ebay feed back

Was this wrapped up in some kind of automated dispute resolution process? As far as I know, eBay doesn't review feedbacks left normally. I've had no trouble leaving neutral and/or negative feedback recently.

GTO(John)

Not that we're aware of. She purchased a calculator of mine that had been stolen at work. The guy who stole it grabbed two others at the same time. After removing names off them (in one case, quite obviously), he took them to another guy at work who did a lot of selling on eBay. The seller got them cleared through a buddy in the Property Office (even though two of them were personal property) so he claims he didn't know they were stolen. Computer logs showed that he was spending half his time at work on eBay, so they canned him for that. They also fired the thief. My calculator had been well cared for, but used sporadically for about 8 years. He listed it as only having "1 hour of use" as if he knew where it came from. We can't prove he knew it was stolen, but the descrition was clearly a fabrication. Another one he claimed was in perfect working order hasn't functioned for years & was just lying around. Fortunately, we spotted them on eBay & bought all three back as evidence.

eBay was contacted by the Police about all of this. They haven't provided any explanation of why they never posted my wife's feedback. The seller is still doing business. No formal charges were ever filed.

Doug White

absolutely- it's bad news, not because of Christian beliefs but there seems to be something different about many of the self-righteous "Christian businessmen" who make such a point of advertising their faith.

The only thing I ever bought from an overtly Christian (or any faith for that matter) eBay seller was a demolition saw that was worn into scrap. Despite all the crosses and Jesuses in the auction, and all the other stuff plastered over their paperwork, no honesty.

GTO(John)

I thought that it was the hurricanes trying to find (and missing) Boca Raton (the mouth of the rat), which is currently the spam capital of the USA.

:-)

Enjoy, DoN.

(Why is it that

This is caused by the fact that since they have already been saved, they are empowered to extract everything of value from "the great, condemned mass" and need feel any guilt in doing so - they, in fact, are assisting in the punishment for failure to see the light. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

The only time Ive ever been burned on Ebay, was when I bought a Syquest drive...1 gig. The seller was some college kid and did the No Mi Problema when it refused to work. The cartridges he included were however worth more than the drive...so I simply wrote it off.

Gunner

Confronting Liberals with the facts of reality is very much akin to clubbing baby seals. It gets boring after a while, but because Liberals are so stupid it is easy work." Steven M. Barry

One should note..that a lot of the "christian stuff" on some of those auctions, is there to snare Christians. The seller may well be Zoroastrian Reformed.

Gunner

Confronting Liberals with the facts of reality is very much akin to clubbing baby seals. It gets boring after a while, but because Liberals are so stupid it is easy work." Steven M. Barry

I have been through the exact same thing. I posted neutral for "not using book ship rate, and surprise pay pal fee" The guy gave me a negative rating [for giving him a neutral rating ] and had lots of rebuttal room.

What does it all mean? Ebay is for sellers and suckers.

What is the big deal about feedback on ebay?

I mean, I have had hostile people write to me within a week of the sale and ask why I haven't given them feedback. My life does not revolve around feedback, and when you have 10-30 items going at a time, feedback is the least of my concerns.

Plus, I like to wait about a month so I can be confident that the people have received their item(s) and like them and the deal.

As long as there are not any neutral or negative feedbacks in a person's history, feedback is moot. You had 311 transactions with no negatives or neutrals. That tells me all. And if I want to check someone out, I look at their neutrals and negatives.

There are some people out there you just can't please no matter what, and there are some who don't understand how feedback works, and will leave neutral/negative feedback for the stupidest of reasons. When I read some of the reasons people complain, and the responses from buyer/seller, it gives me a much better idea of what went on. And I have the choice to bid or pass.

I have been on ebay for a while, have 311 transactions, and will be doing a lot of business there in the coming year, both buying and selling. I could give a rat's patootie about feedback. I just do the best I can, try not to cheat anyone, go overboard in the buyer's favor if there is a problem, and don't think twice about it.

There is a ton of business, and most people don't even know how to use feedback before they bid. Some of the stupidest people in the world patronize ebay. Witness someone who will bid more for an item than an identical item two listings down that has a BIN lower than the bid! As a seller, I love those people. And newbies. And two or more people in the same auction that just have to have it

The recent flood of ebay feedback hassles is just the latest wave of new buyers learning about the system. For those that have been around, it's same old same old.

Steve

Because the man who needs to proclaim his religious faith in his ads is one who *needs* extra integrity points. It makes me real paranoid when some one I'm thinking about doing business with tells me he's "a good Christian", a good one may evangelize you afterward but he'll not use his faith as negotiating tactic.

The easiest way to keep from getting screwed on Ebay is to pay with a credit card. If you get an item that is broken or not as described you can return it and the credit card company will charge it back to them once you have proven you returned it or tried to return it. Also if they accept credit cards there is a better chance that they are reputable. Also use common sense if the item is well below market or to good to be true watch out! Charlie

Just one comment. I decided only to deal, for items of price, with auctions having the paypal price garantee. Although the price is not covered by the $500 garantee, I figgure paypal will rapidly tire of sellers who get them involved in having to pay it back, so a seller won't be on paypals garantee for long.

Ok, my experience. Bought a piece of used machinery advertised as good condition. In short, it didn't work. On taking it apart, it was clear that a former owner had tried to adjust it with a ball peen hammer (in at least 3 places). Turned out the machine was only dead because of a minor adjustment, but putting the entire machine back in good condition, including getting the dents out, took several days.

I left the seller a good rating. I know, you are screaming "why ?". Fact is, I got a good price on a machine that is hard to get. The fact that the owner was a dumb jerk was probally why I got that deal. The simple failure it had probally saved the machines life from further hammer blows. I doubt the owner that did that was the seller. More likely the machine was dumped. The seller probally never plugged it in, and never said he did, just that it "looked good". Fact is, I fully expected the machine to have something wrong with it.

I note the seller never left me any feedback, good or bad. Thats the way it goes.

[ The exact details of that deal have been omitted to protect my further ebay purchases :-) ]

Greetings and salutations...

On 28 Sep 2004 19:28:31 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@aol.com (GTO69RA4) wrote:

Let me take a minute to explain my reasoning here, as I skipped over it in the summary of my position posted earlier. Ebay considers each transaction to consist of two parts. The first part is the performance of the buyer. Did they communicate well with the seller before the auction and at the end when trying to find out about payments? Did they send full payment, promptly? On the seller's side, the questions include Did the seller accurately describe the item in the auction listing? Did they reply to any questions in a timely fashion? Did they ship the item in a timely fashion, and properly packed? Now...the the buyer's side of the "contract" that Ebay keeps trumpeting about is completely fulfilled at the point that the seller receives their payment for the item. That is why I say that the seller should leave feedback at the point that the item is shipped out. The seller's side of the contract is fulfilled when the buyer receives their item, and, any (rare) problems about it are ironed out. At that point, the buyer should leave feedback for the vendor. I agree that this might well put more pressure on the vendor. However, I think this is fair, because, like it or not, millions of buyers every year send goodly chunks of their hard earned cash to a total stranger, with no absolute guarentee that they will get even a banged up box back for it. The fact that only a tiny percentage of the transactions on Ebay go sour is a testement to the honesty and ethical behavior of most of the folks participating in the process. However, the fact that problems can arise is why I would add the "overall rating for transaction" field (with, perhaps, a note field for explanation). That would allow a more complete picture of the transaction and how it played out. Having the ability to post followup feedback on ANY sort of feedback would help too. That would allow the vendor to go back and add a note about a transaction going sour and why it happened. In any case, a big chunk of the folks out there seem to feel that there are problems with the current feedback mechanism on Ebay. It was quite sufficient in the early days, when there were only a few tens of thousands of folks on there, and, thousands of transactions a day. Now that there are millions of folks participating, and, a million transactions a day, the feedback mechanism should be changed to grow with it. In a way, it is the same problem that AOL had. Early on, it was a fairly small population of folks on AOL...and it was a pretty safe place to interact and to explore the whole concept of the cyber-ocean. However, after they started flooding the marketplace with CDs the bar lowered, and more and more folks with evil intent started mis-using their service. It became an open market for illicit activities and spammers. It had to grow, and change its methods of operation to police itself, and, so will Ebay. Regards Dave Mundt

*snip*

Well, I will say that I was wielding a pretty broad brush there. I do realize that my sampling of the "vendor population" on Ebay is pretty small, as it was only the sellers active in the feedback newsgroup. However, almost to a person, they were very and vocally against the changes I proposed.

This is a good point, and one that I have addressed elsewhere. I know that I have seen a number of auctions where, as part of the conditions, the seller has stated that they would cancel bids from buyers with feedback they did not care for. That ranged from "any negatives" to "a large number of negatives". I am not familiar enough with Ebay's UA to remember if that is "legal" or not...but I believe that it was, and, probably still is.

Exactly my point. There have been a number of times when I have been browsing Ebay, and, have seen a "good deal", but, have walked away from it because of some comments in the feedback for the seller. That is exactly the information that the consumer HAS to have in order to make an informed decision about where to spend their hard-earned cash.

*snip* oops...I think I was a bit unclear...Step 2 in the process differs slightly for buyers and sellers. On the seller's side, the feedback would evaluation how quickly the buyer send their funds in and how painless that part was. On the buyer's side, the feedback for the seller would evaluate how quickly the item was shipped and how well it matched the description in the auction listing...

No...obviously, it would be impossible for the seller to post an overall rating for the transaction before they have gotten the item to the buyer. I suppose that I really see the feedback being left in dribs and drabs. The buyer could leave feedback in all three sections at the end of the entire transaction, or, for the communications part at the point that they are satisfied that the seller is sending the item. The seller could leave the first two parts at the point they ship out the item. The buyer could leave the second part at the point that they recieve the item and can check it out. The final rating (overall satisfaction) would be left whenever the seller and buyer were "happy", or at least resigned about where the transaction had gone. If it means that the last rating is a negative, so be it. I suspect that in most cases, it will be positive... In any case, it would make it a LOT easier to get a picture of the overall course of the transactions.

*snip*

Well, again...this last bit IS colored by the flames I got when I ran this same, basic idea up the flagpole in the Ebay feedback forum group...combined with a strong suspicion that Ebay is going to be unwilling to do much of anything that will impact the fees they gather (in LARGE quantity) from the sellers. I could be wrong...but, on the other hand, the fact that I have yet to receive any feedback from the Ebay team, in spite of sending these suggestions to them makes it hard for me to believe that they have any interest in changes that might improve the situation for buyers. Regards Dave Mundt

Ebay makes their money whether any fraud was committed or not. Unless it is alot of money they just make excuses and do nothing at all to help you recover. You can buy a positive feedback token and sell under multiple ID's. I won an item, sent the money order, never received anything except a few excuses from seller, then nothing. Ebay is all about excuses. I'll never need anything that bad again...

--------------------------------------------------------- Greetings Larry, I had no idea that neutral reedback was the same as negative feedback. But that doesn't matter. The description said "VERY NICE". I wouldn't call something that unless I'd checked it out completely first. I assumed that the seller would do the same. In the future I guess I'll have to ask what "very nice" means. But doing that to cover my ass does not excuse the seller calling something "very nice" when the seller either doesn't know or is misrepresenting the item. I know some people might say it depends what you call "very nice" but these would be the same kind of people who argue about what "is" is. Resonable people know what is "very nice" and what isn't. It's not ambiguous. ERS

/snipped for brevity/

Yes, I've seen this too. Of course you can cancel bids and block any buyer that you like. So there is no difficulty blocking a low feedback buyer. However, if that low feedback and highly undesirable buyer places his winning bid in the last 10 seconds of your auction, you are pretty well stuck with him. You cannot retroactively cancel bids once the auction has ended.

My guess (and that's all that it is) is that if an undesirable buyer is the winning bidder on your listing then you as the seller must make reasonable attempts to complete the transaction. Failure to do that will get you an NPS strike and negative feedback. My strong guess is that eBay will not come to your rescue. You will be out all your eBay fees and will have some un-removable, negative feedback in your profile.

Again, a seller's feedback is helpful for the buyer but a buyer's feedback is all-but meaningless for the seller.

Thanks for that clarification Dave. In that case, you and I are in basic agreement. I'm not going to quibble about the details. I think we are both saying that the current feedback system is too course in its application and too easily manipulated. Indeed, it invites manipulation.

I quite like the idea of a 10 point scale for timeliness, communication, quality, packaging, etc. Personally, I think it would give a much better picture of a seller's performance.

For the buyer you can leave it the way it is.

Consider this: There is a quote from the founder of the company, Pierre Omidyar, on this page:

As far as I know, that's the only place on eBay's site where his words are quoted. His message is rather short, he basically says that feedback is important.

Now he invented the system. And he says that it's good and important. I'd have to guess that not too many of eBay's employees of are going to go against the one public proclamation of the founder of the company and start messing with his system.

I think we're stuck with it.

George.

I know your reasoning, you've described it many times before. What I'm saying is that while the legal contract for a buyer is to pay promptly, that's not all there is to the transaction, and feedback (at least the current system) has a broader scope.

If someone pays me quickly but then starts harrassing me 24/7, or decides he doesn't like an item so he files a bogus fraud report with eBay, they are not getting positive feedback. They aren't decent buyers and the feedback will reflect that. I assume you dont sell much, and I admit that the above example isn't a common one, but there are just as many bad buyers as there are sellers.

GTO(John)