Instructive collateral defect discussion with an ex-buyer

[ricarmic]

Before anyone gets up in arms, or accusing me of being an advocate - I struggle with the defect situation as much as everyone else!

However the buyer view of defects naturally occurred while I was talking with a friend today. This is an excerpt from our conversation that I found instructive.

He collects old stuff, (not stamps by the way) and was talking about some of his acquisitions last year.

He commented that the latest things he collects he has to get outside the country (from United Kingdom).

He spent a lot of time trying to find his stuff, which is uncommon and difficult to find the way he wants it. He was successful in finding and buying 3 of them from different vendors all in the United Kingdom.

Only 1 of the 3 ever arrived, which soured him on buying from eBay (those are his words).

He’s not mad at the sellers (I’m not sure he even tried to get his money back), he’s upset that the items he worked so hard to find were lost/not received. That is why he’s soured from buying via eBay.

My personal view is that this is instructive, even though in an INR we as sellers may be polite, professional and respond quickly to the situation (and burn for the loss), the end result is still that the buyer didn’t get what they wanted, and that in and of itself can be enough to turn them off buying further. I’m sure INAD situations can be worse for this.

None of this means I’m any happier with the defect system (I still wish they’d picked a different name for it) but it does help me better see the necessity for something to measure “success” from the buyer’s perspective, and perhaps hearing a real life example from a friend helps me feel a little more willing to cope with the concept of defects - none of use want buyers to go away.

I’m sure others will feel other ways about this, and certainly there are still problems with the defect system, but I figured it was worth at least posting this perspective.

[rose-dee]

I think you're absolutely right -- it's always helpful to remember to consider eBay from the buyer's perspective, especially for sellers who forget that their continued existence on eBay depends upon buyers feeling confident about purchasing on this site, which in turn depends upon eBay keeping sellers professional.  

Although I have a number of issues with the measures employed by eBay in the defect system, it is probably doing its job of weeding out those who are either generally incompetent or less than scrupulous.  Unfortunately it also makes the job of sellers who were already giving outstanding service even harder.  

One gripe I have about the defect system that may sound unusual is that it's all "behind the scenes".  The defect system punishes sellers (sometimes unfairly, but often for good reason), yet a prospective buyer doesn't really see the true status of the seller he/she is planning to purchase from.  Yes, the FB and DSRs are displayed, but as we all know, these don't tell the whole story.  Put another way, a seller can display a pretty good FB/DSR profile, yet actually not be consistently dependable, prompt, and professional.  

I do quite a bit of my supply purchasing on eBay, and I think it's a really good exercise for any seller to make purchases on eBay from time to time.  You really get a different "feel" for the experience than working always from the seller's standpoint, and -- this is the interesting part for me -- you get presented with a different type of message and follow-up than sellers might imagine.  You also realize that you don't get to see behind the curtain.

As a buyer, I do my due diligence in checking sellers' FB/DSRs, item pricing, shipping, etc., but I always feel I'm only seeing half the picture, and I often agonize about making a fairly large purchase from a seller I've never dealt with.  What am I not seeing? How many buyers who didn't leave FB/DSRs opened INR or INAD cases, sent emails with complaints, or returned items?  Consider that we sellers complain we only get 60-70% FB now if we're lucky.  

So sellers are being punished behind the scenes and eBay has effectively made most of us shake in our boots for fear of those defects, yet how does this help buyers in evaluating the seller from whom they are about to make a purchase?  A really bad seller who has racked up a lot of defects and is about to be kicked off the site may look relatively acceptable from a buyer's point of view.  That buyer may be the final straw (and the final victim). 

I know some people will really dislike what I'm about to say, but it seems to me that not making sellers' performance record more visible and public for buyers suggests that eBay's true motive was to remove smaller sellers from the site who can't keep up with the pack, even if they generally provide exemplary customer service.  A half dozen unfortunate, inadvertent or completely non-culpable mistakes in a year and a small seller can end up in sub-standard territory.

As I've probably said many times before, it's far easier for a larger seller, on a 3-month evaluation cycle, to cleanse his record and start over than for a smaller seller who must drag his shame around for 12 months.  And meanwhile the buyers see none of the carnage going on backstage. 

[recped]

I’m sure others will feel other ways about this

Sure those would be the ones who think that if you fix a problem after the fact then all is good in the world but turn that around, if a buyer were to pay but pay `too slow` for them that buyer is still a deadbeat.

I know many people who will never return to eBay because of a couple of less than fantastic transactions, some were compensated and some were not but it really doesn`t matter. They move on to someplace else (which is 2015 isn`t very hard to find).

In my early retail days we worked on the ``abuse the customer as much as possible`` marketing style. It worked fantastic when I was (almost) the only game in town. Years passed competitors arrived on the scene, they worked the opposite strategy `the customer can do no wrong`.

Some of those people are still in the B&M retail trade........I`m not!

[ricarmic]

Hi Rose!

You raise good points, certainly a large volume of transactions can hide problems better than in cases where there are not a lot of transactions.

Today for fun I looked at some of the "one day sales" mass marketing ebay message I got. In the past when I looked at the vendors, what I was able to see looked awful, "lots" of negatives etc. I checked a few today, and while there were still a "lot" of negatives I noticed there were a lot more professional responses and almost always responses to the neutrals and negatives. This leads me to believe the big players are even having to react as well.

eBay's desire to woo in new sellers certainly seems at odds with the seeming challenge to a new seller to survive the defect system.

Statistically speaking, once one has achieved large enough size, certainly it is easier to handle the defects. To just start out and achieve size isn't even possible, given the new seller restrictions in place (which I believe are there to stop the "new seller starts up sells a bunch of stuff and disappears promptly" problem they had).

Statistically speaking new sellers probably do generally create more defects while they learn the processes. Certainly with all the rules now, it is a lot more daunting than it was 16 years ago when I started! Again that seems at odds with their desire to get new sellers.

Certainly showing more information to buyers might help, although from what I see (I watch some sellers that must just be barely hanging on, yet people still buy from them, and their listings do well because of how they're listing quantity items) I don't know how much investigation about the seller the average buyer does. Certainly a number of folks I've provided advice to have no idea how to check seller stuff or to understand what little information is available today!

It will be interesting to see how things continue to unfold.....