Ok, Now I'm Heated! (Update) Feel Better Now

We don't leave feedback just for paying. The buyer has far more responsibility than that. Feedback is a rating of the transaction and the transaction is not over until you receive the coin.

Bobby,

I respect you and I don't doubt you're an ethical person. But what other obligation does a buyer have besides sending timely payment? To me that's holding the buyer hostage so you can leave retaliatory feedback. He can basically send me a box of nails. And if I leave him neg he can drop mine from 100% to 90%.

Guys, look at it this way. SOMEONE has to leave feedback first. As a buyer I could have the same policy. Don't leave feedback until the seller leaves theirs.

So in a situation where one person has to make the first move, who should it be? Obviously the seller because the buyer has the first action of responsibility.

If it were me, I don't see how it would be in my best interest to blast him. I would stay on good terms until I received the coin safely and was satisfied with it.

Let's examine the responsibilities of the buyer....

1) Pay promptly.

This one isn't even as simple as it sounds. Pay promptly using an accepted pay method. Our payment methods accepted are impeccably clear. Do you know how many personal checks we get? Once Susan had to drive 30 miles to pick up $25 because some numb skull wired us money via WU. This guy deserved a negative, even though he paid, but we gave him a positive anyway.

2) Read the auction and understand what they are buying.

We used to sell records on another ID. We listed an LP that had a notch cut in the jacket. In addition to a 600px by 600px photo of the jacket, We also stated in 28 point bright red letters that the jacket was notched. We left him positive feedback when he paid. He gets the LP and leaves us a negative... COVER WAS NOTCHED, SHOULD BE STATED IN LISTING. Now, did this guy deserve a positive just because he paid? Absolutely not. We had no way of knowing he was a knucklehead until he got the LP. We got a dozen negatives like this before we decided to stop leaving feedback first.

3) Obey the law.

We use to have buyers attempt feedback extortion on a regular basis when we were leaving feedback first.

We actually got an email once that all it said was, "Send me $50 in the next 24 hours or I will leave you a negative." Fortunately that particular email, the moron sent the email through ebay and we reported him. He was immediately booted from ebay. We actually had received many negatives from people because we refused to give in to their extortion.

We sold a rare Bob Dylan record. It sold for $5500, but was really only worth about $4800. The guy just got caught up in the bidding. Now we've left positive feedback already. The guy emails us and says, after receiving it, flat out, that he is not going to overpay for it, and if we don't refund him $700 he is going to leave us negative feedback. Did he deserve positive feedback because he paid promptly? Absolutely, positively not.

All of these type negatives stopped when we stopped leaving feedback when payment was received.

We have 1000's of perfectly satisfied customers that fully understand our feedback policy and keep coming back for more. We are so confident in our business practices that we can say there is no reason for any buyer to ever leave us a negative. We accurately represent our items and we offer a 100% money back guarantee, no questions asked, including shipping both ways. If not leaving feedback first avoids getting negatives from people that don't read the listings and extortionists, so it will be. The transaction is never over until the item is received.

The feedback system will always be flawed as long as it's tilted towards the buyer so heavily.

Buyers have the luxury of being able to scrutinize a seller's feedback before they bid. Seller's don't have that luxury, a buyer with 95.9% feedback can bid on your listing with a minute left and there's nothing you can do about it.

10 negatives doesn't penalize a savvy buyer one iota. One negative can crush a seller. Not a level playing field.

The first step in fixing the feedback system is to force buyers to care about their feedback score. Allow sellers to input a minimum feedback % and a minimum feedback received that is allowed to bid on their items. If the potential buyer is under either number stated by the seller they get an error message when they try to bid.

A buyer can say their not going to buy a coin from a seller with under 10 feedback or with 99.8% or lower percentage. Sellers have absolutely no say in the quality of buyer they deal with! That's absurd! A feedback extortionist can just keep buying, and buying, and buying, bidding at the end of an auction even though his feedback is 95%. As a seller you have no choice!

Right now, buyers have the freedom to pick who they deal with, sellers do not.

quote:

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Perhaps putting in bold, red at the top of the description READ ENTIRE AUCTION BEFORE BIDDING!

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Doesn't work. Take a look at this listing, there all the same. In bright blue italics....

While we only accept Paypal from US buyers with confirmed addresses, we now accept Bidpay from International buyers which enables International buyers to pay via Visa or Mastercard.

At least 3 times a month we get "I'm trying to pay you with Paypal and it don't work." Duh.

As Bobby has said, the buyer has more responsibility than just paying for an item. From time to time, I am sure what they buy may not always be what they think they were buying because of a bad picture or not a clear description. If the seller has a return policy it is also their responsibility to notify the seller and give them a chance to correct the problem before leaving a negative. A tranaction is not complete until both sides are satisfied. Obviously this is the ideal situation, and it may not always work out this way.