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 Replies: 69 / Views: 7,002 |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
671 Posts |
Quote:
And the alternative of 'no negative or neutral for buyers'
is fair?!? I meant that forcing sellers into leaving feedback is unfair. Say the seller has been "forced" to leave feedback based on the buyer's payment. Then after that, the buyer demands a refund and threatens negative feedback. The buyer is safe because the seller was forced to leave feedback prematurly. So the seller either loses his money or gets a neg. and loses his reputation. Sound fair? I think not. Like I said before, the wrongs of the old system were not so great, but the system worked. And as they say...don't fix what aint broke. |
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Rest in Peace
United States
1729 Posts |
You have to look at any changes in ebay in light of ebay being "big business" and a huge profit-maker for its owners. Any changes in the way business is done are aimed at improving ebay's profit margin. The most telling change was when ebay acquired PayPal and its "service charges" - which changed entirely the "garage sale" nature that ebay was at its beginning (and I was there just a month or two after ebay went online). I don't do PayPal - never did, never will - for this reason. I agree that there are a lot of dufus bidders, though. Luckily, I've had to leave negative feedback for sellers only a few times, when I never received the item I paid for, or for what I received was poorly packed (like a ceramic cup sent from the UK dropped into a padded envelope!) and broken, or the item was misrepresented in the description. BTW I leave 100% feedback for sellers. I wish I could say the same for the sellers I deal with. On the other hand, I am very careful with the sellers I select and have had excellent experiences with nearly all of them - and the one or two with whom I didn't do NOT get my repeat business. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1208 Posts |
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I meant that forcing sellers into leaving feedback is unfair. Okay, so you force the seller to leave feedback after everything is complete. Still first, but after the buyer clicks an icon of the item being received. Easy enough. No matter what though, the seller has to go first, and the feedback should be mandatory. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1208 Posts |
What if feedback was not identified as buyer/seller? Just positive and negative. Yes, one could determine for a while, which was which by digging around the detailed feedback info pages, but after 90 days, those become far less detailed. And, who would want to go digging that deep just to manually separate feedback into buyer/seller? This is the same thing they did with the detail pages a while back. Those of you that have been with ebaysince the start know that you used to be able to click on a member's negative number and it would pull up a list of all the member's negative feedbacks, and ONLY the negatives. Just like you could click the green or gray numbers and see only that feedback. The seller's got ebay to take that function away. Now if you want to see only the negatives, you have to scroll though all and look at them one by one. This can be a real pain with mega-sellers that have hundreds of feedback pages. It would be the same with undesignated feedback. Could be buyer... could be seller. Who's gonna dig? |
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Rest in Peace
United States
9104 Posts |
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The new system is not flawless in the least but I prefer it this way over the very broken system we had previously. All FB is broken. When's the last time you went to a mall where each store was required by management to post every customer comment ever received on their front window, and encouragedcustomers to comment on every transaction? There is now no point whatsoever to leave FB for a buyer, since you can't leave honest FB. It's like voting in a country that has a 92% voter turnout and there's only one candidate to vote for. What's the point? |
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Rest in Peace
United States
9104 Posts |
Quote:
It's MUCH more broken now as evidenced by the mass exodus of sellers due the the severe escalation of non-paying bidders and extortion. It's 25 times worse. Absolutely. Now anyone, including your competition, can leave you negative FB, and there's nothing you can do about it. Doesn't matter if they bother to pay for what they bid on. A buyer's FB score was always meaningless, but at least you could see who the bums were before. Now you can't even do that. Before, a buyer could have a dozen transactions and negs on all of them, snipe your item and you couldn't even cancel his bid, so what made the difference if someone gave him a neg? Yeah, you used to be able to filter against such jerks, but if he didn't fit the filter and you refused his bid, you were a non-performing seller. Bottom line: ebay is desperate because they're rapidly losing grounds to other sites who aren't messing with their customers, and as usual, they're fixing all the things that weren't broken. |
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Rest in Peace
United States
9104 Posts |
Quote:
When the buyer has paid, his job is done and he should
get feedback then. OK, I go to your movie theater, pay my admission, and I want you to stamp my paperwork saying I'm a great customer. Like ebay, I have to pay before I get my product. Then I proceed to throw popcorn in front of the projector, spill pop on the floor, and annoy the other patrons by giving away the plot in a loud voice. When the usher finally escorts me to leave, I have to stop at the John, where I take a dump in the sink. Just like ebay, there's a lot more to the transaction than paying for the product. |
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Rest in Peace
United States
9104 Posts |
Quote:
I would have to disagree with you there, Bobby. This implies that the buyer shouldn't get positive feedback simply because he didn't leave positive feedback. That's retaliatory feedback. Not at all. The buyer should not get positive feedback because he has demonstrated that he is an idiot and blames the seller for something that was clearly the buyer's fault. As a seller, that's not my idea of a positive transaction. Until they got smart and took their million of dollars of monthly sales elsewhere, one of ebay's biggest sellers dealt mainly in store returns. At the top of EVERY LISTING, they clearly stated items were probably returns, sold AS IS, and that there could be pieces missing, and the untested items might not work at all. THeir stuff might go for 20% of retail. They had lousy FB, and over 90% of their negs were "It doesn't work, just like they siad it might not!" Those buyers don't need negs, they need to be banned from ebay until they can prove that they can read. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1208 Posts |
Mall, movie theater?
What kind of analogies are those compared to trusting
someone unknown, buyer or seller, across the country
from each other? Money changing hands on faith over
long distance...
At least with the mall or movie theater you are face to
face. You know where the other stands and you are far
less likely to scammed by a business with a storefront.
I think the fact that anyone can be a retail seller on
the net takes too much responsibility of being a business
owner out of the equation. I own a REAL business with a
dedicated location, equipment, and face to face customers.
In order to be successful, business like mine need to
remember the old adage "the customer is always right".
Online sellers overlook that adage at their peril.
The Internet, and it's lack of face to face contact,
lowers inhibitions and expectations. Folks are rude
and careless on the net. This extends into seller's
attitudes and they feel like they are entitled to run
their business outside the rules traditionally applied
to businesses that operate in the real world.
If you cried and whined about how customers treated
you face to face, you would be out of business in no time!
Personally I think that the folks that set up retail business
online are folks that never could, would, or are possibly too
lazy to profit in a face to face venture. This does not
include, of course, real businesses that have online branches.
They do it out of true brains, not a 'get rich quick' state of
mind.
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Rest in Peace
United States
9104 Posts |
Quote:
Sorry, but IMO feedback must be mandatory and come from
the seller first. I have a better idea. FB should be eliminated, just like it is in the real world. You got a complaint for the seller, tell them, not the rest of the world. Geez, if you're pist off at Mall-Wart, you shop elsewhere, you don't get to stand in their parking lot holding a sign with your complaints. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1208 Posts |
I have always said: Quote:
The Internet is full of get rich quick mindset individuals
that were never meant to have a business. Eventually these
folks will be weeded out by competition, just as in the real
world. However with the Internet being so low overhead, it
will take a long time, and they will go down whining
"It's not fair!" the whole way. I still stand by that, and I think that the whole "eBay seller tantrum" is just evidence of this and a part of the 'weeding out' process. I believe that ebay understands that those sellers that are meant to make it, will make it through this. And it understands that in the long run, it is better off without those that don't adapt. |
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Rest in Peace
United States
9104 Posts |
Quote:
Now if you want
to see only the negatives, you have to scroll though
all and look at them one by one. Not true, there are a couple free services that allow you to do exactly that. It's just another place where ebay is saving money, like not listing closed items for 90 days. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1208 Posts |
Quote:
I have a better idea. FB should be eliminated, just like
it is in the real world.
You got a complaint for the seller, tell them, not the
rest of the world.
Geez, if you're pist off at Mall-Wart, you shop elsewhere,
you don't get to stand in their parking lot holding a sign
with your complaints. Online you are sending amounts of money, possibly quite large, to unknown entities across the country, or even around the world. Feedback tells you if you want to deal with this person or entity. You're correct about the real world... Don't like the business, shop elsewhere. However I guarantee that you will tell PLENTY of people about that store in your neighborhood. The feedback in the cyber world is just an extension of that. You just don't get that point for some reason. |
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Forum Dad
 United States
24170 Posts |
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Feedback tells you if you want to deal with this person or entity. Yeah sure, if you're a buyer. If you're a seller it tells you nothing. Sellers no longer get that luxury and are just as much at risk from unscrupulous buyers as buyers are from unscrupulous sellers. Sellers get stolen from very single day, paypal makes it so easy it's pathetic, and we have duct tape over our mouths now. They get to steal from me.... then come steal from you, with no warning. Beautiful system. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1208 Posts |
Bobby, I agree totally. Doing away with the ability to give honest feedback on a buyer is crazy wrong. I see why ebay did it, but I think there are better ways. |
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Replies: 69 / Views: 7,002 |
First Page
Posted 08/17/2008 10:16 am
