as promised, or is hard to get a hold of. Are there any alternative auction sites to eBay that use a feedback feature, because if so, I may trade-up?
"The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self." -Albert Einsetin
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A couple of points:
First, they are only eliminating the ability of the seller to leave negative feedback about the buyer . Buyers can still leave negative feedback about the seller.
Second, this particular article fails to point out the claim by eBay that sellers are eight times more likely to leave retaliatory negative feedback than buyers.
Buyers typically have many fewer transactions than sellers. It's a matter of numbers. Please note I'm not necessarily defending the move as I'm not really qualified to make a judgment, just pointing out a couple of things about it.
Personally, I am not a seller. I've never had to deal with a bad/incompetent buyer. However, I have experienced the fact that as a buyer, you have no recourse if you get ripped off. If you leave negative feedback, you are just one little blip on thousands of transactions. But since I may only have a couple of dozen, a single negative feedback counts for much more against me.
All the screaming from sellers about jumping ship might create a viable competitor. But how many sellers will want to start all over? If eBay loses a large portion of its sellers, then they will have made a mistake. Time will tell.
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This is because of Randall, you mark my word.
Personally, I've never used eBay save to monitor a workmate of my father's bids on a power drill intended for my father (Long, complicated, and somewhat Dickensian story), but this... Ugh, I can't see the reasoning behind this change. Is eBay so afraid of litigation from a seller that received a few bad comments?
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Quote:It seems eBay plans on ridding itself of a prominent feature of its feedback utility: to leave negative feedback! To me, this is outrageous! As a seller, I rely on a users negative commentary and feedback: when a new user has three+ negatives saying they do not buy and no positives, its a pretty clear indication of whats to come. Every transaction that "sells" costs the seller money, rather the recipient pays you or not! As a buyer, I want to know if a business sometimes doesn't deliver as promised, or is hard to get a hold of. Are there any alternative auction sites to eBay that use a feedback feature, because if so, I may trade-up?
Well it happened to me. Last week, I put up some movies my kids didn't want anymore. In return for the money they received, we were going to purchase some DDR pads for the PC so we could play Stepmania together (playing the same songs over and over and over on the wii just gets so boring; DDR makers take note: You could make a fortune if you sold downloadable songs for your games). So my items sold and someone with a history of zero bids on my item.. and keep bidding jacking the price all the way up to $170.00. The guy who was bidding had a picture of him in a military outfit and of his daughter sitting on his lap, so I decided to give the guy a chance. Well, as you might have guessed, the guy didn't pay me! I did something to check out his bidding history (not on my items, but in general) and saw that he bid on many auctions, but had zero feedback (I'm not sure how to do this again as a seller and if someone knows and could tell me, please please please do so because I can't figure it out!). If this guy could have actually received negative feedback for not paying, then I would have blocked his bid in the first place! I'm so mad at Ebay right now for making me relist my item. I'm not even sure if there will be more charges for this, but its BS! I can't even think of words to say I'm so frustrated at Ebay for making this change.
"The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self." -Albert Einsetin
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I remember seeing something on the news about this. eBay was siting a decrease in sales over the years and they thought this would be a good move to bring business back up. Not sure what to think yet. I used to sell a fair bit, now I mostly buy.
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I think it is a good move to try to prevent retaliatory feedback for buyers when a seller receives negative feedback, but to completely remove it is not the way to go.
I once had an item that I paid for right after the auction ended. About the time I was expecting it to come in the mail, I got an email saying it just shipping! It took them a weekend and a week just to ship it off. Obviously I wasn't going to leave positive feedback, but seeing as how I had paid promptly I was expecting the seller to leave me positive feedback. They never did such a thing and so I refused to give feedback until they did. Apparently they felt the same way, however, and kept pestering to me to leave them feedback first. Well at this point it was definitely going to be negative feedback. I don't think we ever left each other feedback, but I just knew that if I gave them negative feedback they would have done the same to me for completely unjustified reasons. Oh well, ebay is good for some items but it's not the first place I look.
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Quote:It seems eBay plans on ridding itself of a prominent feature of its feedback utility: to leave negative feedback! To me, this is outrageous! As a seller, I rely on a users negative commentary and feedback: when a new user has three+ negatives saying they do not buy and no positives, its a pretty clear indication of whats to come. Every transaction that "sells" costs the seller money, rather the recipient pays you or not! As a buyer, I want to know if a business sometimes doesn't deliver as promised, or is hard to get a hold of. Are there any alternative auction sites to eBay that use a feedback feature, because if so, I may trade-up?
Once upon a time I purchased a collector's plate from a guy on Ebay. When it arrived (after I had paid promptly) I opened it to find that the plate had been shipped crosswise in the box with minimal backing around it so it had broken. When I contacted the seller showing him pictures of the plate snapped in half in the box he told me that I would have to go after the post office to get reimbursed! I told him I wasn't happy with this outcome as the Post Office wasn't responsible for packaging it for shipping and that they would only reimburse for the price of the plate and I would be out the exorbitant shipping cost that the seller had already charged me. After several go rounds I was reimbursed the full price plus shipping by the seller but because I had to fight so hard to be reimbursed I gave the seller negative feedback. He naturally dinged my back for my honest feedback.
Thing is because he has so much feedback my negative doesn't display anymore but because I use Ebay rarely my negative feedback is so much prominent.:(
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You dealt with a real jerk, and eBay unfortunately has quite a few. Once I let my sister buy something on eBay and without her telling me she found it cheaper and backed out on the deal. Before I could explain to the seller and even offer some kind of reimbursement, he had left me negative feedback and I had perfect feedback since /97. I was pretty pissed, to say the least. Eventually it got buried. If it ever becomes a problem all you have to do is explain to the seller.
Quote:Once upon a time I purchased a collector's plate from a guy on Ebay. When it arrived (after I had paid promptly) I opened it to find that the plate had been shipped crosswise in the box with minimal backing around it so it had broken. When I contacted the seller showing him pictures of the plate snapped in half in the box he told me that I would have to go after the post office to get reimbursed! I told him I wasn't happy with this outcome as the Post Office wasn't responsible for packaging it for shipping and that they would only reimburse for the price of the plate and I would be out the exorbitant shipping cost that the seller had already charged me. After several go rounds I was reimbursed the full price plus shipping by the seller but because I had to fight so hard to be reimbursed I gave the seller negative feedback. He naturally dinged my back for my honest feedback.
Thing is because he has so much feedback my negative doesn't display anymore but because I use Ebay rarely my negative feedback is so much prominent.:(
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07-04-2008, 12:41 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-04-2008, 12:43 AM by Taem.)
Quote:If it ever becomes a problem all you have to do is explain to the seller.
That's not necessarily true either; I've received a negative feedback before from a seller, who took over three weeks to ship my item and charged me for a recycled box, after I left him negative feedback for my experience. This was after hours and hours of failed communication of the course of several days.
Ebay can take away the option to give negative feedback to buyers from sellers so long as they do something to the 'buyers' who don't pay. Bidding on an item on ebay is a LEGAL CONTRACT. Ebay should be obligated to do something to non-paying bidders other than just canceling their accounts if they get too many complaints (because the damage has already been done by then).
"The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self." -Albert Einsetin
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