I’ve commented before on the lamentable eBay feedback system. At present, people will either give no feedback at all or positive feedback to ensure that their own scores are not tarnished when things don’t go according to plan. However, eBay’s response is to skew the system unfairly:
Online auction site eBay has said it plans to overhaul its feedback system and will ban sellers from leaving negative comments about buyers.
This rather assumes that problems will arise from the seller, not the buyer. Of course, scams will more then likely come from people posing as genuine sellers, but that’s not the same thing at all. Feedback has become a tit-for-tat weapon and as a consequence is a pretty meaningless tool anyway. At least, it has in the somewhat rigid fashion that eBay uses.
EBay said problems were occurring, and slowing down trade, when buyers left negative comments about sellers who then retaliated with their own views.
Well, yes, wasn’t that the point? After all when a buyer accuses you of being a con-artist and you have done everything possible to sort out any problems, a means of putting your own side of the story is reasonable. Attempting to get such libellous comment removed takes a great deal of time and effort, not to mention the cost involved. Read my previous post on the matter to get a flavour of it.
Mrs Longrider is a keen eBayer (I tend to use it as a last resort and am far less keen on the whole thing). She has learned in recent weeks just how frustrating dealing with buyers can be. They expect new quality from second-hand goods, they don’t research properly and they want their money back as a consequence. As I mentioned to her during one of her fits of petulance at another whinging email, “welcome to dealing with the public”. As a trader who once dealt directly with the public as a service provider, I would never want to experience it again, nor would I wish it on my worst enemy. The public can be rude, inconsiderate, stupid, gullible and unrealistic. And, importantly, all too willing to blame the consequences of their behaviour on someone else; in this case, the seller.
The sale of Mrs Longrider’s laptop serves as a useful illustration of what can happen. Just before Christmas she put her Dell Latitude 810 PC up for sale. We’ve replaced it with a desktop model, so it was redundant. The buyer secured it for a little under £150 – which, for a fairly robust business machine running XP pro wasn’t a bad price. Two days later she picked up an anxious email demanding that she respond to a question. As she hadn’t logged on for a couple of days, the delay was perfectly reasonable. It seemed that the screen was “fuzzy” and the charger didn’t work. And “it was a Christmas present” followed by a string of exclamation marks. Frankly, if you buy a second-hand computer from eBay days before Christmas as a present, then you are a tit, but that’s another matter.
Realising just what the screen problem was likely to be, Mrs L emailed instructions explaining how to re-seat the screen connector to the motherboard as it had probably come loose in transit. It’s a simple job involving lifting a piece of plastic and pushing with your finger – anyone can do it. The charging failure was baffling as we had checked the machine, including the state of the battery, prior to its departure from chez Longrider and it was charging merrily. I did wonder whether her buyer was sufficiently technically challenged that he was pushing the plug into the wrong hole. Yes, it’s been known. Mrs Longrider can regale you with stories about mangled connectors and sockets if you ask her.
Everything went quiet for a bit, then a day or so after Christmas the buyer asked to return the PC. She agreed and sure enough it came back. The charger was working exactly as it should and the screen connector needed a little shove to re-seat it. So, back on eBay it went. However, this time it barely fetched £100 and she had lost out on postage. Of course, she didn’t need to refund the postage but decided that this would at least get rid of the problem. By this time, her patience was wearing thin and the thought of protracted arguments and negative feedback made the sacrifice of the postage worthwhile – even though this is not normally done.
In the end, neither party left feedback. eBay’s idea of skewing the system so that only the buyer can leave feedback is going to be bad news for people like Mrs L who are not traders, they are ordinary people selling off stuff they no longer need to an increasingly ruthless set of buyers who want what they would normally get when buying new from a shop and all that that entails, but at second-hand prices. One buyer recently bought a pair of boots from Mrs L and sent them back because they didn’t fit. Clearly the buyer had problems deciding what size her feet were, as the item was correctly identified with the right size in the listing. On this occasion, Mrs L did not refund the postage.
Me? I’ll probably not bother any more. I really don’t like the buying and selling stuff that much anyway and I have little patience with idiocy. I’m not sure what Mrs L will make of it, but she’s pretty pissed off with a run of buyers who, frankly, are characterised by their stupidity and have given her more than enough grief. After her difficulties with spiteful feedback that took months to remove – not to mention the costs involved – I wonder.
Feedback is a two-way street. eBay would do well to remember that.
What can I say!!!!! (NOTE THE !!!!!) You are 100% RIGHT!!!!
I too am fed up with e-bay buyers. I have no trouble on my web site, perhaps because they know I will suggest they buy else where if they don’t like what I do.
The star system is better, not great but better. It should also apply to buyers and do away with the blunt weapon that is the man in the streets ability to be abusive with words.
We are seeing the end of what used to be agreat way to sell.
Well done for your honest and open comments!
Best regards Ian
I am waiting for payment for 6 items and cannot get any joy I will have to resort to non paying bidder policy wasting my time and probably resulting in relist fees and not being able to comment on the buyers inaction or at least be able to try to judge a buyer on feedback however dubious .will stop me selling on e bay
It is this that bothers me most about eBay feedback. People make comments that are clearly libellous. On a forum, they would be removed by the moderator, yet eBay leaves them in place and if the victim wants to do something about it they have to go through a drawn out legal process.
I wonder what would happen if someone took a test case against eBay for hosting libellous comment?
one of my buyers actually paid tonight but only after threatening to cancel and offer to a second chance buyer it seems that e bays ethic of feedback creating trust is not working and i am waiting with bated breath to find out if the item does not fit is the wrong colour or just right.
isold an item earlier this week that was secondhand although boxed and with all new instructions but recieved an e mail stating he could not understand them as he is not mechanically minded this led to me offering to fit them if he came to my house as we lived around 30 miles apart he said i should go to him ….. you know what the answer was !!!!!!!!!!!!
Its the nail in the coffin for sellers and all because of a kneejerk reaction after Ebay appeared on BBC’s Watchdog, the buyers now have all the rights and can do whatever they like. They post whatever comments they like on the sellers and make as many false claims as they like. Its really pathetic because some sellers are also buyers and some buyers are also sellers, therefore its stupid to only punish the sellers. I disagree that the majoirty of scams are by sellers, the majority of big priced scams are by sellers, but there are thousands of nigerian buyer scams and run of the mill bread and butter scams from everyday ebay regular buyers. You have any sense at all you really should stop selling on ebay altogether, its not just the fact that buyers have all the rights and no negative feedback but ebay have also increased the fees after the item has been sold i think an extra 2%. And nobody is going to go to court to remove a comment, the legal fees would be too high.
Indeed – I was being rhetorical.
Don’t get me started on eBay’s pricing. Every step of the way they skim off the seller’s profit. I tried – briefly – to do a little drop shipping. By the time I had paid listing fees and the final price fee, I had them taking a cut for me to accept PayPal. The end result was that all my profits went to eBay. It was a short experiment and I haven’t sold anything since.
Frankly, they’ve become too greedy for my taste.
Just had some real nice feedback I sold an item and it was faulty so after speaking with the buyer I refunded and gave her the return postage as a way of apology and have recieved a negative feedback, my first one! I have been more than fair and now am penalised,anyway Ho Hum the way forward is no-one gets any feedback from me until I have read what is left first and I will never offer returns.
I have left the feedback to stand as I can’t be bothered to ask for a retraction!!!!!!
Actually I may not sell any more I may just buy and claim the item never arrived and be quids in after all what can the seller do ?
After reading the various comments, I am more concerned that ever that seller’s will not be in a position to leave neutral or negative feedback for the buyer. It is quite obvious from the comments made that there are some very vindictive people out there who can’t wait for the new rules to take place. SELLERS’S PLEASE TAKE NOTE OF THE FOLLOWING: Now there is a website where you can leave neutral or negative feedback for those buyer’s who warrant it. http://WWW.VOX-POPULI-ONLINE.COM is a site where you can list your feedback about the buyer. It’s a very clean looking site, easy to navigate and it is a free service. So stop worrying about buyer’s holding you to ransom and take a look. We are currently looking for moderators who would like and help and monitor the site to keep it fresh and to stop abuse. If you are interested, login and contact us through the contact us link.
It’ an interesting idea- and serves eBAy right. A note of caution, however; beware of libel.
Thank you for your comment Longrider. We will have to monitor things carefully. The most difficult part of the process is making sellers aware that the site exists. If we can get enough of them on board, it would make a great reference library for sellers feedback.
You will need to have in place the one thing eBay does not have; a rigorous monitoring system with efficient removal of libellous name-calling. You will also have to respond to appeals as well.
On my Rogue Trader site, I have a rule regarding feedback people may give about bad experiences with traders – stick to the facts; and no libel.
A highly recommended site is elfingo.com for online auctions. They are the new ebay. Many smaller sites like this offer buyers far better deals than ebay
ever could. Buyser also save a ton because this site charges little or nothing depending on the day. One more reaso I like elfingo.com is because they don’t
take a part of the sale at all. No commissions or final value fees. A+++ http://www.elfingo.com