Suzy Jagger and Jonathan Richards
Posted on 02/06/2008 8:42:06 AM PST by Stoat
All buyers and sellers are equal in the virtual auction world of eBay, but buyers are about to become more equal than everyone else.
From May, eBay, the world's biggest online auction house, will block sellers from posting any negative or neutral comments about buyers who purchase their goods to coax more of them on to the site.
The move means that anyone selling an item will have little recourse to complain that the purchaser of their Britney Spears T-shirt or antique Whitby egg-timer had been a late payer, or had become a persistent troublemaker, grumbling unfairly about their acquisition.
At the moment, eBay buyers and sellers are encouraged to give a rating about their counterpart on the auction site's feedback system, which alerts other customers about bad experiences and helps to self-regulate the auction site. A buyer or seller with a bad rating is effectively blacklisted. At present customers can scroll through several months of comments about both buyers and sellers to decide whether they feel comfortable doing business with them. Frequent gripes include a seller over-charging for postage, a purchased item delivered late or one party being generally dishonest.
EBay has defended the move, claiming that buyers need more protection than sellers because they have to send money to a counterparty they do not know.
A spokesman for Ebay said yesterday that the auctioneer wanted to stamp out an increasing practice where sellers who had received a bad rating would retaliate by posting a poor rating on the buyer. "Some sellers are gaming the system. And some buyers in turn have been turned off," the spokesman said.
The group added that it is rare for buyers to renege on payments. But sellers have claimed that the new system leaves them vulnerable to extortion with buyers wielding the ability to blacklist them without the opportunity to defend themselves.
A week ago eBay - which makes the bulk of its revenue from commissions - announced that it cutting the amount it cost to list an item on the site by a third, but increasing the commission it charged on completion from 5.25 to 7.5 per cent.
For the vast majority of sellers, this had the effect of increasing the overall cost of shifting goods on the site. For instance, to sell a £100 camera now costs £6.70, where previously it would have cost £5.85.
The higher commission means that sellers of high value goods now also pay more.
Sellers have claimed that the new system leaves them vulnerable to extortion, with buyers wielding the ability to blacklist them without the opportunity to defend themselves.
A week ago eBay - which makes the bulk of its revenue from commissions - said that it was cutting the amount it cost to list an item for sale on the site by a third but was increasing the commission it charged on completion from 5.25 to 7.5 per cent.
The new pricing structure unleashed a torrent of complaints on eBay's message boards, where its sellers - who have long been a vocal community - vented their anger.
One said: “The fees are deceiving: lowering the front-end cost, then adding it to the final fee. Anyone who can do the math can see that they are not lowering the fees, they are increasing them.” Another said: “As a seller, I have been kicked in the head.”
The latest upheaval comes at a difficult time for eBay. Its core business has struggled against slowing growth rates and it is trying to combat issues such as fraud, as well as increased competition from vendors, such as Amazon.
Last year it said that it was taking a $1.4billion (£712 million) charge in relation to Skype, the telephony service that it bought for $2.6 billion in 2005 and for which it admitted it had overpaid. Analysts have also expressed concern at the failure to increase the number of users, which remains static at 83 million.
How does E-Bay make its money? (I’ve never used E-Bay.)
I believe that most of their revenue comes from the various fees that sellers are required to pay in order to transact sales at their site. It's free for buyers to use eBay.
This is VERY STUPID.
As someone who is not a high volume seller, it was VERY important to me to HAVE those ratings as a buyer, because it helped establish my credibility as a seller.
Without that, many people won’t have any ratings and there is a dispute process with negative ratings and the vast majority of negative ratings are for SELLERS, anyway, so this change is unnecessary.
It hurts buyers. Now, sellers cannot distinguish between credible and non-credible buyers.
How stupid.
My biggest issue with PayPal/Ebay is their customer service is all people who read from a script and simply are not fluent enough or not bold enough to try to REALLY understand the issue. Maybe the ones from the email are but the ones on the phone leave a LOT to be desired in terms of even comprehending the situation.
Almost every time I’ve spoken to someone from the Philippines or India, I feel like I wasted my time. (that goes for any CS call, not just PayPal or Ebay but credit cards also)
Your point about the blackmail aspect of seller feedback on buyers is appreciated and I adjust my previous position.
I think there should be a means to leave feedback about buyers but perhaps it has to be restricted to POST-official complaint to Ebay (regarding scamming, non-payment, etc.)
In any case, I recently won a jersey on EBay and PayPal still had my old account as the default and I told the buyer this and that I would look into how that resolves and still pay him from my open account. I did so and when I had not received the item, he said I had cancelled the payment and to pay him the money.
He and I went through several messages where I had to explain it to him. Because PayPal/Ebay want you to document your communications, I initiated a dispute on PayPal and he refunded my money after sending me a late email saying he would send the item.
All he had to do was send the stupid item. I feel like, in my bones, the person either had too many sales to understand that he WAS paid from the same guy with the cancelled payment OR he thought he could scam me out of some extra cash by playing stupid.
Well, I’m out the jersey but I got refunded.
I didn’t leave him any feedback with an implicit understanding that he wouldn’t leave me any. Consider it a misunderstanding and move on, since no one took a financial loss.
If you call them by their proper name FeeBay you'll begin to understand.
I've found parts for vintage motorcycles and boats and even a plane on eBay I never would have located elsewhere, and would never have been able to use the vehicles otherwise, so I'm thankful for it, but this latest crap is just the height of arrogance and greed and contempt for sellers.
Ebay doesn't directly charge buyers but when sellers have to jack up their shipping to raise money to pay the selling fees...well, you get the idea.
Yes, charges will get passed along to the buyer.
Personally, I have had to resort to giving a negative feedback a handful of times, and everytime, the seller slammed me in a negative feeedback.
2 of the times involved not receiving the product at all, then, after over a month of trying to work with the seller, giving up and posting negative feedback, paypal would investigate and get my money back for me.
The third was when I bought an "As New Demo" dirtbike from a dealer, only to have a POS that looked like it had run the Baja 1000, then performed messenger service on the UN/Hezzbollah Blue Line and then shipped to me.
I didn't buy it through pay pal (funny thing, the dealer didn't accept them), so my only recourse was to post my complaint on numerous motorcycle websites, including one brand specific site that had a dealer feedback section, where my complaint has recieved 18,482 views and 205 posts (until they froze the thread) in the 37 months it's been standing, an all time record.
In that case, the site administrator tried to mediate a solution, and there was 2nd hand input from both sides, but the seller refused to take the bike back or effect repairs, and Ebay wouldn't do anything about it. However, about 1/4 or better of the complaints turn out to be too high or unreasonable expectations from the buyer, who will often start publicly slamming the company as their 1st recourse.
Once these situations have a chance to air themselves out, almost all come to amiable conclusions, with the exception of a few rotten eggs that show up time and time again, and simply don't put a value on credibility.
Muzzling one side's ability to defend or cry fowl will only lead to unscrupulous characters trying to take advantage of honest businessmen, just the same as it would the consumers if the tables were turned.
Post a caveat with each ad; Buyers with more than 1 negative feedback will have their bids removed. Period.
This is a good move. Many sellers who receive and deserve a negative will give the buyer a negative in retaliation. All a buyer has to do is pay and pay promptly. A buyer takes all the risk! Sellers can protect themselves requiring Paypal or checks that they hold before they ship.
That happens quite frequently, and has prompted me to look at a seller's activity before ever placing a bid. Even though I've never left a negative (even though I should have.....but I decided to let the matter go because I was worried about retaliation spoiling my perfect feedback record) knowing how the seller reacts to such events gives me an insight into his or her character. Do I want to give money to somebody who has a history of slamming others with retaliatory negatives on numerous occasions? Probably not, no matter how good of a deal the item is.
I bought an "As New Demo" dirtbike from a dealer, only to have a POS that looked like it had run the Baja 1000, then performed messenger service on the UN/Hezzbollah Blue Line and then shipped to me.
I'm very sorry to hear of your bad luck with such an expensive item. I feel lucky that the stoatmobile has ended up being such a winner for me. I bought it sight unseen, using only the eBay description and the 'feeling' that I got about the seller from his online activity and other feedback as my guide. Boy, I sweated bullets when I bid on that thing but it's turned out to be the best car I've ever had in my life....although it could have easily turned out the opposite way. Pure luck and stoat-sense, that's all it was.
Muzzling one side's ability to defend or cry fowl will only lead to unscrupulous characters trying to take advantage of honest businessmen, just the same as it would the consumers if the tables were turned.
You're probably right, and I wish that I knew of a "perfect" answer for all this. After another decade or so the internet will be fine-tuned like a racehorse and we'll all be laughing at the primitive methods we used back in the early years of the century.
can’t you still leave a response to the negative feedback of a buyer which shows up underneath the negative feedback? I had a seller lie about my transaction and left me a negative so I just responded and it shows up underneath his bs.
My point is you sell a high volume and you sell frequently.
I only sell during short periods, once a year. When I first heard about the new feedback policy, I wasn’t worried because I figured any buyer trying to extort discounts using the threat of negative feedback wouldn’t be a problem, since my feedback is up around 300, all of it positive. Any other potential buyers would be able to see my overwhelming positives in the face of such nonsense. But it turns out the new policy includes expiring my postive feedback after a year, which means I have to start all over again building up trust with buyers.
I just looked at our ratings for the last 12 months. 7332 Positive, 28 Neutral, 4 Negative. We really try not to leave neutral or negative feedback. We also try to work out problems. Sometimes we get someone who complains about everything...It doesn,t work right, it doesn’t look like the photo, I don’t like where it was manufactured. We usually bend over backward, give refunds, etc and some will still leave negative feedback. Then you look at their feedback and all sellers have the exact same problem. So we block them from further bidding. It is not worth the trouble. Without feedback on buyers, how do you know if they are just having a bad day or if they are always so much trouble to deal with?
After reading in much more detail I am joining thousands of others and boycotting ebay for both selling and buying Feb 18-25 in protest of the new changes which really hurt ‘the little guy’
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000636290&tstart=0&mod=1202882850050
Please join me and tell others.
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