Ebay Buyer Feedback - Prepared To Be Sued?

I think he makes a ton of valid comments. How can a system be considered fair when it's so one-sided in favor of the buyer?

Yes there are plenty of bad sellers. We've seen plenty pointed out on this forum. At the same time, there are plenty of bad buyers. Buyers who don't fully read the description or look at the pictures, buyers who don't pay within the specified timeframe or worse yet don't pay at all. The seller can do everything 100% correctly (if it were to be judged and observed by a neutral 3rd party) yet the buyer has all the power in the world to ding the seller if he/she made a mistake on their own such as thinking they are getting an mint state coin when the description and pictures clearly show a coin in extra fine condition.

It's all to common in this society for people to pass the buck for their own mistakes, and ebay allows this to run rampant and unchecked, with the net result of sellers being the ones taking the short end of it (both in terms of feedback and detailed seller ratings, and both of these can affect the fee structure that ebay charges them). I know this from personal experience as my first negative came from an idiot buyer who admittedly bought the wrong size on a piece of sports equipment and then accused me of mis-listing the item despite the overwhelming evidence that I did everything right. I even offered to pay for the Square-Trade arbitration service to settle it once and for all, and he declined for some odd reason and then left me a negative.

I guess I could write a mini novel about this, but it would only serve to support some of the points the author already made in the blog. I'd love to see some comments from other ebay sellers though, ones who either sell on a regular basis or used to sell on a regular basis on ebay.

Does ebay have separate feedback so that you have a score as a seller and a different score as a buyer? I have never sold on ebay, so I don't know.

I agree that the feedback system is unfair to the sellers. I've probably sold less than 100 items on ebay and I have had problems with 3 buyers. One buyer never paid for an item. I sent him 2 messages asking for a payment and he didn't respond. I relisted the item after about 10 days and sold it. The original buyer sent me a nasty email about 5 weeks later complaining that he never received the item and claimed to have proof of payment. I asked to see the proof of payment and I never heard from him again. He didn't leave negative feedback, but I would have had a hard time getting it off of my account if he had.

I recently got my first neutral feedback from a buyer. I sold 1 Wheat cent roll and the buyer didn't find any "great dates" so he left a neutral feedback. I think he paid $3.99 for the roll and I didn't advertise the roll as "unsearched", nor did I claim that someone found a 1909-S VDB in one of my rolls last week. I think the neutral feedback was uncalled for, but I don't have a way to dispute it. I think that once you have 1,000 rating you can begin to dispute non positive feedback.

The DSR's are so flawed for this reason and that people often mistake what the post office charges as being the seller's fault. For example, if I sell a 5 1/2 item to someone in California, it may cost $16 or so to ship by Priority Mail. If I charge actual shipping, and the buyer thinks it's higher than he expected, I get dinged when in fact I charged the actual amount it cost me to ship the item. So am I supposed to subsidize the shipping costs for every item I sell?

Also, it doesn't take an IQ of 150 to know that free shipping isn't totally free. It's built into the price of the item so if I charge $50 for item with free shipping, or charge $40 for the item plus $10 shipping the net cost is the same to the buyer. But which listing do you think would sell first?

Anyway...off my rant for now...lol. These ebay threads get me a little fired up.

If anyone hears about a class action suit against ebay, I want to be included. He doesn't even mention PayPal chargebacks by buyers when you can furnish proof of delivery. ebay is destroying their customer base (the sellers), which is probably why their year end results as just reported were very disappointing in stark contrast to Amazon. They will reap what they sow!

Coinhunter: In the example I was giving, shipping WAS absolutely, 100% free. Even though I haven't sold much over the last year, when I have listed some items, I started my AUCTION STYLE listings at .99 cents and have offered free shipping. I hate to admit it, but I am a weenie and I bowed to ebay's enormous pressure to offer free shipping in an attempt to get my DSR up to TRS level...and I guess it worked, because I just became a TRS this week. But my point is...even with my ABSOLUTELY FREE SHIPPING, a competitor could buy a coin from me, give me a glowing, positive feedback and then still give me a low DSR rating for shipping costs (!) and my TRS rating would either disappear or be seriously threatened. And to make matters worse, I wouldn't even know who did this to me because ebay won't divulge that info. Worse...from their lofty position at the controls, the ebay gods could see that there is no reason for me to get that low DSR on shipping costs (because of the free shipping) and they won't do jack squat to reverse or anull that low rating. And let's all remember this lest we forget: ebay does not get a cut of any shipping and handling charges a seller charges a buyer. The whole DSR thing is driven by ebay's desire to have ALL of their sellers offer free shipping so that ebay gets their cut of ALL of the money that the seller pays. We can whine and snivel about these DSRs all we want, and rightfully so, but there's no turning back..they're here to stay because they are helping to increase ebay's take on millions of transactions.