Ebay Workshop: Top Tips For Improving Your Shipping Dsr

As is the case with most Powersellers, there was a time when I left feedback for buyers as soon as they paid me. Now I wait until I receive it first. I use an automated system which automatically leaves positive feedback as soon as I receive it...this sometimes burns me, because buyers who DESERVE bad feedback will sometimes leave me positive first, knowing that it will be returned. However, it's the best solution for me overall.

It's too risky leaving feedback for a buyer, unless they've already left it for you. I kid you not, I once got a neg from somebody (like 7 or 8 years ago) which said something like, "I just like to leave bad feedback." He did it to everyone he bought from. This was back when I used to leave positive feedback before I received it.

You wanna really flame me, Metalman? Guess what else I do? I sometimes leave negatives to buyers who gave me a neutral. I've had instance where, for example, a customer left me a neutral which said something like, "Good product, but shipping was slow," even though I shipped the product within 24 hours of receipt of payment. Well it isn't my fault that it took USPS 4 days to deliver a 1st class mail package 2,000+ miles from my house. I thought it was horrible for this person to zap me on the feedback for 5-day delivery to the other side of the country...so he got a neg!

People who are primarily buyers have absolutely no concept of how hard it is to be a seller. They can study feedback, etc., but they really just don't know. Ask anyone who is a Powerseller and an active buyer which side is more difficult, and they will ALL tell you that selling is much riskier, much more frustrating, and much more difficult to manage when problems arise. Buyers have avenues to recoup their losses from bad sellers, but sellers have NO power against losses from unreasonable and/or scamming buyers!

The answer to your question isn't what you want to hear, but it's kind of simple...and now I'm looking at this strictly from a buyer's perspective.

If I was a casual seller, but hardcore buyer, I'd have two accounts. Honestly, negative feedbacks mean NOTHING to people who are only buyers. Most sellers won't look at your feedback unless you are a deadbeat, slow to pay, or otherwise a pain-in-the-butt buyer. You bid, you pay, done deal. As a seller, I'll never look at your feedback unless you don't pay me.

For selling, use a separate account and you'll never have to worry about the retaliatory feedback impacting your sales reputation.

Personally, I just use one account. I find that most bad feedback comes from buyers, so I prefer to let my buying experiences help my rating. I've only had three bad buying transactions with ebay out of a LOT of purchases. In all instances, I chose to not leave feedback at all because it just wasn't worth it to me. I got my money back from Paypal and that was good enough for me.

Thats not a solution to the problem ,,that still means sellers are giving unwarranted negatives to good buyers .

where is the accountability ?

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If I was a casual seller, but hardcore buyer, I'd have two accounts. Honestly, negative feedbacks mean NOTHING to people who are only buyers. Most sellers won't look at your feedback unless you are a deadbeat, slow to pay, or otherwise a pain-in-the-butt buyer. You bid, you pay, done deal. As a seller, I'll never look at your feedback unless you don't pay me.

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Exactly...if you're a seller, there is no way to stop someone from bidding on your item in the last minute who is a problem buyer. The only slight prevention against bad buyers that sellers have are:

1) Block them if they know through networking or having dealt with directly
2) Set up ebay with the automatic bid if the person has 2 non paying strikes in the last month

But that still doesn't stop a person from setting up a new fresh account or from using their friends account. As a seller, you are helpless as the clock ticks down on your auctions from stopping a potentially bad buyer who doesn't fit into one of the categories above. By the time you know you have a bad buyer, it's already too late.

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report an unwarranted negative with appropriate documentation 10 ,20 and 30 day account suspensions . 4th infraction NARU applicable either way buyer or seller . with a one year accrual rate ,in other words everyone starts at zero each year .
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I think this would be a good first step if they could come up with a way to implement it. But I might take it a step further and either block the ISP of the bad buyer or seller, and block the name/address of the bad seller or buyer from registering a new id. The hope is to prevent someone from creating a new account just to retaliate against the other person, and to make them serve their punishment so to speak.

Also, I think ebay should make it easier to view the negatives/neutrals received and left by both buyers and sellers. I know there is that toolhaus site that you can use, but alot of people dont know about it. As a seller, I would also like to have access to the number of non-paying bidder strikes that have been posted against someone in the last month, 3 months, and 6 months for example. I guess you could call that some sort of risk management for the seller. As a buyer I would like to see in advance if a seller is one that has a history of not leaving feedback or leaving bad feedback before I give them my business.

Maybe one further step is to force buyers to go through a free 3rd party arbitration service (through ebay) that forces both sides to to respond to a dispute in a fixed amount of time. My hope here is to prevent buyers from leaving bad feedback in instances where items are sold as is, or instances where the post office takes forever despite the seller mailing it within 24 hours of payment.