Ebay’s Stupid New Feedback Policy

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

Armchair Booksellers, Or why I hate the Amazon Sellers Board

Got a problem with a customer?
Post the problem on the Amazon Seller’s board. Go out and scout books for the next 3 hours, or, perhaps reprice the books you have, or list some Auctions. . .Then go back to your post, and you will find that some nice bookseller will have replied with a composed e-mail for you to send to your customer! No need to spend your own precious time on this, some person who only sells 10 books a week, and prob lives off their spouse, will do it all for you!

Need to know where to get cheaper shipping supplies? Don’t bother doing the research yourself, instead, post to the forum, again go out and purchase more inventory or other things that will generate you more income, and when you come back there will be a slew of sources for you. OF course, I should mention, that since none of these people ever do their own research on supplies, the cheapest supplier with the best quality product ( matching ulines) has not yet been posted to any of these threads, lol.

Really these people have too much time on their hands, they post every little thing that happens to them in a day. I feel sorry for them, as some must be lonely or something, and have no one else to talk to, but enough is enough. Also, I don’t feel too bad for them as a lot of them , just want to show how smart they are, how much more they know than anyone else. Bizarre.

Here is one post I see too much : “Anyone else notice that their feedback number is fluctuating? Every time I’ve checked today it’s gone up and down.” Who the heck has time to check their feedback more than once a day–Heck, I don’t even read my comments.

There is another lady that posts every time one of the “hundreds” of packages she ships is a day late, or, not scanned, or her post carrier sneezed, or someone left her a “4,” or someone uses a weird word in their feedback comment. I put hundreds in quotations because if you look at her feedback and inventory, there is no way that she sells 100s of books a week–in fact, I doubt she sells a 100 books a month across all her venues–but she will be the first to give you all the advice you need. . .

Don’t feel like researching a title? Again post it to the forum, there is always someone who wants to show off their knowledge and search skill– this one aggravates me the most because often times the title is available right there on Amazon if the OP had just searched–and more times than not if they had used Addall, or just googled, they would’ve found a ton of info on the title. It’s pure lazyness. And besides, when you all tell a Lazy NOOB how to price their book, the chances of me buying it low and selling it high go down.

You know, I’m all for trying to help someone determine if their book has woodcuts, or was published in 1829, or is a First Edition. But really, do we have to hand the whole kettle with prepared meal, plates, silverware, napkins, and bottle of wine, over to them?

Every little thing, every little time that these Armchair, Part Time, and Hobby booksellers decide to do all the work for someone else, it cuts into almost all of our businesses. They make the competition stronger, by giving them more time–Time is money. I mean people have written books just by reading those forums.

I think that a lot of people are learning that the practice of showing off their expertise in forums/blogs that thousands of people can read is damaging to their own bottomline as I see the usual suspects don’t offer as much help as they used to, and many blogs do not post insider info anymore, heck, alot of them don’t even update– Though, you gotta love that one blog out there, the one that has a B & M and is teaching it’s own customers how to sell online–OK, isn’t that where you get a good chunk of your inventory? And even though the remainder market has been glutted, they seek to make it even worse by posting all the links on their blog–again, why not make people do their own research? Why hand everything over to them?

Inventory is getting harder and harder to find, and it’s going up in price too. I buy books that should sell for $30 only to have some jack ass part time seller get desperate to sell their book, cuz you know, they can’t hold onto a book for longer than a week, and they come along and knock their price down to $17, thus the repricers follow, and the price is ruined. Now sometimes I can buy all the low copies if the profit margin is good, but that is getting to be slim to none–plus one never knows when Hamilton Books might get a surplus from some old warehouse somewhere and come in and undercut you with a 100 copies of the book.

I do not have a husband to support me, I am not retired with a pension or a SS check. I do this full time, if you are one of these people that has so much time on their hands, and another income, or someone else supporting you, please think about this before you give help so freely.

You may ask, “If you hate them so, why do you still visit.” Because anytime anything happens in the book seller world, or there is any prob with any book seller site/service, a million people rush to be the first to post about it.

***One should also be forewarned that there is just as much misinformation on the forums as good info, and people will preach to the heaven about how to do something, but if you order a book from them, you will find that they aren’t practicing preachers.

best,

BWB

Ebayer Pet Peeve

Just a quick post today.

One of the things that annoys BWB the most is when an Ebayer buys an item out of my store, doesn’t pay until they get the Unpaid Item Dispute notice, and then pays with an echeck.

Some people ship right away with echecks, I wait for them to clear for pricier items. . . I only needed to be burned once 🙂

This is irratating in a couple ways. . .As you can imagine, it takes a few extra steps to keep track of the transaction. . . And I have gotten a neutral feedback before from one of these buyers for slow shipping–After payment cleared the book only took 5 days to get to to the buyer, if you add the 3 -4 days for the check to clear, it was still within my shipping guidelines listed clearly of 4 – 14 days–apparently I was supposed to ship the book as soon as the customer won the auction, and have faith that they would send along payment someday.

Of course, I know, I should be thankful that something actually sold out of my store. .. I have a previous post describing our love hate relationship. . .

Calling it off with International Shipping?

I’m thinking of ending my relationship with International Shipping. . .

INTL shipping is too much like dating that Slicky Boy everyone warns you about. . .

He often arrives late. . .If he shows up at all. . .You never really know where he is hanging out. . .Sometimes he just disappears for a few weeks. . . You can’t trust a word he says and you can’t keep track of him unless you invest in some expensive GPS system or a PI. . .Sometimes you end up paying for the date and it’s never cheap because Slicky Boys have extravagant tastes despite their low pay grade. . .Slicky Boys are also very high maintenance. . .And sure, I’ve had a blast with them, but the nights waiting up, wondering if they were coming home, or laying dead in a road or some other woman’s bed outweighed the fun.

I have sold some of my priciest tomes INTL, however my average INTL sale is only $30, this does not give me much margin for error. Here are a few problems off the top of my head that I have with INTL sales.

1- There is no inexpensive option to track the book, you have to trust the customer when they say the book did not arrive. I believe that people are basically honest, however last year I had 6 missing books to Great Britain in a 2 month time period surrounding the back to school crowd. I use Endicia so sloppy writing was not the issue, nor was improper forms. In the US I just lose out on my cost of the book and $3 or so for shipping, for INTL add $10 – $30 to that and it sucks. I don’t lay awake at night wondering if the book will get there or if I will have to refund, but I do get a certain level of stress with these orders.

2-Most books I ship have to go 1st Class INTL, the flat rate envelope does not properly give the protection these books need. While, most of my 1st INTL packages average abut 7 – 14 days, the P.O. does not even give a delivery estimate. They like to say, “varies.” Many a customer understands this, but a few don’t, and they are hard to deal with.

3-If a book is returned for insufficient address or whatever other Post Office whim, I usually eat the cost to resend it, esp if the address was correct. At $10- $30 a pop, as I said before, it sucks, and adds up.

4- I don’t offer heavy books for INTL sale on most sites. On Ebay people can mail me for a quote. On abe though, they can purchase and then I will request extra shipping. Lately when I request extra shipping charges through Abe, people, refuse. . .This wasn’t always the case. I do pay the extra up to 2lbs or so, but if a book is 4 lbs, I have to request the extra shipping. Even if it was a $150 book, why should I pay $25 – $30 out of my pocket to ship the book, when it will usually sell in US within a couple months? Set the shipping rate higher? Then I wouldn’t sell a darn thing, most books cost me less than $14 to ship.

5- High Maintenance -I have to answer a lot more e-mails for INTL shipping, and most of the time I can’t really tell them anything about where their packages is. The US PO sometimes scans the Customs info, sometimes they don’t. Also, for heavy books and books that need a shipping quote, I have to package the book and weigh it, send the emails, and then get rejected 9 out of 10 times. Other high maintenance that I don’t have to deal with atm is the whole needing to hand them to a cashier at the Post Office.

Umm yeah, so, I’m on the fence.

I like the idea of sharing literature around the world. I used to have book stores in Australia and Ireland order 5 – 10 books from me at a time, and then I would send them surface–this was a win win situation for both of us–I could still use the M bag for them, but M Bag is the biggest hassle in the world for me, my post office doesn’t even carry them, I have to go to a downtown location to get it. . . .Well I have alot more thoughts on this, but I have to get back to work.