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Location: Alabama | It seems like there should be some way to denote buyers who never pay for auctions.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/business/2008/02/06/janis.uk.ebay.... |
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Location: NJ | I cannot see this lasting long.
I have so many e bay idiot buyers it is not funny |
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Location: enid, ok | I'm with you guys. I don't see this as a viable option for long. Unless they throw in free airfare and a nice Louisville Slugger for every buyer that deserves it. Nah, hell they'd go broke in no time. |
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Location: Colorado Rocky Mountains | This is interesting. I have only bought things on eBay and have never sold a thing. I wonder if my 100% positive rating with 187 qualified transactions, albeit all purchases, will be stripped from my profile? Won't sellers be concerned about the legitimacy and history of their prospective buyers? As a legitimate buyer, I might be equally concerned that there will no longer be any institutional incentive to keep sellers without scruples from using shell buyers to run up the cost of items. |
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Location: Madison, Wisconsin | I have to agree with the story. I purchased a road case and it was suposed to ship in a week. It took almost a month to get it and when I left neg feedback, they slammed me. I ended up having to pull the feedback and they were suposed to rebate me $25. Never got the money after repedted requests but at that point, I had no recourse. (Don't buy from Island Cases) |
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Location: The State of Hockey | As a seller and a buyer I think this is a lousy idea. This throws the sale way off balance for the buyers, and there are many unscrupulous buyers out there |
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Location: Phoenix | I'm all for it. I bought an item a year ago, paid immediately with Paypal, waited a month and never got it. Sent emails, no response. Went through Ebay email, no response. Filed dispute, weeks later FINALLY got the item.
So I left negative feedback on the seller. Guess what? The jerk left negative FB on ME the buyer!!! And despite what Square Trade claims, there's no way to have retaliatory negative feedback eliminated. |
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Location: NJ | eBay?
(click.) |
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Location: 6 String Ranch | Ebay can be good Cliff, just like there are times when Nora Jones is OK, and Barry Manthat'slow, and yawnie.
I've got a lot of stuff from ebay. Just got to be careful, that's all. |
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Location: closely held secret | My wife and I have an ebay business, so I keep up on this stuff. I have very mixed feelings about it.
If you read through all the details:
" * Buyers will only be able to receive positive Feedback.
* Positive repeat customer Feedback will count (up to 1 Feedback from the same buyer per week.)
* Feedback more than 12-months old won't count towards your Feedback percentage.
* When a buyer doesn't respond to the Unpaid Item (UPI) process the negative or neutral Feedback they have left for that transaction will be removed.
* When a member is suspended, all their negative and neutral Feedback will be removed.
* Buyers must wait 3 days before leaving negative or neutral Feedback for sellers with an established track record, to encourage communication.
* All Feedback must be left within 60 days (compared to 90 days today) of listing end to encourage timely Feedback and discourage abuse.
* Buyers will be held more accountable when sellers report an unpaid item or commit other policy violations."
The only part of this I'm really not happy with is not having any method of warning other sellers about buyers who don't understand how damaging negs are to sellers, and hand them out for no intelligent reason.
It does seem weighted toward the buyer, but look at other businesses - do restaurants or music stores get to publicly complain about their customers? Nope. If the customer violates a rule or policy then some sort of action (legal) can be taken, but the business must depend on their quality of service to be reflected in their customers response. Do businesses get customers who are absolute jerks and would complain no matter how good the service was? Sure, all the time.
I'm more concerned about the other changes ebay slipped in, like the 'safe payments':
"To help ensure more buyers are protected, in some cases we'll require sellers to offer either PayPal or a merchant credit card to customers. PayPal buyer protection covers most qualified transactions up to $2000.00 USD.
Sellers will only be required to provide this safe payment option to customers in certain situations:
* For listings in riskier categories, like computers and cell phones
* If the seller has 5% or more dissatisfied customers
* If the seller has less than 100 Feedback
In a small number of cases (fewer than 5% of all payments on eBay), PayPal will hold payment funds until either the buyer has left positive Feedback or 21 days have passed without a claim."
If they start tweaking the requirements up PP could be sitting on a lot of seller's money, making interest while we wait to be paid.
...or the fee changes. Dropping the listing fees a few pennies while raising the FVF by >3.5% on auctions and >3% on store sales, and calling it 'a reduction in fees' is pretty close to fraud, IMO. Whether or not you actually save anything depends entirely on your percentage of unsold listings. In other words, it won't cost you as much to NOT sell something, but it WILL cost you more if you sell it.
They're also going to start basing visibility and FVF discounts on DSR's (Detailed Seller Rating, which is optional for the buyer). We'll have to wait and see how that goes.
[/ebay_rant_end] |
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Location: Atlanta GA | I have both bought and sold items on ebay. I have had both good and bad transactions both ways. It seems to me that the one leveragable recourse is the feedback system. Of course there are people who don't care about that. They can take your money or your item and then just create another name, buy a bunch of $.99 items for references and then scam you on the $600.00 item and disappear. But without full understanding of how ebay works, it seems the feedback system does give an incentive for basically honest people not to be tempted to do the unthinkable. (I don't know what % of people on ebay this applies to)
I will say that Ebay "has it going on", this .com is one of few that has turned into a huge global interprise. I can't believe they would remove one of the major features (at least in my mind) without careful consideration to it impact on the business. |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | Originally posted by Mauvais Beal:
Ebay can be good..., just like ... Barry Manthat'slow, and yawnie. Beal, that's enough bourbon. |
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Posts: 4389
Location: Capital District, NY, USA Minor Outlying Islands | I heard that ebay has matured as a business and they aren't getting as many new users annually as they did in the past. It looks like everyone who would use ebay, is using ebay, and they're trying to get more customers by encouraging buyers. Problem is that they've forgotten about the other side of the transaction.
Ah, I'll see how it goes. I lived without ebay once, I can probably do it again. Though it'll be a lot harder for me to get rid of stuff. |
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Location: Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey | Originally posted by Mauvais Beal:
Ebay can be good Cliff, just like there are times when Nora Jones is OK, and Barry Manthat'slow, and yawnie.
I've got a lot of stuff from ebay. Just got to be careful, that's all. Hey, don't say anything about Nora Jones. I had a bad case of insomnia once which her music cured instantly! |
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Location: Phoenix AZ | It's a business just like any other business. The owners look for ways to tweak it and improve the bottom line.
Ebays customers (source of revenue) are the SELLERS. They make nothing from buyers. So it is in ebay's best interest to do everything they can to attract more SELLERS. But sellers need buyers. It would seem antilogical that removing the feedback tool for sellers would attract more of them. BUT, I am sure they have done their homework and believe that this move will attract more buyers, and therefor more sellers to serve them, and the honestly and repulation of the sellers should improve since they have no way to retaliate against a buyer over a bad transaction. Just my 2 pesos.
Dave |
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| As it's been said, Ebay is pro-seller, period. It's easy for Ebay to presume all their sellers are going to be honest, so they think all us buyers are obliged to take Ebay's word for it. Nonesense. BoycottEbay.com There's an idea that might get their attention... |
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Location: Atlanta GA | Every time some comes up with a better mouse trap, someone else comes up with a better mouse...
My openion is that they are "forcing" more transactions to be handled through Paypal. Which is costly and not without further potential issues, but a seller would be silly not to use it now on big ticket items.
BUY STOCK IN PAYPAL and never send any money or items that you can't live without. You can fully expect to lose them (seemingly now more than ever) |
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| It's a tough decision either way, but as a buyer I've never used paypal, just bank wires on the large puchases and money orders on the smaller ones. I've heard horror stories about paypal, but then there are those who've never had a problem. Ebay appears to presume an endless supply of buyers. |
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Location: NJ | pay pal
cut me a break. some guy gets around all the rules of a merchant credit card account and offeres credit card service to average people with higher fees.
e bay buys pay pal and now requires that their users use it?????? can you say monopoly?????
oh yeah I used to do 90 percent of my overseas sales via western union and UPS decides western union is prone to fraud so they tell people not to use it and you cannot mention it in your autcions without getting the auctions canned. Wow how did an over 100 year old company get from respected to merchants of fraud with pay pal being less than 10 years old on top?
boggles the mind. |
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| Sounds like Paypal and UPS are still on their honeymoon... Western Union has never failed me in any transaction. If Ebay requires me as a buyer to use paypal, they lost my business forever. |
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Location: Atlanta GA | In my mind the push towards PayPal is more subtle than them just saying "you have to use PayPal". The implication is that you can send payment anyway you want, but if there a problem the response from eBay will be "You should have used PayPal.
Lets say you send a guy $500 for a guitar, he cashes the WU wire or check and doesn't send the guitar. Can you call WU and ask for the money back? In the old feedback system you had this Marshmellow Hammer you could hit the seller with and now you don't (and it went both ways). At least if you used PayPal they would refund the money and try to resolve it. In theory.
I'm not promoting PayPal, but it is a form of hedging your bet in the case something goes wrong. And eventually something will go worng on either side of the transaction, and short of the feeback system you have nothing otherwise. So in the OFC, the discussion threads will move from "Oh I hope the guitar doesn't get stuck in a cold truck in Pittsburg over the weekend" to "I just hope the seller shipped it". |
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Location: Scotland | "If Ebay requires me as a buyer to use paypal, they lost my business forever"
Like they'll care. There were some stock market figures in a music trade mag this month. Publicly-traded music or music-related companies with market capitalization in the billions:- 1st - Apple Computers, $168Billon, 2nd - Ebay $48Billion. The only "real" music company anywhere near was Yamaha at just under $5billion. Ebay are huge, and as a result they can do pretty much anything they like and get away with it. Ebay is like flying with any Airline, You have 2 choices, don't fly or bend over and take it. |
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Location: Colorado Rocky Mountains | Originally posted by Watchme22:
In the old feedback system you had this Marshmellow Hammer you could hit the seller with and now you don't ... Isn't it only buyer feedback that is being discontinued? |
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| I only "USE" ebay now to sell items I need to get going in a hurry. They are really creating a monster of a monopoly that you just can't ignore. Between Ebay/Paypal fees and shipping it costs around $200 to sell and send a $2000 guitar.
I don't like it but if I consigned it it would cost me twice that or more so I will still use ebay. I think they know this. Just like FUEL, they know your going to pay for it. |
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Location: NJ | so I don't take pay pal. I take credit cards LIKE ALL LEGITITMATE BUSINESSSES.
Give me one additional advantiage you have using pay pal that you don't have using a credit card.
you have to dispute the charge any way you look at it. And what many people don't realize is that the item HAS to be returned to the seller. Many buyer scammers out there think that they can keep the item and cancel the charge WRONG. the first question the credit card company asks is "did you return the item"
pay pal is just another way to take money. As a legitimate business who pays for merchant services, I find this disgusting. The fact that e bay requires you to take pay pal is stupid.
Some of the "old timers" who would sell in the buy and sell papers or the vintage mags would accept postal money order only. Why? they can cash it at the post office and there is no paper trail.
So you take pay pal now you have to declare income, pay state sales tax etc. Do you think e bay is going to balk at providing information to the feds or state govt on your account? hell no and how friggin convenient is it for them to be able to show how much $$ you took in along with what kind of business you have.
I hate this subject. |
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Location: Atlanta GA | Originally posted by ProfessorBB:
Originally posted by Watchme22:
In the old feedback system you had this Marshmellow Hammer you could hit the seller with and now you don't ... Isn't it only buyer feedback that is being discontinued? |
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Location: Chehalis, Washington | The up side of Paypal (at the risk of being the only one who thinks so) is that it allows people who are not a "business" to be able to safely send and receive money that they would not otherwise be able to. I absolutely WILL NOT send some random person a money order or wire money for an item. A couple years ago I got scammed out of $2700 on a wire transfer deal, and I won't ever go there again.
Likewise, I've had two occasions that I bought items from private (non-business) sellers on ebay that turned out to be either bogus or damaged, and if not for Paypal's buyer protection system I would have lost money on both of those. Fortunately, it worked out, and I have not ever really had a problem with them.
The trick is, it's just another payment processor, who happened to be the first one to figure out how to provide that service to private parties. I can't fault them for that, nor can I fault ebay (their parent company) from wanting to encourage users to use that system, as it puts money right back in their pocket. Strikes me as good business sense overall, and last I heard something like 25% of ALL ONLINE SALES were handled through ebay in some way...astounding.
What DOES concern me as a frequent ebay user (200 transactions in 4 years) is taking away the balance of sellers being able to leave feedback. As I know many people here do also, I am very hesitant to deal with a buyer with no feedback, as the couple times I have I ended up getting burned in some way, even if it is just relisting fees from a deadbeat bidder. Likewise, the way the "reputation" system is set up ONLY works if there is reputation for "good" and "bad" buyers as well as sellers. I don't buy anything on ebay without checking feedback scores, and likewise require those with low or negative feedback to contact me before I let them bid. It's just simple good marketplace ethics if you ask me.
I think they're really shooting themselves in the foot here, since raising fees, requiring paypal of those who choose not to use it, and eliminating sellers' ability to judge the legitimacy of customers can only hurt the system in the long run. I for one will be much more hesitant to sell things through ebay if they make the process both more expensive and more risky for sellers.
...breathe...sorry, rant over. This just seems stupid to me. Kind of like if Ovation decided to stop distinguishing on the labels between Celebrity's and US-made guitars, and just put them both out for us to guess which is which. It would be ridiculous, and only hurt the brand in the long run. That's my concern here. Just my 2 cents. |
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Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | Originally posted by alpep:
so I don't take pay pal. I take credit cards LIKE ALL LEGITITMATE BUSINESSSES.
Give me one additional advantiage you have using pay pal that you don't have using a credit card.
you have to dispute the charge any way you look at it. And what many people don't realize is that the item HAS to be returned to the seller. Many buyer scammers out there think that they can keep the item and cancel the charge WRONG. the first question the credit card company asks is "did you return the item"
pay pal is just another way to take money. As a legitimate business who pays for merchant services, I find this disgusting. The fact that e bay requires you to take pay pal is stupid.
Some of the "old timers" who would sell in the buy and sell papers or the vintage mags would accept postal money order only. Why? they can cash it at the post office and there is no paper trail.
So you take pay pal now you have to declare income, pay state sales tax etc. Do you think e bay is going to balk at providing information to the feds or state govt on your account? hell no and how friggin convenient is it for them to be able to show how much $$ you took in along with what kind of business you have.
I hate this subject. What he said... especially the last line +1 +1 +1 +1
For me it works out. I only take Payment via paypal unless someone asks ahead of time to send a money order. But that's because it works for us. I do all my shipping via PayPal also, so all the records are in one place. It also figurs out the tax for me. However, I don't have a brick and morter store and I don't generally take phone orders.. but if I do, they pay via PayPal.
Again... it works for me at this time, but I could see if I was set up with a store or sold in places besides eBay... I'd be at wits end. I'm somewhat at wits end just reading about it.
But, to paraphrase what someone said.. I do have a choice. I could always starve... not much of a choice. :( |
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Location: Keepin' It Weird in Portland, OR | it wouldn't link.
sorry for wasting time/space |
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Location: NJ | another statement that makes my blood boil.
I don't use pay pal they cost too much.
so did you pay to set up a merchant account? do you pay a statement fee every month from 4 credit card companies? did you buy or rent a credit card terminal?
Oh no you didn't? how about that REAL BUSINESSES DO !!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
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Location: south east Michigan | One of the qwirkyest chacteristics about e-bay is how "real" business's stand shoulder to shoulder with the guy who is just trying to clear out some room in his closet. |
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Location: Chehalis, Washington | And the guy clearing room could soon end up with a multi-million dollar business just doing that. I hear those stories all the time.
Al, I'm not sure who you work through, but for our business we use both Paypal for online purchases through our website (because it's easy and I'm not a professional web designer and did it myself), but we have a merchant account and terminal for the road shows we do. For that, we purchased a terminal and pay merchant fees....and you know what? Our paypal account is actually MORE expensive to use. We don't pay monthly statement fees and did not pay to set up the account. Competition out there is way fierce for merchant services, and it's not too hard to find a good deal anymore.
If you do local business and use a bank, that's cool. If it's online and Paypal works for you, that's cool too. Different strokes for different folks I guess. |
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Location: Colorado | Unfortunately, we live in a society that demands instant gratification. This society wants hands-on control of its destiny (because it simply cannot trust others to do their job). This society wants things now--not next week, not tomorrow, NOW. PayPal and other online payment companies work and succeed because they are convenient for buyer and seller. Ebay and PayPal are a match made in "I have to have it now" heaven. And they know it.
Businesses and sellers are, in alot of cases, willing to pay the 3% PayPal fee out of their selling price. Once again, convenience.
It would probably go something like this:
The buyer who doesn't want to get up from their computer, walk to the garage, get into their car, push the button to open the garage door, turn the ignition key, put the car into gear, drive a mile or so to the nearest store that sells money orders, get out of their car, walk into the store, wait in line at the counter, actually communicate face-to-face with a human being, pull out their wallet and say, "Oh, crap--no cash. Where's the nearest ATM?", pay a $0.50 charge for the money order after paying a $2.00 fee at the ATM, get back in their car, drive home, pull out an envelope, address it, stamp it, put money order inside with printed off auction page, walk to mail box and put envelope inside, raise the red mail flag, walk back into the house, shut the door, walk back to the computer, sit back down and hope that, by the grace of God, the US Postal Service doesn't let them down.
In the time it took someone to read this, they could have paid for an auction item through PayPal and not been in a situation where they had to "make" time to go buy a money order and, God forbid, mail it and wait another week for the item they purchased. Am I guilty of this? Absolutely. Too many people believe their time is "worth" something. To some degree I used to be one of them.
In the last year or so I have been more careful than usual on Ebay. I am usually a buyer, not a seller. Generally speaking, based on my observations, buyers and sellers do not communicate well enough--that would take effort from both parties. Buyers are far too impatient and feel cheated. Untimely, hasty feedback is one of the results. Sellers feel justified in their "eye-for-an-eye" retaliation.
It takes effort to throw someone under a bus, but not much from a computer keyboard. It takes a little more effort to communicate on a courteous level in an attempt to avoid a reputation-damaging situation.
More proof to me that the internet is good for some things, not everything. |
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Location: west | I'm with you on this one Wabbit..
We have an ebay business and the items you highlighted area a concern for us too...
feb 20 coming at us like a freight train...
guess we'll see how it all works out... |
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Location: closely held secret | Unless Bill Cobb gets over-ridden (or ridden-over) these changes will happen, like it or not. We'll just deal with whatever happens. I know from reading the ebay forums that a lot of sellers are expecting the worst.
And Todd, we love buyers like you're describing. They make it possible for someone like my wife to operate a thriving and growing internet sales business despite not driving and having virtually no computer experience. |
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Location: NJ | back in the dark ages (the nineties) you had to pay to get a merchant account set up fees etc. I think it was $350 or something like that. I also had to purchase a terminal etc. I get statement fees every month and everytime I take an card it seems like my fees are higher but true not as high as pay pal
as for the feedback. I had some wanker from the UK bid on an item. he then sends me an e mail to cancel his bid, I tell him to withdraw his bid. he does not want to do that since it is an e bay strike against him. so he tells me he will not pay. I am out the listing fee and I have to wait 8 days to go through the e bay appeal procese to get my final value fees back. if i send him a negative he will give me one, although he deserves it not me.
so as a seller you are always screwed. |
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| The UK wanker concerned wasn't me, just in case you were wondering.
My bank actually has Lost Art's details listed and stored so I can just make a call and they send al money. SWMBO doesn't know this. I'd be grateful if it stayed that way. |
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Location: west | well check this out - it appears as if a large contingent of sellers are going to strike against ebay the week of 18-25 Feb - in protest of the rule changes - and i'm all for a general selling strike - I urge all of you to not sell one darn thing during the week of 18-25 Feb.. :-)
general ebay seller strike 18-25 Feb
NO SELLING! NO BUYING!! NO EBAYING!!!
FEB 18th - 25th and eBay...YOU'RE FIRED! |
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Location: closely held secret | Yeah, and nobody was gonna buy gas on May 15 to protest high prices. That worked well. |
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Location: SoCal | I followed the May 15th gas strike and didn't buy on the 15th. Instead, I filled up on the 14th..... |
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Location: Michigan | I just listed something on the E-Bay and it took me a half a hour and a BIG VO & Water with their live chat people to find out that I could still list an item without having to accept PayPal as a payment source.
After doing E-Bay for a few years to me it just keeps getting harder & longer for me to sell anything.They seem to be trying to get so creative with the way you that you list things that they are scaring away people like me who just want to clean out the basement and have some fun doing it.GWB |
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Location: closely held secret | I'm ashamed of you, Paul. I certainly didn't fill up on the 14th.
I had plenty to get me through till the 16th... |
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Location: west | "Yeah, and nobody was gonna buy gas on May 15 to protest high prices. That worked well."
well - as has been said in the past - "you can lead the blind masses to water...."
fuel and ebay humm.. you're right! I see the vast similarities... :-)
but alas...it's true. it's hard enough to even sit down with yer kids for dinner and talk, much less getting the neighborhood together to discuss anything important... it's no wonder nothing works..
the consumer has a considerable amount of economic power; especially en-masse... and it's lost due to __________. (insert reason here) |
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Location: closely held secret | Ok, so the fuel/ebay comparison is a little shaky. The fuel thing won't work because people need fuel. Skipping one day is no sacrifice, and the oil companies never see a blip. In fact, it hurts the retailers who have no control over the price much more.
The point is, it's hard to get enough people to boycott when it's their livelihood at stake. |
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Location: Cicero, NY | Note to admins: I would like it duly noted that I'm willingly holding my tongue here... |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | and you look very silly doing that. |
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Location: Cicero, NY | ;) |
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Location: closely held secret | Hard to understand, too. C'mon, Weas, let the wisdom flow. |
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Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | I read the "new policy" and there are some things that it doesn't address, which may in fact be the silver lining.
Now this I'm sure doesn't apply to everyone, but just in our circumstance...
On not being able to leave negative feedback..
- I have gotten a few stupid negatives. They really were totally unfounded, and we received NO communication from the buyer at all. They paid, got their item, agreed it was as described, didn't like it, left negative. Now we did of course "respond" to the negative which is shown and really the important part. The fact that I pissed and left them a negative is pretty irrelevant. I only care about people reading feedback for me as a seller and right under the persons moronic comment, it my comment, and of course a link to the auction where any who cares to take the time can see it was just buyers remorse or whatever.
So, for that part of it, not such a big deal. We haven't had the cases that many have of a non-pay bidder leaving bad feedback too. That of course will end which is a good thing.
But as I said, I don't see where the "respond to negative" is going away, that's the real important one for my money.
- Now on the strike thing... Lisa came up with this, and frankly I'm surprised none of the 1000's discussing the strike came up with this idea and it's much more damaging and long lasting. Sellers should just stop leaving feedback. Period. Postive, or otherwise. When you buy something in a regular store you don't get a grade on how well you paid or how nicely you waited in line. However, if a customer does send you a nice note, you may post it on your bulletin board. We give feedback to those who leave us feedback, unless of course I'm the buyer, then I leave feedback.
But back to my point.. Rather than hurting ourselves with a week of lost business, that will have essentially no affect on eBay... just stop using the Feedback system. Those that need to respond to negatives can (response to neg), but other than that... don't. How will this affect anything you ask??? Simple.. All the new people that are signing up to eBay daily that need to get some sort of feedback to even be able to buy with most dealers. I believe most of my auctions state that you have to have a feedback of at least 2 to bid. If none of the new buyers from here forward get feedback... THAT will put a dent in eBay because it will drive BUYERS away. And THAT is who eBay caters to.
As it is... after the 20th, for the average joe buyer, it's business as usual. The people really affected by all this is "sellers". As long as there are buyers, there will be sellers. Drive the buyers away... eBay will listen.
As far as the "other" sites... sorry.. for many of us, it just isn't worth it. For myself it isn't worth it. The customers aren't there. eBay is just too big. I sell a lot of odd little odds and ends. Deciding to list something on a site with 2 or 3 million members, mostly focused on niche category, and regional (several sites are like this) or for the same money list to 13+ million people worldwide... simple answer.
Again.. NOT the solution for everyone.
FYI... The bit about "having" to use PayPal is only for certain "High Risk" items and applies to "New Users" mostly.
I know people love to feed off drama, gloom and doom, and paranoia, but after reading that eBay forum, the CNNMoney, ZDNet and other articles, I went and re-read the new policy. It has little affect on anyone doing a legit business on eBay, except the fee's which actually in some cases give discounts for high-volume, good service.
I will say this. It is making it harder for new people to start out on eBay. That is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because most of us will agree that our worst "customers" and incidents are created by NEW eBayers over items for which they paid less than $5.00, and of course non-pay bidders. This new system should weed some of them out. The down side is there are people out there that rarely use eBay... but I or you might have that special something they want, and now it's going to be a bit harder for them to have the opportunity to have it.
So, as they say... we shall see. Coke survived "New Coke"... eBay will press on as well. |
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Joined:
February 2005
Posts: 11840
Location: closely held secret | Good points, Miles. I had forgotten about 'respond to negs'. It is more important to be able to defend rather than retaliate.
Lisa's idea is a good one. Post it on the ebay forum! |
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Joined:
January 2008
Posts: 58
Location: west | This whole feedback change stems from ebay research that indicates that sellers left neg FB eight times more often then buyers. It's easy to see why. Anyone with a large FB rating with thousands of sales could leave a neg FB without fear of reprisal because the neg they received in return would not have a significant effect on their FB rating. But for a buyer with only 10 FB's, one neg would lower his/her score by 10%. Not very fair is it, and ebay says it is discouraging new ebay buyers.
Now the changes come and something to consider .. Now, as an ebay buyer it's going to be great. A negative can be left for a seller for any whimsical reason; and it can now be left without fear of reprisal. The new policy encourages buyers to leave negs and leave them more often. And hey, I'm a buyer too...
In light of this though, I wonder if I will ever perform as a seller well enough to never get a neg? My goal of perfect selling is now much harder; even though I always work my arse off to please buyers by offering honest product descriptions performing exceptional customer service.
Sure, they've instuted some new and additional seller protections. What remains to be seen is if they are all worthwhile or effective.
My take is that alot of "bad" sellers, probably very large volume sellers, have made ebay life difficult for all of us. Since ebay knows who they are why not punish them and leave the rest of us "good" sellers alone? Of course, you know the answer is revenue and cash flow. The large sellers make millions for ebay.
Why hasn't ebay thought of a FB weighting system? Maybe based on overall sales. To make the weight of each neg equal for all levels.
For those that aren't up to speed on what is happening please go and read the Jan 29 announcements on ebay from Bill Cobb and Jim Ambach, here's the link
ebay Jan 08 Announcements
Guess I'll just take a wait-and-see approach. Still I'm not selling for that week as I really don't have to. If I help I help, if not no biggie. |
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Joined:
December 2001
Posts: 7237
Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | " A negative can be left for a seller for any whimsical reason; "
You see that's what I thought... and I wondered about people just leaving negatives for everyone... But the ramification is actually worse. It will certainly look worse.
When I go to the page of the seller whom I left negative feedback... I see my feedback, and they didn't leave a comment. It's just noise on the screen. A few others had problems with this person also, but maybe they are bipolar cause they have lots of good feedback too.
If the new system was in place... when looking at this buyer... they would just have a very low number of feedbacks, but when you looked at their "feedback left for others" you'd see their negative comments and the "response" comments from the sellers. THAT would tell a real story.
I'm NOT saying the new system is perfect, or that it will cure all. I think some of the other idea's like a weighted system will help, and in fact, they are doing that to some extent with negative feedback over a year old no longer having an affect on score.
think what eBay really missed the boat on is explaining what ISN'T changing and also what are the "and other policies to protect sellers" are.
Again, even that notice they put out is catered to the BUYER even though it's the seller that makes eBay the money.
I actually think the biggest reason for the change other than the rates, is neither the sellers nor the buyers. It's the scammers. For most eBay is a pretty safe place to do business. Not perfect, but pretty safe for most. However, there are scam rings that are smartly making use of eBay, mostly from overseas.
Ordering things from buyers all over and not paying for them, or using bogus payments to get the goods strictly to resale in their home country. Then there are the groups that open several accounts, boost each others feedback, then open big bulk stores, sell 1000's in merchandise and deliver nothing. They go as far as they can, make as much as possible.. then wash, rinse, repeat. |
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Joined:
April 2007
Posts: 10
Location: Dartmouth UK | I've used ebay for about 7 years, have 600+ feedback, 100% positive as buyer and seller, transactions worldwide in both cases.
All I would input here is if you dont like it, dont use it!
Any body going to die if ebay ceases??
I'll hang back on clearing a "few more attic items" and see what happens.Okay if you have an ebay business it may be not to your liking, so adapt or move on..change is inevitable - USA management theories for years :-) |
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Joined:
July 2002
Posts: 1900
| Also agree Lisa's idea was great. I wonder how much the ebay people consider the sellers and buyers reccomendations before they make their decisions. The idea about 'a weighted system of feedback' would be quite practical. Ebay has been doing this a long time, so they must know the difference between the good sellers, the bad sellers and the scammers. |
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Joined:
January 2006
Posts: 5881
Location: Colorado Rocky Mountains | The changes have apparently not yet been put into effect. I just received positive feedback as a buyer (coincidently, for my unofficial OFC gatherings Hawaiian shirt!). |
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Ebay stops Seller's Feedback of Buyers