I know, I was agreeing with you (admittedly, on re-reading, this isn’t made clear).
I did not know about that. I had sold some cards several months earlier and the rule was not there. That makes sense now.
I don’t agree that they are bogus - and I don’t think there exists an adequate solution to many of them by other means such as reporting to the police (they’ll just shrug, in many cases), or reporting to eBay (they won’t act on anything that happens outside of their system - such as demands made by direct email).
I’ve never received a neg - either as buyer or seller, and never had much cause to issue them either (I negged 3 NPBs in six years), but I do believe the ability for sellers to leave negative feedback will turn out to have been holding some things in check - maybe time will prove me wrong on this - we’ll see.
I do agree that sellers demanding feedback first is not acceptable and I do agree that retaliatory feedback was a serious problem that needed a solution. I just believe this proposed solution is a terrible one that makes no real sense and is unjust (not violation-of-human-rights-unjust, merely unbalanced in the way it treats members of a supposed community). That’s all.
Those are mostly 8 years old, one is 4 years old. Maybe it is just damn hard, but have been buying on Amazon for a decade and I have never seen my buyer FB. If you can tell me how to navigate to mine, I’ll be amused.
Sure thing.
Don’t be surprised if you don’t have any, though.
Directions:
Click Your Account
Click Your Seller Account [this shows up even if you aren’t authorized to sell on Amazon]
LOGIN USING EMAIL ADDRESS AND PASSWORD
Under Reports, click on View Your Ratings and Feedback
PS- Yes, the account I showed you doesn’t have many recent feedback. I happen to know that the owner of that account buys tons of books.
PPS- I just stumbled across the following individual, who may be among Amazon’s biggest spenders.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/seller/feedback.html/?ie=UTF8&asin=&pageNumber=0&marketplaceSeller=1&seller=A3DGNHUN0WODBF
While we’re at it, here’s a buyer with tons of feedback… and a healthy amount of it from angry sellers:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/seller/feedback.html/?seller=AUXW4H0OB74QG&marketplaceSeller=1
My scenarios would only be bogus if those circumstances and situations were not already happening on Ebay every single day. Go hang on any of the seller boards and listen to the doozies they tell…the undeserved negatives, the psychotic buyers. The percentage is small, but they happen. Under the new system? Good sellers can be auto-restricted or rendered invisible via code that only reads the feedback numbers. It’s unlikely in the extreme that Ebay will suddenly develop better customer service than it currently offers, which is to say, damn near zero, and so…what recourse will good sellers have if they are sidelined like that?
Oh right. Leave.
I do. And many times, once investigated by the rather clever sleuths on the boards there, it turns out the seller is the crazy one. Or no one can verify the complaint. :dubious: Rarely is the complaint justified and verified- unless it’s a newbie buyer. Newbies make all sorts of stupid mistakes on eBay. Newbies will continue to make mistakes under the new system too, but per the new policies, those mistakes will be easier to reverse, like if the newbie gets NARUed. In fact, if you go to the Feedback board now,there are a lot of sellers making rash threats and many sellers complaining that the new policy is getting them rip-offs… two months in the future. :dubious: Good trick that, buyers with time-travel. :rolleyes: (The new policy doesn’t start until Aprl, assuming it isn;t changed by then)
What’s funny is that one seller was screaming about some “psychotic buyer” who left him a Neutral- until one poster pointed out that the seller retaliated by leaving that buyer a Retalitory NEG, which is* exactly* the kind of irresponsible behaviour eBay is trying to stop with this new upcoming policy.
Mr. Slant, yes, I see it, thanks. Hmm only 4 ratings over a decade and hundreds and hundreds of purchases. One is unhappy as I gave them a 4 instead of a 5. Meh. But yeah, I guess they can. However, no buyer on Amazon is worried about Retalitory FB.
Oh good lord, this is going to suck.
As a seller, I used to leave feedback as soon as I recieved payment. Until I got burned.
Here’s how it happened. I sold a vintage motorcycle part to a guy and it had a small chip out of it, in a place that was not visible once installed and did not effect the performance in any way.
In addition, it was clearly shown in the photos of the item.
He gets the item and demands I send him almost half the money back in a refund or he will leave me a negative because I didn’t mention the defect in the text (even though it was shown in the photo). I went ahead and refunded him because I have perfect feedback and it was worth it to me to keep it. I know other buyers who have gotten held up by similar scams.
After that, I started leaving feedback after the buyer leaves me feedback. If i screwed up and shipped the wrong thing and got a neutral or a neg when it was deserved, I would still leave the buyer a positive (which hasn’t happened, knock on wood).
I have refunded money before because the buyer wasnt happy even when it wasn’t my fault, but being forced to do so by being black mailed…
A few months ago I got a lot of factory demo high end coffee makers in my shop that I sold on ebay. These were used in trade show demos and so they had been used briefly for demonstartions and the boxes were a little beat up and I clearly stated this in my auction description. I sold probably 20 of these with no problems until one buyer didnt read the add and left me a negative for selling them a used appliance as new. I emailed back and explained that they should have read the auction and that my perfect feedback was damaged as a result. The buyer emailed me back saying they wouldnt withdraw the feedback because they felt it was rude of me to complain about it.
I left them a negative and got a mutual withdrawel the right quick. Sure they paid on time, but the experience of them leaving me unfair feedback was an overall negative. The buyers responsibility DOES NOT end at paying, but requires that they be reasonble human beings after the money is sent.
It will totally screw the honest sellers out there if we dont have any tool to fight back against the scammers and the people who are just plain rude. I block users with negatives now. sure i can file a unpaid item claim when I get some idiot who bids on stuff and never responds but that takes a lot of time. I’d rather be able to filter out the people who have already done this kind of thing before.
What I would hope happens with this new policy is that a single negative isn’t going to be such a big deal that you’d have to pay money to get out of it. If sellers aren’t competing to get 99+% positive ratings, that freak who can’t be pleased can be told to go fuck himself.
You’re welcome.
I’m surprised you have that many, actually.
It seems like the sellers who leave buyer feedback on Amazon are the ones who think they’re still on Ebay. The same ones that say, “NO RETURNS!” in their item descriptions. Too bad for them, on Amazon, you’ll accept returns and if you refuse then Amazon will just refund your buyer their money anyway…
And no, no buyer worries about retaliatory FB…
PS- It’s really silly for them to be mad about a 4. That hurts your ‘star rating’, but it doesn’t hurt your % positive rating. Currently, Amazon only shows the % positive to consumers… heck, I’d take gladly take 500 4 ratings right now. It’d raise my feedback from 98 to 99. I don’t care about stars, nor does anyone else.
In the future, I’d forward his email where he offerred to exchange feedback for money to Ebay.
Asking for a refund is okay, but saying that you’ll leave a neg if you don’t get a certain amount of money is against the rules. Actually, even offerring to refund in exchange for neg deletion is against the rules.
I think doing that could get him sanctioned or banned.
No, it wouldnt.
His email was worded as basically saying
the item wasnt as described, and not worth as much as he bid for it, and that I should make it right with a partial refund.
I’ts been a couple of years so I dont remember the exact wording, but it was obvious I would recieve a neg if I didnt do so…but it was not worded as directly as "give me money or I’ll give you a negative.
Ebay would have ignored it. If you have ever had to contact ebay about a abuse, its damn near impossible to get them to even read a complaint, or take any action. I have no reason to think they will start playing nice now.
I once had a non paying bidder who by his email address I found was a previously banned ebayer. it took me something like 15 emails before they stopped sending me form letters and finally looked at the issue and banned the guy again.
Ah. My bad. I misunderstood your post.
I’ve sold thousands of items online in the last year, and I thank my lucky stars that 99% of people I do business with are basically nice, reasonable people.
It’s all the more surprising when I hear stories like yours.
That figure is reflected in my ebay feedback score 
I’ve stated my POV as a seller but I have concerns about this as a buyer as well. How will I sift through all those extra negatives and work out what are reasonable and what are not? How will I know wether the seller was willing to work things out before the negative got left (or even afterward)?
And another point. I ALWAYS look at the feedback that sellers leave in response to negatives and neutrals. It’s probably the single most important factor in wether I buy from some-one or not because it’s a good indicator of how the seller deals with problems.
I’m getting a new ID and retiring my ten year old 100% fb ID as a museum piece. (Apart from anything else, I’ve obviously only maintained that by withholding feedback and being highly protectionist. Bah.)
Well, CNN Money is listening:
http://fsbfeatures.blogs.fsb.cnn.com/2008/01/31/ebay-fee-hike-sparks-seller-rebellion/