Is it just me or do you think that the seller on ebay should always leave feedback for the buyer BEFORE the buyer does for the seller?
If I win an auction and pay promptly that is all the seller needs to base his/her comments and feedback should be left immediately. Too many sellers wait to see if they have received a positive before leaving feedback for the buyer with the implication being that if you don't give me a positive, then I won't give you one. It should be quite possible for the seller to give a positive based on prompt payment and the buyer to give a neutral or negative based on standard of goods or quality of service. Maybe a better system (although I accept it will never happen) would be that the buyer is UNABLE to leave feedback until he has received feedback from the seller.
I agree with you and I always thought this was some form of feedback extortion.
The last time I bought something on eBay I was surprised to see "Positive feedback will be automatically left for you upon receipt of positive feedback". When the item arrived the feedback I left for the seller was "Easy & fast transaction. Withholds feedback until positive feedback is received." I was automatically given positive feedback identical to what the seller's last few customers got. I'm still curious as to what my feedback would have been if the seller had actually read and responded to my feedback personally. Hopefully some of the sellers future customers saw it so they knew the game he was playing.
Perhaps a better solution would be blind feedback. Although both sides would know when feedback had been left, netiher would be able to read it, including +ve or -ve, until the other had left feedback.
I feel the feedback system of seller leaving it after the buyer does so, works - it helps prevent a buyer from deciding an item is unsuitable or something then seeking retribution using the feedback system, without any attempt for both parties to fix things....... personally, I never leave feedback first if I am a seller, as the likelihood of communication between parties when there's a problem is near zero - the buyer will just let fly in many cases. To have the right of reply through the feedback system is really the only comeback the seller has after that.... if he has already left it, he can't then go on to change it. All that can be done is an addendum, but this doesn't alter the original positive or negative rating.
I speak from some experience - not huge but still significant - more than
550 transactions at 100% positive rating(mostly international transactions). I have had hassles though, always to do with postage costs. I refuse to be extorted by sellers who try price-gouging on and have had to make several complaints because of it...... which made absolutely NO difference at all, but you gotta do what you can to curb this behaviour. This particular behaviour by sellers is probably the most talked about thing on the eBay forums - yet eBay fails to act on it because they figure (I am assuming here) that sellers pay fees, not buyers.
For example I bought a tap from the UK (I am in Australia) for 5 GBP. Before the auction ended, he sent me an estimated cost of 9.71GBP (the precise amount I paid for another tap) and then tried to hit me with a FURTHER 40GBP before he would send it to me, stating it was oversize and overweight for Royal Mail's normal shipping rules. What the seller didn't know is that this was the second one of its exact kind I had bought from the UK and I knew how much postage was. . Either he was lazy or lied, or both OR he decided he didn't get enough for his tap and decided to bolster his sale with this charge. I explained how I knew what the correct cost should be and referred him to the auction number as proof. He lodged an unpaid item strike when I told him I wouldn't pay what he asked - I appealed and explained to eBay my position - I lost.
You will see a lot of auctions for items at .99cents - then you look at the shipping costs and they are astronomical - this achieves two things (apart from alienating people) - 1. it avoids eBay fees based on the sale price (Postage isn't factored into eBay's fees) and nets naive sellers who don't read the fine print, of which there is usually heaps! In 7 years of being on eBay I reckon I have seen it all, and then someone will come up with some new scam to suck people in.
Apologies for the rant - eBay is just one of my pet subjects....I think it is an incredible system and when used correctly is wonderful, but scumbags abound..... just look at the number of unbelievably cheap Plasma TVs, high-end car stereos and laptops etc. that are supposedly available from China or the Ukraine...... those buggers are netting millions from newbies - and it takes so bloody long to complain because of international shipping times..... by the time the buyer "gets" what's up - there's swirling papers and tumbleweeds where their money used to be.
Feedback from a seller isn't /just/ about how good the buyer's money is, or how quickly he paid. It's about what they're like as trading partner overall. Are they reasonable, fair and honest (as far as you can tell.) Their reactoin to the goods is far more an indicator than the speed with which they click on Paypal.
When I was a newbie eBay seller, too many buyers held me over a barrel because they felt their item was the wrong shade of purple or they'd paid
37p too much shipping or they didn't realise when I said good condition I didn't mean excellent....their demands to me with hints at -ve were tantamount to extortion as far as I was concerned.
As a buyer I leave +ve as soon as I'm the happy recipient of the goods won, irrespective of whether the seller has left me feedback or not. I have given scores of +ve's where I have not received any in return from sellers. That's a shame, but I'm still alive!
But now, as a seller I leave feedback as soon as I know the buyer is happy - and to convince me of that they need to put their money where there mouse is and post +ve. If they're not happy then I do my best to work it out.
Whatever which way you prefer feedback, someone has got to go first. I expect to go first when I buy, and go second when I sell. That 50/50 balance seems fair to me. I buy a lot on eBay. */Everyone/* can't go first. Or are you of the opinion that */everyone else/* should go first? :)
At the end of the day life and people go on, even without feedback! So I go by the (seller) axim - if you don't want feedback, that's cool - you don't need to leave any.
That is a very sensible suggestion and much better than the one I offered. I hear what Fil has said but I still beleive that either party should feel free to leave accurate feedback without worrying about what the other may say in return.
Robert Flint said the following on 21/03/2006 10:10:
No, no, no!! This subject comes up time and time again on the eBay discussion boards, and eBay themselves suggest that the buyer leaves feedback first.
Feedback shouldn't be left by either party until the transaction is complete. The transaction isn't complete until the buyer has received the goods, and has indicated that he is happy with them.
A seller leaving feedback first is leaving themselves wide open to abuse. The buyer can simply decide he doesn't like the item, and leave a negative, or realise that it wasn't sent by trackable means, so does a chargeback to get his money back as well as keep the goods.
Incidentally, the idea of "blind" feedback is a good one on the face of it, but don't forget that feedback isn't for those involved in that transaction, it is for others to be able to make a judgement. Also, you can't block a user from reading feedback without blocking everyone else. What's to stop someone simply logging in under a different ID? I have two IDs for instance (the second one for posting on the boards), and others have several IDs.
At the end of the day though, the feedback system is entirely voluntary
- don't ever, ever chase for feedback, as you may not get what you were expecting!
What little I do sell, I leave feedback after I have shipped the item. To be honest, I don't care if the buyer leaves feedback or not, though I do read the feedback when given.
I don't know who your seller was obviously, but there are those sellers who complete hundreds or thousands of transactions every day. They cannot possibly leave individual feedback, and use one of the various eBay seller tools to automatically leave feedback for them. This isn't feedback extortion - it's simply how eBay's seller tools work. No-one will have read your feedback - you got a positive for a positive, selected randomly from a pre-set list. By the same token if you had left a negative (without attempting to resolve the issue) you would have been left a negative. Your comment will be noted by other eBay users, and that is the aim of the whole exercise, but at the end of the day by leaving a positive you indicated that overall you were happy with the transaction.
As a buyer, I always leave feedback as soon as the item arrives, and I'm happy with it. As a seller, I wait for the buyer to leave feedback. If they don't that's up to them - I'm buying/selling goods, not feedback. I've only ever had to leave one negative for a non-payer, but left it knowing full well I could have had a retaliatory negative - feedback is just a number, but loss of money is real! Minor niggles have been sorted out satisfactorily - I even left a positive for a seller who genuinely mis-described an item, but didn't hesitate for a second to refund in full on return.
In case anyone was wondering, I am still at the magic 100%, and a negative now will barely make any difference to my percentage. And yes, my imagination has dried up to be able to leave individual comments, so feedback left tends to be selected from a list, with maybe a tweak here and there.
Absolutely, I've bought a couple of items from one seller and had absolutely first class experience from him, but some clown left him three lots of negative feedback within a week - all complaining about the quality of items purchased which hadn't yet been shipped!
Wouldn't work, some buyers just don't leave feedback, or only leave it some weeks or even months later, and in the meantime nothing is going on record to say whether buyer or seller are reasonable people.
yes, the 40GBP impost was added after he called the post office .... he wouldn't even taker the thing down there to get the real cost - slack and idle creature!
not sure what you mean by repeat buyers/sellers but my overall rating is in the high 300's with multiple transactions from a single buyer/seller only counting as one feedback point.....which makes sense to me up to a point. I'm not sure, but it may be that you get another point after some time has elapsed and it is a different series of auctions, but I doubt it - that's how it should be I reckon.
Of the 550 transactions I've had, I have had three items damaged in transit - each time the seller made-good.
The worst experiences I've had are: One seller decided to send something via international courier from the UK, or so she claimed, therefore sent me another invoice (that SHE made up to look like an eBay invoice) for a further 77GBP on an item that cost 13GBP! Nothing happened to her even after I scanned the Royal Mail stamp on the parcel and sent that to eBay! Hope her medication kicks in sometime soon. Finally, the piece de resistance - just prior to last Easter I bought two locos - a Caledonian Single and a super detailed Britannia - the Brit had serious money put into it and was lovely. I think I won them at reasonable cost. Anyway the seller sent me an invoice for local postage, even after responding to my question regarding shipping to Australia AND posting it on the auction page, that they would be happy to do so! I emailed immediately for the adjustment to postage costs and asked them to note my address and confirm that I was the guy who they responded to earlier. Never heard back til after Easter and what I got was an unpaid item dispute opened because their "policy" was to do this if someone didn't pay within seven days! Things went downhill from there! :)))) Within a few days) the items were relisted and I was prevented from bidding again as they blocked my bids due to my being a delinquent bidder! The wonderful ending to the story though is that I got a mate to bid on the Brit again ( I had already bought another Callie....ok ok - several) and I won it for 26.20GBP where [previously I had won it at 52.33GBP!The planets aligned for me that time.
I am sure everyone will have stories like these and I apologise for going off topic yet again.
Steve
"Paul Boyd" wrote in message news:44204493$0$9254$ snipped-for-privacy@ptn-nntp-reader01.plus.net...
Perfect summary Fil. I suspect that those who disagree are probably buyers, rather than buyers and sellers. My own opinion changed rather rapidly, after I started selling as well as buying :-)
I realised after I posted that my comment could have implied shilling, but I meant nothing of the sort - it was a reference to your score compared to the number of positives you have! I do know your ID, but I'm certainly not going to post it here.
Don't you just love it when something like that happens? Like when you get beaten by a sniper (yes - I snipe as well!), then win a later auction for a lot less.
especially with my addiction....ahem....passion! Caledonian Singles, Lords of the Isles and Rockets.
The prices vary wildly for these and lately, even though I have not bought, man there have been some bargains out there - one Lord went for 34GBP! And that was boxed with a clerestory carriage - I was dumbfounded - well, maybe just dumb, because I expected it would go for high 60's so didnt bother
but it all evens out and after all, with 6 or more of each, how many of the bloody things do I need.........!
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