[Stoat]

Related articles that may be of interest:

eBay sellers split on changes - washingtonpost.com

Exasperated eBay Sellers Threaten to Strike Epicenter from Wired.com

[Puppage]

Don’t want to upset little Billy’s self esteem now, do we?

[CarrotAndStick]

I hope they don’t abandon comments regarding sellers.

[forkinsocket]

Whaaat? This is ridiculous.

[patton]

Huh. I just bought a house off Craigs List.

I am pretty sure the seller didn’t pay them %7.5

[OSHA]

.... an increasing practice where sellers who had received a bad rating would retaliate by posting a poor rating on the buyer.

BS!

I have a rating of about 300 with 1 negative. It was retaliation from negative FB left for a no-pay buyer with a -1 rating on a $2.50 item.

[randita]

I'm an occasional Ebay seller and buyer. I've had a few times where buyers who won the auction never completed the purchase. I never send the item until paid, but it's annoying having to chase them down and then to apply to Ebay for a refund of the listing fees. I left negative feedback for those bidders.

I also had an occasion where someone claimed I didn't represent the item properly (I did) and demanded money back plus all shipping fees even though I had a No Returns policy on the item as it was not an expensive item. I fulfilled that request at cost to me, but didn't leave negative feedback. Instead I just blocked the person from bidding on any of my items in the future.

By and large, I've been very satisfied with the Ebay transactions I've made.

[MtnClimber]

Wow, I have an e-bay business and the level of buyer fraud is incredible. We had to start using delivery confirmation on everything because some buyers would use Paypal, claim the item never arrived and e-bay would return the money no matter how many times the buyer had pulled this stunt. The fact that a buyer did not want to buy insurance did not matter at all. Been looking at Amazon too!

[South40]

eBay moves closer to subsidiary PayPal in the SUCK department.

[Melinda]

In an increasingly dishonest world, Ebay buyers are also using sellers to replace broken possessions virtually for free buy “purchasing” a set of items, and then claiming one piece arrived broken(the one they want to replace), and then expect a refund after returning the broken one. Good luck Ebay, the criminals have figured out how to use your sellers, too. For this reason, I know of several users who have canceled seller accounts.

[JZelle]

Frequent gripes include a seller over-charging for postage, a purchased item delivered late or one party being generally dishonest.

What's fair postage anyway? Is it the actual shipping charge, or is it ok to add few dollars for your own handling (box, envelope, driving to PO)? I always try to charge as close to actual shipping as possible. However, I recently purchased a couple shirts where the guy charged me $12 while the actual shipping charge was $4.90.

[CharlesWayneCT]

E-bay should figure out how to track late payments directly, and do their own “rating” for the buyers that way. Buyers should not be rated subjectively.

[GovernmentShrinker]

A better system would to be to prevent any feedback for a given transaction from being publicly posted until both buyer and seller have left feedback. Eliminates the retaliation phenomenon, while keeping information about both buyers and sellers available to prospective buyers and sellers.

[Teacher317]

I think this is a decent idea. As a buyer, I was once HIGHLY unsatisfied with my purchase, and wrote so. The seller responded by writing a highly negative review of me, then immediately offered to retract it if I would do likewise... in other words, their ability to leave negative comments was used as blackmail. The sellers have FAR less risk on eBay, since they do not release the goods until the money has cleared. As such, they should not also have the ability to abuse the comments feature simply to retain falsely high ratings. Buyers risk getting shafted by inaccurate photos and descriptions, poor shipping, late shipping, etc. The comments feature is really the only tool that they have, and giving sellers equal power there is unnecessary.

[Danette]

Ebay is competing against Amazon. Amazon sellers don’t leave feedback for buyers. Amazon is safer for buyers.

As a buyer, I’m happy with this new change. Now, I can honestly rate the seller without retaliatory feedback.

Sellers are FINALLY going to have to give good customer service, not over charge on shipping, and actually give good descriptions.

The big thing for sellers is this:

When will PayPal release the eBay item hold?

PayPal will release the hold when the earliest of the following occurs:

* the buyer leaves positive feedback, * 3 days after confirmed item delivery* or * 21 days without a dispute, claim, chargeback, or reversal filed on that transaction.

* This applies to US domestic transactions that are shipped by USPS or FedEx and either (i) use PayPal shipping labels to ship items or (ii) upload tracking information to PayPal via the transaction details page.

[packrat35]

This move is crap. I sell on eBay and I expect to be able to leave bad feedback if I don’t get paid. Now buyers can ding me and I have no recourse. That is stupid.

Do retalitory feedback happen? Yes it does and sometimes it is warrented. If you buy from me and I delver and did nothing wrong, then leave me negative feedback. Why shouldn’t I dod the same.

There’s a lot of little turds that get off on leaving negative feedback for no reason. Also newbies are particularly bad about negative feedback for no reason.

I almost always leave feedback now for buyers immediatly after they pay, except for those with 20 or less feedback. They are the ones who would try to scam me the most. Now I can’t even protect myself that way either.

Ebay has been getting more and more expensive for sellers and less useful. I will probably wrap up my selling by June and just quit for a while.

[TBP]

So now if the buyer cheats you, you have no recourse. (Of course, you could leave “positve” feedback with negative comments as the substance, right?)

Must be a self-esteem, PC thing. Can’t have buyers feeling bad. They might buy elsewhere and eBay might lose its commission — so we’ll be nice to them, whether they screw you or not.

[toddlintown]

I had a moron with just 2 prior sales (a newbie) complain that a package he received from me was missing pieces and broke and finally ended his complaint with “etc.” as another complaint.

The package was insured and I told him to make a claim with USPS and explain to me how I’m supposed to handle and rectify a complaint of “etc?”

He wouldn’t file the claim with USPS because he said the outside of the box wasn’t damaged. When I told him that was irrelevant, that the inside contents could still have been damaged by rough handling and he should make the freaking claim with USPS, he turned around and instead gave me a negative rating. Buttressed between his negative were all kinds of accolades by others for my “quick service,” “well-packed item,” and “timely mailing.”

All this for a $15 item.

You always wind up with a drama queen who won’t follow eBay procedures.

[4yearlurker]

About 20% of my Ebay customers are late payers or dead beats. A seller can still file a NPB against the buyer. Buyers will now be getting positive negatives. How is a seller to know if a buyer is a non-payer? This move by Ebay is down right stupid. I’m selling up to May and then I’m done with Ebay. A seller will be at the buyers mercy and a lot of buyers WILL take advantage of the new feedback system.

[Tanniker Smith]

So I’ll leave “Postitive feedback”: You suck. I wish I could still give Negative Feedback!!!!!!! F- F- F- F-

[BaBaStooey]

The only time I was hit with negative feedback, was when I was a buyer, and I gave a seller neutral feedback, because I felt that the cost of the shipping and handling was too high (roughly $5) relative to the long length of time (nearly a month) that it took to ship the item (one CD).

The seller retaliated by hitting me with negative feedback. Their biggest complaint was that I e-mailed them a few times during that long month, trying to follow up to see if I would ever get the item.

If the new rules have anything to do with someone else in my situation no longer experiencing what I experienced, then I support it wholeheartedly.