eBay seller

[LCHIEN]

I'm not so sure about this. Although eBay might ACT like they don't care about buyers, I doubt they are so naive to believe that buyers don't matter. Think of what would happen to the sellers and to eBay if the buyers got fed up and went elsewhere. It's the buyers that feed EVERYBODY.

I agree with J4F, eBay's whole premise is built on buyers trusting sellers in sight-unseen transactions. If the buyer trust is lost, then eBay's whole empire will go down the tubes.

Right now I feel confident with careful shopping you can get better than 99% chance of a transaction completed with little or no hassle.

If that fell to 90% or 80% I'd probably stop using it altogether despite the variety and bargains you can get.

[bfrikken]

First of all, Your feelings, intuition, thoughts, what have you are correct, IMO. However, if I were you, I'd say in this instance, you got your item, so all and all, you didn't get screwed which is a good thing. I give you a lot of credit in your thought process. You're always a stand up guy on this board. So, I guess the only thing I'd say is I'd just not give him feedback, don't waste any more time and energy on it, cause everyone else here needs you answering techinical questions, project questions, trivia, etc. Like I said, I'm just glad you got the item and aren't shafted out of the money.

[bmyers]

I am speaking from experience. I had 100% approval in my ebay account with maybe 100-125 or so positive (only) feedbacks. I had a seller charge me for things that were not disclosed at auction time in an auction I won. Just a few dollars really but it is the principle of the thing right? It was also a gift for my son that I wanted him to have.

I complained to the seller that he was bumping for charges he didn’t disclose. He sluggishly said, so what. So I paid the $, left negative feedback saying that he charged me for things he didn't disclose. He had thousands of feedbacks, and more complaints than I had feedbacks. I didn’t notice, I just looked at his approval percentage at the time.
He retaliated and left me a really rude, vulgar, and irrelevant feedback for me, dropping me further down than him in percentage points and I was the guy that got screwed.

Just a few dollars and principle marred my ebay score but I thought, "hey, what if this guy does this to 3000 other people", he'd clear another $6k-7k, which is grand larceny. But instead, I get a vulgar negative and irrelevant feedback for being a good guy. I asked ebay twice to remove it due to the vulgarity and they refused twice. They are making too much money off the 3000 other sales this guy has and couldn't care less about me and my 1 neg.

So, Loring can dazzle us with the math of why the feedback system at ebay stinks when it comes to hi-volume sellers. But I think the answer is clear just who Ebay protects with it’s current feedback system. A system designed no doubt back when Bob went and sold everything out of his storage room, not when storefronts were the name of the game.

Really, Loring should protect his own ebay score, no one else will. You can boycott ebay if you want to, I don’t think they’ll notice. What do plan on using instead?


Bill (not trying to be argumentative, just being a realist)

[bmyers]

and you did get your item. So yeah, all-in-all, the transaction worked out. Maybe the guy just ........ (<-insert your own worst weekly crisis here) and spaced out on it.

Okay, I'm done. I'll pass the soap box now...



Bill

[LarryG]

He retaliated and left me a really rude, vulgar, and irrelevant feedback for me, dropping me further down than him in percentage points and I was the guy that got screwed.

THAT, more than anything else, is what I look for when I'm evaluating a given seller. I'll let a few negatives slide (like Loring, I usually shoot for about 98% or better) if reading between the feedback lines indicates that there was a Sh!t Happens type of problem that was beyond the seller's control, or if the buyer is some jerk who clearly can't be satisfied no matter what. But if a seller is rude and vulgar to his buyers, even once, he'll get no bids from me.

One flaw in the eBay system, and I've no suggestions for how to implement a fix, is that the seller should generally be required to give feedback first. A lot of the big-volume Power Sellers won't do it, because they're savvy enough to realize that this leaves them open to negatives they won't be able to do anything about. But when a buyer acts in good faith and pays right away, as Loring did in this case, it's unconscionable for the seller to say, "Feedback time ... you go first."

[LCHIEN]

and you did get your item. So yeah, all-in-all, the transaction worked out. Maybe the guy just ........ (<-insert your own worst weekly crisis here) and spaced out on it.

Okay, I'm done. I'll pass the soap box now...



Bill

Ha, didn't get it yet. He just SAID he shipped it yesterday.
Obviously no feedback of any kind until I get it.

[Tom Miller]

Well the truth is with his 3000 feedbacks (96%) and my 176 feedbacks (100%) a negative feedback would do him a lot less damage than it would do me.

If your definition of "damage" is solely based on the change in Positive Feedback %, then I agree.

However, assuming you're a buyer, I don't think your Positive Feedback % matters nearly as much in a transaction, does it? In fact, for a buyer, does it matter at all? But, again, I admit naivete in the ways of the 'bay.

Regards,
Tom

[MilDoc]

Actually, I'd probably believe the seller in this case. There's a dealer I've purchased a lot from in the past year. Ordered again around the 28th of May, didn't hear from him, emailed him and got the same reply you did. So, as I have complete faith in him I'd believe there was a PayPal / eBay problem about that time.

This has happened to the system before. Years ago I sold a lot of stuff on eBay, and for about a week there were problems.

[just4funsies]

But you CAN do something about negative feedback. You can post a "Reply" right there with the negative comment. If your reply seems straight-up and plausible, anyone reading the feedback will ignore the negative posting. That's why the system allows for words to be used, and not just scores. Percentages are just a number, and informed potential trading partners will read the content before making any decisions. Posting negative feedback that makes the poster sound stupid or unreasonable will work against him.

And one other thing... If a dealer sees that you will "reply" in defense of any negative feedback he might post, he will think twice before he puts something up that you don't deserve.