Is Ebay broken? (1 Viewer)

[Patrick Sun]

Imagine her feedback rating...

 

[Jeff_Standley]

Oh yeah, whats with the feedback thats blocked so you cant read it. I was looking at a guys feedback that was private and could not see why he got so many negatives. Thats crap if you ask me, I want to know why some of these negatives are popping up on his account and filter through correct feedback and crap feedback.

 

[MarcoBiscotti]

Ebay should have an option to link directly to the negative feedback remarks in a seller's rating instead of having you scroll through 25 pages of feedback to read what buyer's complaints were. That's something that has annoyed me about Ebay's feedback system for years. I don't know about you guys, but whenever I find a seller with a feedback rating of less than 98%, it's the first thing I check. I do the same if I come accross any questionable listings as I've been burned once before on limited edition Asian import titles. Despite the fact that the auctions were advertised as being 100% authentic studio product. I always check a sellers other auctions and feedback ratings before even considering placing any bids.

 

[Chris Lockwood]

> It does piss me off when as a buyer I make sure the transaction is completed quickly, and then I get no response, even after leaving positive feedback for the seller. That's just plain rude.

On feedback, if you've left it & they didn't, just contact them & nicely ask them to. It might have been an oversight. Some people don't use the feedback feature, & a lot of buyers don't care about getting feedback if they aren't going to sell anything.

When I buy something, I don't bother trying to contact the seller until I think there may be a problem. I wait at least a week after paying. Some people run lots of auctions, and having to reply to mundane questions like "Did you ship it yet?" can eat up a lot of time.


> Something else that bothers me a little is the professional ebay dealers, who are basically using ebay as an online storefront.

So? There's a reason they're called ebay stores. Should people with lots of stuff to sell not be allowed to use ebay? They'd have to set up their own sites, then advertise it, vs. just using ebay, where there are already lots of people searching for stuff.

Now, sellers advertising stuff they don't have is another issue, but it shouldn't matter how many auctions they have.

What about pre-sale questions? I've answered lots of them & found that 99% of those people never buy the item, even if the answer was favorable. I've stopped answering them, except on higher-priced items. I had one guy send 4 separate questions on a $6 DVD- what's the UPC number, is it a promo, does it have this special feature, etc? If he's that picky, go to a retail store for it. This smelled like someone who would not be satisfied anyway & would want to return it.


> In my opinion, a buyer is not entitled to positive feedback simply because he/she pays. It is the manner in which they conduct themselves during the entire life of the transaction that matters. If a buyer receives a damaged or incorrect item, and the seller quickly responds with a replacement, refund or some other remuneration acceptable to the buyer, that seller is still deserving of positive feedback, not negative or neutral.

Good points. Nothing like losing money on a sale, then getting negative feedback on top of that. People leave negatives for all kinds of stupid reasons, such as they thought the shipping fee was too high, although it was fixed & stated in the listing.

 

[Chris Bardon]

My point was that it seems like one of the ideas behind ebay in the first place was to give people a place to sell their stuff. If your item gets buried inside 100 dealers' items, it makes it that much harder for the average person to successfully sell something on ebay. It's not a major problem, and one thing that could really help would be if sellers offering multiples of the same item actually set up a multi-item auction, instead of listing the same item 100 times.

 

[Marvin]

This site isn't part of eBay (as far as I know) but it looks like it will allow you to do that:
http://www.toolhaus.org/

 

[Chris Lockwood]

> I don't care how many auctions you run-if you don't have time to answer questions (and "have you shipped it" is a very valid question), then stop selling so many items.

No, stop wasting my time by asking me 12 hours after the auction ended whether the item has shipped. Allow a reasonable amount of time for it to arrive. Ditto for questions about tracking numbers, or "when will it arrive?" (I dunno, ask the post office).


> My point was that it seems like one of the ideas behind ebay in the first place was to give people a place to sell their stuff. If your item gets buried inside 100 dealers' items, it makes it that much harder for the average person to successfully sell something on ebay.

I see you don't understand how the listings on ebay work. When you do a search, you DO NOT see items from ebay stores unless there aren't enough auction items found. In that case you'll get store listings at the bottom.

You do know that ebay makes money on each sale or listing, right? So why would they set up their site to favor someone who has only 1 or 2 items to sell? That would make no sense.

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

That would depend entirely on how the seller responds. If they are a prick about it, then no, they shouldn't get positive feedback, as that is unfair to other buyer who might likewise receive shoddy merchandise or poor service, even if in the end the problem is corrected. There should be, on the buyer's side, an attempt at reconcilliation before any feedback is posted, and whining about shipping charges clearly stated in the auction is just plain stupid. I like the new feature that allows you to see shipping charges before even entering an auction. Saves me a lot of time on low dollars items as I can avoid those who are making all their money on shipping charges.

As for asking for tracking numbers, this isn't some frivolous request. The UPS service I have doesn't notify me when a parcel has arrived, and they only hold items for so long, so being able to track the shipment is critical. I usually ask for a tracking number along with the payment, rather than send a separate email. It isn't so much a matter of knowing the thing has shipped wihin minutes of the auction end as it is being able to know when to expect delivery.

I too wish you could view only the negative comments, as a lot of time the complainer is a loser. It's also nice to see what the seller had to say in response to get a feel for how they conduct themselves. I bought an item today from a seller with a good number of negatives, but all the complaints were from noobs who simply didn't understand the process. My dealings with the store have been fine so far, and I don't expect any problems with my purchase.

 

[Andrew Bunk]

Good point Jeff. My comment was made assuming the seller is not combative about resolution.


Regarding status inquiries, I let Paypal do the talking. When I generate the postage label from my items the night before I drop them off at the P.O., I update the Paypal transaction detail with the tracking information. This in turn generates an email to the buyer with the shipping carrier and tracking #. I do feel it's nice as a buyer to receive a shipping status, instead of just bidding and waiting for it to arrive. But a lot of sellers don't have time to personally email every buyer. So the Paypal system works well for me in this case.

The only bad thing is the USPS in my area does not do origin scans on items dropped in the internet postage box, so basically, until the day the item is in the buyer's delivery area, the tracking shows only the Electronic Information received info. I have receive a fair amount of requests for status because of this, but still not nearly as many as I would if I didn't use Paypal's notification.