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.
auctionarms.com is popular.
Carolyn
That’s the real problem. There are scam artists out there who will purchase an item, and then start negotiating for a lower price, holding the threat of negative feedback against the seller. This just makes that all that much easier since they now have nothiing to fear from the feedback process.
That sux.
I’m certainly not tied to Ebay as a buyer. I hope other sites can compete.
Can you post some of those? :)
Thanks-
I’ve been selling and buying on ebay for several years but I’m wondering if another avenue might not be better.
I do far more selling than I do buying, and I don’t like the changes they are making. I particularly don’t like the feedback change. I rarely leave negative feedback but I’d like to have the option.
It really irritates me that I can do everything humanly possible to satisfy a buyer yet that person can then turn around and leave negative feedback. I’ve also had a couple of dissatisfied buyers leave negative feedback without ever attempting to let me know there was a problem. I think the feedback system should be set up so that can’t be done. I try to give good, honest service, but occasionally a mistake can be made.
I also charge a small shipping and handling fee; as another poster said, packaging materials can cost and I try to make sure things are well-packed. It also drives me nuts when people try to get me to reduce shipping costs. I list costs in the listing, so you aren’t going to be unpleasantly surprised at the auction’s end. I don’t charge anything outrageous, so if you don’t like the cost, don’t bid.
I think I’m going to check out amazon and wagglepop and maybe abebooks, too.
As a seller with over one thousand positives, I can tell you Ebay sucks.
Nothing but wannabe e-tailers now.
Their fees are too high, and since Paypal buddied up. I cancelled my Paypal.
I use craigslist for both buying and selling.
We bought a car off Ebay (probably our first mistake) and it turned out that there were problems with it. Arizonacarnut was the seller. He is a dealer in Arizona. When we tried to get him to make good, he refused so we posted negative feedback. So instead of trying to make good, he employed some outfit called Squaretrade, paid them some money, and they somehow got the negative feedback removed. Lately, we have noticed he did the same thing to someone else. So as long as there are outfits that can get negative feedback removed from Ebay, then there is no leval playing field.
bidville.com
epier.com
webbidz.com
ioffer.com
overstock.com
ecrater.com
Among others..........
A very good gun auction site is Gunbroker.com
I'm sorry to hear of your poor experiences. I purchased the stoatmobile on eBay, and it is the best car I've owned in my life, I got a fantastic deal on it and the seller was a courteous gent all 'round, so both ends of the spectrum do indeed exist, and by mentioning my opposite impressions I don't mean to imply that I'm trying to diminish yours....there are definitely some bad actors out there, which is to be expected anywhere where a buck can be made.
Thank you for your insights on SquareTrade....I have purchased items from sellers advertising their affiliation with this service but I wasn't aware that feedback removal was part of what they do.
Try craigslist. I believe they also allow people to pay using Google checkout.
related benefit to eBay from bringing in new buyers of obscure stuff is that many of these people are probably not in the habit of online shopping, or at least not on this type of site. Once they start hanging around eBay looking for obscure items, they’ll soon start to notice that you can get just about anything on eBay, and start shifting some shopping that they used to do in bricks-and-mortar stores, or the online sites of bricks-and-mortar store chains, to eBay
I think what's going to happen is the complete opposite. I am a full time (almost) Ebay seller. I deal in antiques and hard to find oddities. I have almost 1000 sales and 100% positive feedback.
With the new system, they are going to wipe out your hard earned ratings and only keep the past years I think (both buyer and seller).
Any seller with under 100 recent sales (60 days I believe) will be required to take Paypal. Paypal will hold your money in their "escrow" account for up to 21 days. I've heard that they give buyers their money back for no reason at all.
The new search engine they will implement will show you items listed by their criteria. Their criteria is by Powerseller and their rating. Little guys items are going to be hard to find.
There's a whole lot more changes than simply upping the fees and not allowing sellers to give feedback anymore. You will find less oddities and much more big box items that you can find anywhere.
Small sellers are being squeezed out.
I'm very sorry to hear that. Some of the most wonderful things that I've bought on eBay came from smaller sellers.
bump
I've looked at every alternative site to Ebay. No Haviland Limoges, no rare Railroad China. I'm not sure where I will sell anymore.
I am going to participate in the Boycott of Ebay that starts February 18. I won't buy or list anything that week. I'm hoping the boycott will work and they will rescind at least part of the new rules.
What’s the best alternative for auctioning books? I looked at Abebooks but probably wouldn’t do enough volume to make it pay for itself. Also, I like to sell books by the box on occasion.
Not a matter of esteem but reputation.
Here’s a recent event:
Ordered a used router. From the picture it looked next to new, complete with box.
Paid promptly using paypal.
Item did not ship for 20 days.
Seller did not provide tracking info or respond to inquiries.
Item arrived in an unsuitable container.
Item arrived dinged, scratched and filthy, complete with a drinking glass ring on it.
So when the buyer gets treated like this and then gives deserved negative feedback about the seller, why should the seller be able to retaliate and leave underved negative remarks?
Many people won’t do business with ebayers that have more than a couple negatives, so yes, those remarks could hurt more than your feelings.
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