eBay rolls out great new prices-for them

The BBQ Pit
41

I’ve always hated this seller mentality. It is not up to the seller to decide when the whole transaction is over. It’s up to the buyer. The buyer comes to you to buy a product. When he completes his part of the transaction he has paid you and you agree to send him a certain product in a certain condiction by a certain date. At this point his part of the transaction is over and all that is left is for him to wait for his product to arrive and he should be rated right away. If you send him the wrong product, a broken product, send it late etc… that’s not his problem even if you offer to “fix things”. At this point his experience is not what he was expecting and you didn’t meet your end of the original deal. You sending the right product, fixed product etc… doesn’t change the experience into a flawless shopping experience. Should your rating not reflect the fact that you sent a product that he was not happy with? Or that you sent it late etc… When I order something from Amazon or another big online retailer I’m fucking pissed if I get the wrong product or if it’s broken, late etc… The best they can do to appease me is to fix their mistake and hope my next experience is better. It shouldn’t be different for ebayers. Transactions should be rated on an individual basis. If I buy something from you in the future and the transaction goes smoothly then you get a + feedback even if you recieved a - in the past.

Sellers are not entitled to anything other than the money they’ve been promised by the buyer.

42

Yes.
I have a slow-turn inventory, though, so the bulk of my Ebay fees in any given month are the cost of having the store and the cost of listing the items.

43

That’s an anti-fraud measure, at least in part. There are various known scams involving gift cards, including reselling stolen cards in bulk.

44

Well, clearly we’re not going to see eye to eye on this, but my view is simply that there isn’t very much to say at the point immediately after the buyer has paid - all you can say is ‘paid promptly’ - which doesn’t give anyone else any idea of what the whole experience of selling to that person is like - and that’s what feedback is supposed to be about. And anyway, I’m not insisting that as seller, I dictate when the transaction is over - I leave the to the buyer - and when the transaction is over, I leave feedback about it.

45

But anyway, there’s little point in me saying any more on the subject, since it’s not something I do anymore.

46

Will the new system also block a seller from responding to a buyer’s negative feedback? Because that’s a good way to explain ridiculous negative feedback left for a seller without leaving negative feedback for the buyer. And if I’m a buyer, I’m going to be reading the seller’s feedback and seeing what response he gives, if any, to any negative feedback.

47

I like Ebay. It helps me provide a very modest supplemental income to my family, for a few hours of work a week.

I hate Ebay. Its upper management appears, on the whole, to have no idea how their business actually works, or who pays them all those billions of dollars in fees every year with which to impress their stockholders.

Their most recent idiocy? I mean besides trumpeting a ‘fee decrease’ far and wide that will actually raise fees for most users?

Sellers will no longer be able to leave negative feedback for buyers. Ever. No matter what the buyer does. Not even if the buyer claims non-receipt (when even the post office confirms delivery). Not even if the buyer claims receipt of a fake, then actually returns a fake while keeping an authentic item. Not even if the buyer, being too stupid to read a description, buys the wrong thing and negs the seller for sending them what they bought. Not if the buyer thinks they were buying something taupe and gets something a faintly different shade and goes ballistic. Not if they simply don’t PAY. Not if they say they’re going to, thus negating the UPI process, but still don’t pay. Not ever. That glowing 100% feedback some people like to feel proud about? Will mean nothing.

Sellers, in exchange, will be held hostage to their ‘stars’. Ebay tells buyers that a rating of 4 stars out of 5 is ‘very good’, but fails to mention that a seller whose star rating falls below 4.8 (out of 5) may have their account restricted for ‘poor performance’, and have Paypal funds for items held inaccessible for 3 weeks, or until the buyer leaves positive feedback. So the seller will not actually HAVE that money, as it can be taken away at any moment. Yet the seller is still expected to send the item AND the item is expected to be received in 3 days…even coast-to-coast (because that is the new time-limit before which a negative may be left for the seller…even if the buyer hasn’t paid yet, and many buyers do not pay for a week, in my experience. Sometimes the automated end-of-auction invoices don’t even get to them.) This 3-day window will hold true even when the buyer chooses and pays for media mail or parcel post. If it doesn’t arrive? It’s open season on the seller with no recourse.

Of course there are bad sellers - I’ll never deny that, and bad sellers deserve negs AND removal from Ebay, and they are a serious problem. But there are also bad buyers. Removing the ability of sellers to inform other sellers of buyers to avoid - and for that matter, removing one method by which a bad buyer may be automatically NARUd (by achieving a -4 rating)… is simply insane.

Insane.

How can they hope to increase their buyer base by driving out their seller base?

A little part-time weekend job is looking more and more like the future. Instead.

48

Since there’s already an active Pit thread on this topic, I’m going to close this one. I’ll try to move the OP so that it appears as a post in that one. Hold on…

Edit: looks like it worked.

49

This is all fine and dandy…but what happens if you (the seller) screw up, the buyer complains and you do right?

What if the buyer is a little miffed and leaves negative feedback.

He paid right on time. You screwed up…buyer not very happy.

a) Do you leave him positive feedback because he paid on time?

or

b) Give the buyer negative feedback because you bent over backwards correcting your mistake but he was still unhappy?

50

I see someone killed my ignorance. It does make sense to wait.

I guess I just don’t think devious enough :frowning:

51

I don’t leave feedback purely on the basis of speed of payment. If the transaction as a whole is positive, then I leave positive feedback - if it’s negative, I’ll leave a neg - but the important thing to note is that the feedback left me (if any) by the buyer is not part of the transaction - it isn’t usually something I take into consideration when deciding what feedback I will leave - so there are certainly plausible scenarios in which I would leave a positive feedback even if the buyer left me a neg.

52

The possibility of bad stuff like that was only ever part of my reason for waiting until the transaction is complete before leaving feedback - for example in my case, I quite often had pleasant email feedback from satisfied customers, so I was able to comment on pleasant and friendly communication in the feedback I left.

53

Didn’t you say “But it’s just not right to leave feedback about the whole transaction until the whole transaction is over.” So, do you not only leave FB for the buyer after he leaves FB for you, based upon you can;t leave FB until the entire transaction is over?

54

[QUOTE=Chotii]

Sellers will no longer be able to leave negative feedback for buyers. Ever. No matter what the buyer does. Not even if the buyer claims non-receipt (when even the post office confirms delivery). Not even if the buyer claims receipt of a fake, then actually returns a fake while keeping an authentic item. Not even if the buyer, being too stupid to read a description, buys the wrong thing and negs the seller for sending them what they bought. Not if the buyer thinks they were buying something taupe and gets something a faintly different shade and goes ballistic. Not if they simply don’t PAY. Not if they say they’re going to, thus negating the UPI process, but still don’t pay. Not ever. .[/QUOTE

You are right in that the seller will no longer be able to leave bad FB. But all the other scenaios are bogus. Who givs a rats-ass if you can;t leave a NEG if instead you can have them arrested or eBay NARU them or more likely simply remove their FB.
http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl?/comments/2008/1/1201611437.html
*3. Removal of negative and neutral Feedback left by members who are suspended or who fail to respond to the Unpaid Item Process (UPI).
*
http://ecommwire.com/?id=4286&keys=eBay-fees-insertion-fees-final-value-fees
However, to compensate for the sellers’ lack of being able to leave feedback, there will soon be ways for sellers to get rid of negative feedback from buyers. Negative and neutral feedback and comments from buyers who become suspended will retroactively be removed from a seller’s profile.

On Amazon.com, the booksellers can’t leave FB for the buyers and it works fine. No one has any significant amounts of those sorts of problems.

So, all your scenarios are bogus.

55

Actually, on Amazon, sellers CAN and do leave feedback.
Check out this buyer, who has 10 feedback:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/seller/feedback.html/002-6168470-1042460?seller=A90YB9HJ39BDQ&marketplaceSeller=1

Few buyers know about buyer feedback on Amazon.
Many sellers actually don’t know about it. It’s hard to find a buyer’s feedback within your Amazon seller account user interface.
The only time it ever gets checked is when a high-dollar sale (over $100) goes through. Some sellers do check your feedback, but all they’re worried about is feedback noting that you’ve had packages damaged, lost or stolen.
If you get a customer like that, Amazon doesn’t want you to cancel the order, but you might decide to buy insurance on the shipment and have FedEx or UPS demand the buyer present matching ID and sign for delivery prior to receiving the package. If there’s a history of damage, you might also choose to ship your items in a 200-lb-test box instead of the cheaper 75-lb-test boxes.

56

Finally, my note on undeserved bad feedback:

It’s all relative. You’re on a level playing field with other sellers.
You may get bogus feedback from customers who didn’t read the description, but on average, so will your competitors. If you’re doing any volume and selling online, you will get occasional unpleasant customers, occasional mentally ill customer and from time to time you’ll even have alcoholics that don’t remember placing the order and would like to return their purchase. Better yet, those alcoholics will email you demanding return authorization when they’re so drunk that can’t understand their email.
It happens to everyone, so it averages out.

57

Feedback is not part of the transaction, therefore I don’t need to wait until I receive it before I consider the transaction complete. Usually, the transaction is complete when the buyer has received the item and, hopefully, is happy with it - leaving feedback for the seller is one way the buyer can signal that this stage has been reached, but it’s not the only one - and all my buyers were assured that I would not hold feedback hostage, and would leave it first if they cared to signal the conclusion of the transaction in any way - such as email or eBay message.

You already knew my policy on this.

58

And this, people, is what ebay has descended to. One huge, revolting on-line supermarket. I blame Checkout (then, I blame Checkout for global warming and the plate I broke last night). Since Checkout, no-one emails any-one any more. Not to say, “Hi, I bought your item. How much do I owe?” and certainly not say, “Hi, how are you down there? It must be summer now. We have 12 ft snow here in Ohio and I envy you!. BTW, I bought your item. How much do I owe?”. I never had a problem in years and then boom Checkout, and every-one thinks all we tiny sellers are amazon. Yup, we’re entitled to screw all except some $$ and woefucking betide if things aren’t just so because after all, we’re only the faceless front people for some giant supermarket and caps-locked emails are going to get your message across better than reasonable communication and goddamit you’ve fulfilled your responsibilities because you GODDAM PAID AND THAT’S ALL THE DAMN SELLERS ARE ENTITLED TO GODDAMMIT TO HELL.

Yeah, I know. Get off my lawn.

59

Actually, sellers are entitled to fair and civil treatment from their buyers, as well as prompt payment. Just because you’re the customer, doesn’t mean you get to be an ass.

60

Hey. I just said that.