OT: Twatting eBay screwing with things again.

And if the first contact is a neg? Your oh so valuable 100% is blown out= of the water and you can't respond in a way that shows in a obvious way = on their record as you have already left your feedback for them.

I'm with Austin, as a Buyer I leave feedback when the goods have arrived= and I'm happy. As a Seller I give feedback when I know (from the buyer leaving suitable feedback) that the buyer is happy with the goods and transaction. If I sell something and don't get feedback niether does tha= t buyer.

Under the new scheme of sellers not being able to give negs or neutrals = I won't leave feedback for buyers unless they leave a +ve for me.

Maybe the feedback shouldn't be published for either party until both ha= ve approved it?

You'll know that whether you leave feedback first or not.

You can always not send the item, or claim to have sent it and for it to have been lost in the post, which results in no end of hassle on the buyer's behalf. Stopping the credit card payment or paypal payment isn't that easy, I've tried stopping payments by credit card (not with ebay purchases), it takes a fair few letters and phone calls, certainly with my bank anyway (lloyds). I tried claming once via paypal's protection scheme and got nowhere.

They've paid me though, so if they neg me then I can follow-up their neg with a comment, they've given me their cash which is their part of the bargain and the part that really counts, feedback is trivial in comparison. The feedback bit is just a plus. My 100% isn't so valuable that I'm going to try and abuse people in the way others do.

Fine, it's the retaliatory negatives that were the problem.

Either that or the buyer can leave feedback but it can't be seen by the seller or anyone else until the seller has left feedback.

You've obviously been on the end of a poor PP experience as a buyer (as I have a seller!). All I can say is that if you choose to buy from someone who comes under the Paypal protection scheme (indicated within the listing) then it is a very easy process to follow through. I don't know how long ago it was, but you can now claim for several different things, (not received, not as described etc.) and it is up to the seller to disprove your claim.

Paypal will automatically refund the buyer if the seller cannot provide a tracking number for the parcel they sent you. If the seller fails to respond within 7 days, Paypal automatically refunds the buyer etc. etc. If an agreement cannot be reached then each case is personally reviewed by a PP rep. to asses the merits. The dispute process is actually very good, and as an honest seller (& buyer!) I fully support it, it helps my business by giving buyers some confidence in sending their money to a stranger. Unfortunately it is highly abused by many dishonest buyers, or used too hastily before any communication takes place to resolve the issue. If you sold professionally you'd soon become aware of this, and get just as frustrated as me!

Matt

On or around Sat, 2 Feb 2008 23:55:32 +0000, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:

whereas others have made claims through paypal even though the goods are known to have been delivered, another YMMV, I guess.

As may be, my main reasons for stopping selling are not the current changes, it's that the ebay shops are not worth it any more, after previous changes which increased the cost of running them and decreased the exposure. Since those changes, I've made I think 1 sale on the ebay shop, which is considerably less than previously.

I'll probably go over to running my own online trading which my hosting provider now has a system for.

On or around Sat, 02 Feb 2008 16:39:14 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@btopenworld.com (Tim Jones) enlightened us thusly:

You can (I assume) still respond to feedback, but that doesn't affect the score, so a non-merited negative still spoils the score.

The one good change is that if the person doing the unwarranted negatives is dishonest then after a bit they will be suspended, and henceforth that will result in the removal of the feedback they've given, so restoring the reputation of the people they maligned.

On or around Sat, 02 Feb 2008 18:47:29 +0100, Matt M enlightened us thusly:

that's certainly the impression I got when I contacted them about the issue of fees and exposure for ebay shops. they'd decided what they were doing and it didn't matter a f*ck that if it had a negative impact on MY sales, so long as they were coining it.

I shall shortly be voting with my feet and closing the ebay shop and I will tell them exactly why, and I bet I get either no repsonse at all or a pre-recorded platitude about how ebay are keen to improve the online trading experience for everyone.

On or around Sat, 2 Feb 2008 19:34:52 +0000, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:

The same applies to any distance-selling or mail order, though. You send money or funds and trust the seller to send you the goods. It's normal practice all over the place and not only on ebay.

On or around Sat, 2 Feb 2008 13:17:16 -0000, "Badger" enlightened us thusly:

I do that anyway, or rather, the operation does, you still have premises. I'll sell online through non-ebay means. I've no intention of setting up a separate retail shop, it's not, for the most part, that kind of business.

I may well still put things on eBay. But it'll be one or two things now and then on auctions, to maintain a presence. Want to bet that if I try to inlcude a link to my website, they'll kill the items, in due course?

no, that's fine. I do so myself and I buy on ebay myself, and from other online sources. But the ebay shop is not worth it any more; it was good to start with but now ebay want more money for a less-good service, before, it was good value, now it ain't.

A perfect 100% score is a big thing to aim for whilst there nare people who place a high value on 100% I think it's unrealistic to believe that you can please veryone all of the time. If some has a high score I don't think anything bad of a 97% score.

I think this is a huge plus. In every case of unjustified feedback I've seen the guilty mparty has pretty soon been suspended.

It's the same with any large company with millions of clients, the individual doesn't really matter, so it's only when shitloads of people like you do the same that they might pay some attention. I suspect that millions of people like me caused these rule changes in the first place, grumbling about retaliatory feedback! When your millions outnumber my millions they might change ;-)

As an indication that this is so, this was lifted from an item description of something I was looking at today:-

"No negative feedback to be left or negative feedback will be left back in return which will be three times worse."

Neil

(Reply via NG please)

In message , Neil writes

But to twist that, would you buy from a muppet who posted that?

Send me the link.

Cheers,

Matt

Unfortunately the muppets don't give themselves away usually, at least that muppet has the word "muppet" written on his/her forehead..

They do say up to 48 hours, it probably takes that long for the mass of auto-replying robots to chat amongst themselves bouncing irrelevant messages back and forth before they run out of things to say and a human steps in to read the message!

Well, they've all gone now, I don't recall the user's details so can't see if he/she's just changed the text or removed the auctions, but the wording can't be found in searches any more.

I may have inadvertently had something to do with that... I posted in a thread on ebays community pages with one of his auctions pointing out that this was the sort of wanker that had made ebays changes necessary. fleabay, worried as always that individuals posting criticism of them must be stamped out, immediately removed the thread AND sent me a threatening email, to which I replied that their efforts would be better spent on educating the seller rather than disciplining me for pointing it out - I think they removed his auctions at that point :)

No they haven't! Maybe the ones you reported have been removed, but if so, they didn't look very deep because he has 50+ current listings, the majority of them with that text.

Matt