Rant eBay to "ban sellers from leaving negative comments about buyers"

Crazy idea if you ask me,ebay will have nothing but trouble.

 

What Fod said makes a lot of sense.

And this is something i've had experience with. The only negative feedback I have - I'm mostly a buyer, not a seller - is when I left negative feedback about a seller who then retaliated by giving me negative feedback, for no reason other than the fact I wasn't happy with him.

As far as what eBay have decided to do, i think it's not as good as Fod's suggestion but better than what's there at the moment. And funnily enough I'm tempted to leave somone i bought from recently some less-than-positive feedback, but i probably won't for fear of retaliation - quite as eBay describe

 

Without a doubt, that's the best solution. I can side with sellers in this issue (no feedback at all seems too much), but OTOH, I'm fed up with multi-sellers that don't leave feedback until you have posted yours, even when payment has been immediate, or forget to leave it at all.

This said, I much prefer eBay's solution to the current system. I've met more sellers that abuse it than the other way around. I hope eBay enforces some policies to protect the many honest and likable sellers that use it but at least I'm glado they are doing something.

 

So just leave positive feedback and ad a negative comment. I've sold stuff before and never received feedback at all from the sellers. It ticks me off when I pay promptly and then have to wait for a month or more to receive feedback from the seller. In my opinion a buyer who pays promptly deserves to get immediate positive feedback.

 

if that change goes through it will just piss off even more ebay users, honestly, the prices for many products are exactly the same as in retail, the variety of products is allready shrinking, you cant use it to dodge the vat anymore as in its early years because the government is watching closely, they are regularly increasing the fees for the sellers (which those try to recover with inflated postage fees) and so on. ebay is really going downhill...

 

I had a bit of a root around on eBay looking for more info on the feedback changes and dug this up, it looks its not all bad news :

source : fleaBay

Looks like eBay have taken some notice of what people are concerned about and made some changes, or that most of what is floating around on the web is concentrating on point 2 and the restrictions in point 5, I'm not too sure about point 4 but I can see why they've put it in there.

 

i think its sort of a good idea, but sellers should be able to leave both positive and neutral feedback
This way, they can sort of leave bad feedback, but it wont necessarily count (and if they don't get paid or whatever, they can still complain to fleabay)

I know Ive definitely felt like leaving negative feedback before to a seller, but its pointless because the seller just leaves you negative feedback, I also usually don't give feedback until the seller does

 

Probably controversial

First of all, I know this will meet with a lot of complaints, but anyone who thinks the seller should have to leave feedback as soon as they are paid is dead wrong. The transaction is FAR from over. Getting paid is not the last thing the seller has to care about. I won't bother listing all the other things that have to happen and if you don't know what they are, then you either don't sell on eBay, or you are shortsighted.
This IS the way it HAS to be, to be fair - Buyer wins auction, Buyer pays, Seller sends item, Buyer receives item, Buyer and seller work out any problems, BUYER leaves feedback FIRST, then seller leaves feedback.
I feel qualified to make this statement because I both sell and buy on eBay.

And yes, I agree that buyers are afraid to leave negative feedback because of retaliation, but there is no way around it. Both ends have to have this power (AND THIS FEAR) so that everyone behaves. If I feel strongly enough about it, I will leave negative, knowing that I may get retaliated, but I feel that the feedback responses (which most people do not use and can go 3 levels deep) should help explain the situation to any feedback reader enough to see who really was at fault.

The best suggestion I saw in this thread (and it would have been better if eBay had done this instead of what they did), was that no one can see the feedback until they are both left. This would really expedite the feedbacks since there is no reason for anyone to "wait" and see what the other end left them. And it would stop someone from leaving retaliatory negative feedback. The only problem (and it should be easily fixable) is that the only way many sellers know that the buyer is happy is from getting positive feedback. The fix is this: If the buyer does not send an e-mail (it would have to be a form thru e-Bay that would officially trigger an indicator to eBay that it was sent) to the seller telling them that everything is OK (or not), the buyer can not leave feedback. If the buyer is not happy, a good seller should respond in a reasonable amount of time and tell the buyer what will be done to fix the situation. If the buyer is still not happy, they will leave a negative and so be it.

The onesy twosey seller is dead (that is what I was) with this feedback change. I do not have a customer service department to bend over backward to keep an unreasonable buyer happy AND if I do have to spend money to fix the situation, I will probably lose money on selling the item since I did not sell 100 of them. That is what it is, but onesy twosey sellers and buyers was why eBay was created and why it grew and thrived. Now it will become somewhere for people to buy stuff from people who are in the business of selling things. That is not a bad thing at all, but the onesy-twoseys are left out in the cold. I would love to know how the person who initially started eBay feels about this...........

Another suggestion. eBay classifies sellers based on volume. Sellers that less than a set amount of things a month (and I am talking SMALL numbers here 2, 3, 4) CAN leave negative feedback. They would be clearly marked as such next to their ID, and YES, I know that may buyers would shy away, but these sellers are usually the only ones that you can get something from that's rare, or used and not needed, at a great price. And as always, they can look at the feedback to see if this seller does right by the buyers and describes things properly.