Ebay’s Stupid New Feedback Policy
Posted by bitchwithbooks on January 31, 2008
Can’t leave a buyer a Negative, or even a Neutral !
This is idiotic. . .Even on Amazon a Seller can leave negative feedback for buyers to warn other sellers about potential scammers and hard to deal with customers.
No buyer needs perfect feedback.
I love when people say they are being held hostage by the seller, if they are a shitty seller then simply take the chance they might leave a negative, who cares? You don’t need your perfect 100% ! A few negatives will never hurt the buyer, us sellers are smart enough to know retaliatory feedback and real deserved negative feedback. However your seller needs near perfect 100%, and this policy will only help scammers. And now us sellers will have no way to be forewarned of these people.
My policy is that I don’t leave a positive until I know the transaction is satisfactory,either by feedback or an e-mail. And guess what? I get feedback on almost 90% of my Ebay transactions. Before I started doing this I was hovering around 40%.
Why did I start waiting to leave feedback?
I’ve received just below 3000 positive feedbacks, and 6 negative feedbacks. Every negative I have, the buyer never e-mailed me first to let me fix the problem .
1 feedback is because the person felt that they paid too much! Yes, I came to their house and held a gun to their head and said please buy my overpriced item!
2 feedbacks are for slow shipping–both packages got there in less than 6 business days– one of them 4 business days and this packages was also paid for 2 weeks late. My listings clearly state delivery time, and that I will not ship until paid.
1 negative came from an item damaged during shipment. The 2 others were from Half.com transactions in which I overlooked a flaw.
You know who this policy really hurts? Any New sellers or buyers or INTL buyers.
New sellers are going to have to have to refund even the most blatant scammers. If someone is truly dissatisfied with a product, they won’t even have to return it to the seller, as a new seller won’t be able to take a negative feedback.
New buyers? I already see tons of auctions that state “Do No Bid unless you have 100 Feedbacks.”
I won’t take this approach, but, I will close my store and only run auctions, and for expensive items, I will cancel bids of anyone without a proven track record, or even the slightest spottiest record-where as before I would ship to those people on the edge and just take extra precautions. A proven track record to me means a couple years of buying on Ebay, at least 100 positive feedbacks preferably in the past year, and the purchase of other expensive items.
I will also not being doing International transactions through Ebay anymore. INTL transactions usually take a couple extra steps of communication, and there is all sorts of room to get threatened with a neg before the seller has any chance to work things out. I think I don’t need to elaborate here-as one can read my post about International shipping.
It’s true that if I think that someone is scamming, I don’t have to refund, I can send all my proof to paypal, etc. I can absorb a negative, as many sellers can.
Some sellers simply won’t be able to do this without really damaging their feedback percentage, these people will truly be held hostage to feedback, and will lose sales in the short term, until other sellers feedback percentage even out with theirs. I’m guessing that 99.7 and up won’t be considered excellent a year from now, it will be more like 98.7 and up.
People are quick to point out that buyer feedback doesn’t count on Amazon-as I’ve said b4, one can still leave a negative to warn other sellers.
Also, negatives don’t hurt as much on Amazon, and for many of us, we do much more volume on Amazon and can still hold a 99 or 100%.
Also it’s the way the feedback is viewed. Customers on Ebay see a percentage number, and are leary of buying 99.6 and below, on amazon the feedback is viewed dif, as stars, one can have 5 full stars and only be 4.9 or 4.8, when one clicks through -which they rarely do–they see 99%, 98%, etc, there are no decimal points, and generally it seems that people start to avoid sellers around the 4.6 mark–i forgot what percentage that figures out to be and I will fix this when I wake up more and get my work done.
So bottomline. I will closing my store and only be doing Auctions on Ebay, and only for those things that I know to be Ebay gold. Of course I’ll still have to put up with jackasses that need to get an unpaid item notice to actually pay–with buy it nows I always check the must pay immediately box, but with auctions, one can’t force people pay right when the auctions over–hmm something that we don’t have to deal with anywhere else.
New Ebay Slogan:
Welcome to Ebay where you pay more than ever to have your customers jack you around.
For more Ebay nightmare stories which illustrate how wrong this policy is, please see my previous thread : Aggratiing Customers
Bob said
Oh relax from the eBay PR page.
“Sellers may only leave positive feedback for buyers (at the seller’s option).”
So you do not have to do it!
bitchwithbooks said
I think that you are missing the point, I only care that I can’t leave them a neutral or negative. Maybe you have had much better luck when it comes to scammers than some of us. . .And, I’ll be nicer here and add people who want something for nothing. Maybe you’ve had much better luck trying to get people to pay, or haven’t had to deal with any psychos who send name calling e-mails the day after their book was ordered demanding to know where it is.
1- If a customer is unhappy with a book, the customer can hold threat of immediate negative feedback, and not even return the book–much like some others use A t Z to get free books all the time, and to a lesser extent alibris.
Now me, I can take the negative–You better bet I’m going to get an expensive book back before refunding. But, What about a seller who only has 100 feedbacks or even 500? 1 negative hurts pretty bad.
2-Since I mainly sell expensive items on Ebay, I do use insurance. If a book goes missing, the company I use requires that customer also fill out paperwork. How many times have I told a customer this, only to have them all of a suddenly find the missing book and leave me positive feedback? Now the honest guys will fill out the paperwork, and hopefully wait patiently. What about those that were just trying to get a free book?
Even sellers who have 1000+ feedback might find it hard not to give in to the threat of feedback–Anyone who has done any kind of volume gets idiotic negative feedbacks from time to time, unless they are extremely lucky. And unfortunately, every negative I’ve received on every site the customer never e-mailed me first, I shoudl be allowed to leave them a neutral for this, since Ebay says to e-mail the seller with any prob b4 leaving a negative.
Feedback bombing also becomes a bigger issue.
Isn’t this what makes Ebay wonderful? We can all run our business the way we want as long as it is within Ebay guidelines. So, just because I changed my business model there, and many others have changed their business model over there, it doesn’t mean that you have to.
bitchwithbooks said
Also,
What about people who agree to buy an item ( either through purchase in a store, or Auction) and then tell you that they will only pay X amount, or that they won’t pay $4.00 for shipping, only $2.00? Or insist on free shipping?
Before you can point out that everything was stated clearly in your listing, and carry on with the transaction. Now you faced with choosing between shipping an item to a customer who is already unhappy and will prob leave a neg regardless ( since we can’t leave one for them) or canceling the transaction and facing a temp neg until Ebay hopefully removes it. It’s not clear how quickly, and smoothy canceled transactions and unpaid item disputes are going to work.
Plus, I can’t leave the neg feedback for the Jackass to warn other sellers?
I’ve had this happen 3 times, one is already explained in a previous column. 2nd guy buys a $300 book and insists on only paying $200. 3rd time person buys a $50 and insists on free shipping.
Bob said
Ummm can’t you red?
From http://www2.ebay.com/aw/ca/200801290858572.html
Sellers may only leave positive feedback for buyers (at the seller’s option).
You are the seller! You do not have to do this! It is just an option!
bitchwithbooks said
Umm, can’t you read?
I’m concerned about not being able to leave a neutral or Negative.
And the power this gives the customer to manipulate the seller for freebies.
Lets just leave it at that and agree to disagree. I have too much work to do.
Jim said
uh, Bob, stop being an idiot.
Perry Ford said
I closed my E-Bay store last week of over 3000 items when I received 5 instant ransom demands for cash for feedback. When I refused to pay, I received 2 negatives and 3 neutrals. E-Bay will lose over $14,000 this year from me and they don’t care because that is just a little bit. I wrote E-Bay who clearly stated they would take care of this type of abuse, yet they told me I did not qualify. A Boycott in February is not going to do a thing. Most people will not remember since it is so far in advance. You have to stop selling right now. If you have a store, you need to close it. E-Bay has lost 10 of their top 100 stores this past year (not because of the feedback but because of the fee increase). Sit on your merchandise, it will be more valuable later. Inflation is going crazy. You may have to pay next year the same as you sold it for this year. If you pull E-Bay to their knees, they will change their policy to survive. Shitty little boycotts won’t work and shitty little petitions won’t work either. Christmas sales is what will work. Kill E-Bay’s Christmas sales this coming year and hold your inventory until next year. You will get more for it.
Perry Ford said
And another thing. I don’t publish the fact on E-Bay that I ship through Pay Pal and get delivery confirmations for everything I ship. I can’t tell you how many people have filed claims against me with Pay Pal only to find out that the item tracked right to them with the date and time posted at USPS.com. There is easily as many fraud buyers as sellers for sure. Sellers pay E-Bay, buyers do not. If a seller pulls listings, E-Bay will feel the pain. It is just a matter of time. I read an e-Commerce article stating that of a survey they ran, 56% of all E-Bay sellers are planning on leaving E-Bay within the next 6 months. That will pretty much do them in for Christmas this year.
Perry Ford said
Funny thing happened since my last post. E-Bay writes me wanting to get my store re-opened. I told them it would not happen as long as the new feedback restriction was in effect. Then 5 days later they write telling me that all of my auctions have been cancelled due to a trust and safety issue and that I have fallen to the bottom worst 1% of sellers due to a non performance issue. They have placed me on a 30 day suspension while I am to be reviewed. I called them on the phone and the guy I spoke to says “I am looking at your account and this has got to be a mistake”. With a 95.5% feedback score and no open issues of any kind, he tells me my account looks nice and clean and says hold on while I go back to Trust & Safety to try to expedite this for you. Trust & Saftey tells him to tell me that they won’t speak with me on the phone and that I will just have to answer the complaint with an e-mail(with small balls, they hide behind the e-mail system). After I do this and tell them that with 3000 sales in the past year and a half and only 6 issues ever for Item Not As Described (which is the only complaint title that could apply to me since Item Not Received does not). Funny how they have so many categories to sell under but only 2 for buyers to complain under. That’s so that if a buyer gets pissed off at me for not running right to the post office the minute he pays so he can have instant delivery and that since the item did show up within 6 days, he can still complain and state that the item isn’t the same. So I reply and explain to them how out of the 6 that 2 are due to items broken during shipment and 1 where I sold a girl a new bridge and pier set for an electric train set and made the mistake of putting a factory photo of the box on which showed a train going over the bridge and piers. She complained that the $9.99 listing and $5 shipping led her to believe that the box also included a complete freight train and track. I could not help her with her complaint since I did not know which planet she was writing from. The other 3 were simply items that had different color features or other small differences from the photos I used. At any rate I had a 99.3 percent rating just before the feedback change. The day after the change, I had offers to sell me good feedback and threats that I would receive negatives otherwise. One guy from Australia left me a negative while the very next feedback down from another buyer was a positive on the exact same item with the exact same listing number. When researching this same item I found 6 positive feedbacks in the past for the exact same item with the same exact photo and description. That and 3 neutrals from another person wanting shipping charges refunded for no reason dropped me to a 98.5% rating even though the sales took place before the new policy went into effect. E-Bay told me there was no abuse here from this from either of these buyers and would not remove the feedback. So now I went to the E-Bay discussion forum where everybody is bitching about the new policy and a boycott and guess what. I could not find one person that is on that forum that has had any type of transaction on E-Bay in the past month. Should I believe they are also restricted from using the site while being investigated as well. The only confusing question I have is how in the hell can E-Bay expect to recover from this if they get rid of everybody with less than a 100% selling record (especially now that buyers who want to play and cause mischief can just screw any seller for fun with negative feedback). It seems that over a little bit of time, all sellers will be gone. What then?
Perry Ford said
Correction to rating stated in last post at top of page. 99.5%, NOT 95.5%.
What happened to Ebay? said
When all the buyers have to go back to paying retail for there crap…they will want us sellers back!
Please tell me someone is creating a website to compete with ebay! Now is a great time to recruit sellers! There all pissed off a FeEBay!
MoneyMike said
First, Bitch With Books, I agree with you completely. I recently sold an autographed poster on ebay, and I included a certificate of authenticity. The buyer came to his own idiotic conclusion that it was a fake. I guess he was more qualified to judge the authenticity than an expert who actually appraises such items for a living. But instead of contacting me first, he just left a negative feedback. I only sell items on ebay once in awhile, so it’s not a situation where a business of mine is being ruined, but it is annoying, and I definitely see the potential for even just a couple negative feedbacks to harm an honest seller’s business.
Second, Bob, your reading comprehension skills are lacking. Actually, I am being too kind; you are a moron. BWB is claiming that it is stupid that a seller is unable to leave a negative or neutral feedback. The fact that the seller has the option to not leave any feedback at all does not remedy anything….the seller is STILL unable to warn others of scammers and deadbeat buyers. So I ask you, “ummmm can’t you red?” [sic]