eBay Woes

In My Humble Opinion
1

I recently bid on this auction: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8188756228&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWN%3AIT&rd=1

I was SO happy to find this ceramic piece, I had it as a cast iron many years ago, and loved it, but it was destroyed when the shelf it was on fell.

Today, I got an e mail from the seller, saying she went to pour the mold for me, and mice had gotten into the mold and chewed the detail off the face, so she was cancelling the auction. I was BEYOND disappointed… I had looked for this particular statue for YEARS :frowning: . I wrote her back and told her she needed to rethink listing items for sale without knowing if she would be able to honor the auction, and I left neutral feedback.

I just recieved a nasty note from her, saying I had 2 days to retract the feedback (Which acnnot be done) or she was going to retaliate with negative feedback for me, that I should have read the auction, etc.

I did read the auction, and knew she wasn’t going to pour it until she had a buyer, but am I out of line for feeling like she should have known if the mold was good or not before posting the auction? I did NOTHING wrong in this transaction, and feel like any retalitory feedback from her is nothing but sour grapes.

So… was I wrong for leaving the neutral feedback? Is there anything I can do when/if she leaves the undeserved negative she has promised?

Sometimes I really hate eBay…

2

Nah, I think you’re just (understandably) upset and disappointed. It’s not like she did it on purpose, and she’s out the money she was going to get from you, too. I would just chalk this up as One of Those Things™ and not leave feedback at all.

Since you’ve already done it you may want to leave a follow-up and explain what happened.

3

Let me get this straight. You won an auction for an Irish Setter ceramic piece. There was a picture of the type of piece you were bidding on included on the bid page. The picture included face details. Nowhere in the product description did the seller say that the picture was dissimilar to what you would be receiving. After you won, you were contacted and the seller told you that the ceramic piece you would be receiving would not be like the one pictured and described on the bid page. You were unhappy with this and left a neutral feedback.

Did I miss something? I must have, I can’t figure out what you did to warrant negative feedback.

4

I won’t be GETTING the statue. She said the mold was ruined and she would not be pouring it. I left the neutral because I feel like she should have CHECKED the mold and known it was good to be used BEFORE she listed the auction, which she did not. She is threatening me with the negative simply because I left the neutral, not because of anything I actually DID in this auction.

Did that clear it up for you any?

5

I don’t think you were wrong.

I hate eBay because of all the feedback hostage exchange stuff. What good is a site that only positive feedbacks can be left even when the sale goes badly?

My buyer was such a cheat- he was a non-paying high bidder and I said so on his feedback. He wrote something like “Liar! You sold to the second highest bidder before I could pay. I have proof!!” or something like that. What a bald-faced lie. And how frustrating.

I hate eBay and never go there anymore.

Sorry you had a bad experience.

6

Here is her latest snitty reply:

1# yes feed back can be with drawn
2# This was not an auction but a store item that has been listed for months
3# yes you are in the wrong or shall I call it ignorance if you think that over 14,000 molds which is my inventory can be checked on a daily bases.
4# you are in the wrong. You have been unreasonable and basically throwing a temper because everything didn’t work out for you. Because you are disappointed you are stomping your feet.
5# I am not in the wrong. I produce quality bisque. I will not pour a mold that will not produce quality. I am not God and I can not control the world so that everything works out the way you hope. Are you really foolish enough to think I am doing this for fun. I do everything in my power to SELL. But I only sell Quality.
6# Respond all you want all I will be doing is telling the truth.

7

I would forward that email to eBay. Seems like a no-no to me.

8

I think “neutral” feedback is fair… assuming that you didn’t lose any money. She didn’t follow through with her end of the sale/auction.

She sounds snobby.

9

I just looked at the website, and found this page regarding feedback extortion. It does indeed say to forward the email to eBay, so maybe they can do something for you. I would try to do it ASAP, before she leaves the neg.

10

THANK YOU !! I have just turned her in with copies of every e mail we have exchanged today. I will let y’all know what happens now!

11

If I’m not mistaken, isn’t it against eBay rules to offer something that hasn’t been made, as in, “I will sew you this custom dress, blah blah blah?”

12

Send her a link to the page and quote the eBay rule.

Don’t say anything else. Especially don’t let her know that you have already reported her!

You might also look to see if she violated a rule by offering something she hadn’t made yet. If so, link and quote that rule too.

13

No, that’s quite legitimate; you just have to follow through with it.
For example, they say:

14

I am going to take the unpopular position and say you shouldn’t have left the neutral. I say this from the point of view of a seller who works full time on ebay.

I work for a business that has an ebay store as a component of our regular gallery workings. We list 200-300 auctions at any given time, and unfortunately shit happens. Especially when you are dealing with that kind of volume, even more so when you are dealing with one of a kind original art. Things get lost in the mail, things get damaged in shipping, I have myself accidentally ruined a piece of art as I was sending it to our shipping department. Shit happens. This does not mean that I am not careful, this does not mean that I do not do my level best 40+ hours a week to bend over backward and satisfy the customer, but sometimes it doesn’t work out.

Negative feedback should be reserved for crooks, neutral feedback should be reserved for people who are jerks. I don’t know what the woman said to you, but if she was polite and apologetic and refunded you your money right away, then you just shouldn’t have left feedback at all. She doesn’t deserve a positive, but noting was lost nothing was gained, it should be as if the transaction didn’t take place.

I understand that it IS disappointing to think you have purchased something, and then find out it wasn’t available. But, if I can try to put this in perspective, lets say you came into the art gallery I work at. You see a statue for sale in one of our display cases, say a porcelain figurine. You like it and want to buy one. It is the last piece we have in stock, and as I pull it from the display case I somehow drop it (it would never happen :smiley: , but for arguments sake) and it shatters. You would be upset because you have been looking for this figurine and thought you had found one, but now it is gone. Would you then sue us? Would you stand outside our shop for 6 months calling us crooks, and telling people not to come inside because we will rip them off? Would you even be angry?

Negative and neutral feedback can have a HUGE impact on someones sales, and I know of at least one person in the art world that was put out of business on ebay by 6 unhappy customers (they did more than just leave bad feedback, but they were unhappy for mainly the same reasons you are). Moreover my feedback rating is a point of pride. My whole job is customer care, and when I do my best to be accommodating and make you happy, you leaving a neutral is a slap in the face.

Now, the lady saying she will leave you negative feedback unless you retract is wrong as well. I won’t go into why since I think you already know that, but she is behaving badly. That is the kind of behavior that would warrant a neutral or negative feedback. That being said, I wouldn’t blame her for leaving a negative and telling other sellers that you leave knee jerk feedback without trying to work things out with the seller first. And frankly, as a seller, I would be glad to know about it.

15

I agree. In cases like this, where you didn’t lose anything, not leaving any FB at all would have been the right thing. However, she’s a bitch for retaliating. The nice thing is that savvy buyers will see that retaliation, and avoid her like the plague.

16

I agree with NAF1138. It sucks to miss out on something you want, but you didn’t lose anything in this transaction except hope, and the seller shouldn’t have their rating dinged because of that. If you lost any money, either in Paypal fees, stamps/money order fees, or just because the seller didn’t want to return your money that’s one thing, but it seems like you didn’t have to pay them in the first place, that they alerted you to the problem immediately. I have been in this situation and I gave the seller a positive. Why? Well, they refunded my money (including the little extra that Paypal takes out, which they really didn’t have to calculate) and they were super-apologetic. That’s good customer service too, not just giving me what I want. I would rather get nothing than an item that has been damaged or is not really as described.

And no, they probably don’t have time to check all the molds, if there are several hundred of them. This is not an auction, it was the same as buying from a store, and stores can’t always check their merchandise every day to make sure it is gold. If I were you I would retract the feedback (and you can do that), yes her email back was snippy but frankly I think yours was too. I mean really, it is not like you got defective merchandise, you just didn’t get anything. And in my book, that is a “positive,” I think “neutral” should be reserved for items that are damaged due to improper shipping but are otherwise fine or where the S/H is blatantly jacked up. “Negative” I save for outright crooks (I have never left a negative).

I do agree that feedback extortion sucks ass and is largely responsible for the declining state of Ebay. I wish they would rig it so that neither the buyer nor seller can see one another’s feedback until a set number of days after the auction, at which point the opportunity to leave feedback will end. AFAICT, no Ebay user likes the system the way it is now. I wonder why they won’t change it?

17

I don’t agree. It seems to me you’re contending there are really only two kinds of feeback, positive and negative. “Neutral” doesn’t mean bad, it means what the OP indicated: “This transaction didn’t come off, not through my fault, but through the fault of the seller.” It’s a little heads-up to the next buyer that even though they may be the high bidder, there may be reasons why they won’t get the item. As a point of clarification, neutrals don’t play into your feedback score. See here for details.

18

Your suggestion would make the feedback system valueless. For all that people complain about abuses of the feedback system, I can’t think of a better or fairer way to keep people honest. And I imagine that these days, most eBay users take the feedback scores at a modest discount, just because they know there are jerks out there. I actually wish more sellers and buyers would stand up to the blackmail, in fact. No one has a perfect score anymore, and I don’t hesitate to buy things from people in the 99.7-99.9% range.

19

Well, see, she should have made sure her mold was good BEFORE offering it up for sale, and she should have made the product first. Just in case.

There is nothing wrong with neutral feedback. It’s exactly that-neutral. It means it wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad. Something happened, and the deal failed. To me, that warrants neutral feedback.

Oh well.

20

Not on eBay, where a Neutral really means a mild negative. Now, what it should mean, and what it does mean are two different things, I’ll grant.