eBay

arhirii2007 · ‎07-02-2020

E-bay's seller feedback has become a complete farce. Today I left negative feedback for a seller that never sent my item, gave me a fake tracking#, then completely stopped responding. If anyone ever deserved a negative, then this guy would be first in line. However, because he is also a "Top-Rated Seller", eBay removed my feedback literally within minutes of my having left it. So what is the point of even having a feedback system if e-Bay chooses to protect dishonest sellers by removing negatives? How are we to warn other buyers about our experiences when this is what happens? I guess sellers like this make lots of money for eBay so they must be protected at all costs. I guess I will now have to plaster this seller's name all over social media (as well as eBay's cover-up) to warn others. What a sad place this has become.

mcrlmn · ‎07-02-2020

Sometimes, the content of the feedback may have bearing on it's removal.
What was the feedback you left for this seller?

arhirii2007 · ‎07-02-2020

The feedback was: "Item never arrived. Seller didn't respond. Got refund from e-Bay"

esclyons · ‎07-02-2020

So How are we as seller's able to warn other seller's about bad buyer's??? If you bought from an overseas seller, they aren't able to ship within the time limits, with covid, so they probably re-actively remove any negative feedback..

reallynicestamps · ‎07-02-2020

It was the part about the refund that got it removed.

Now -- you may feel better about leaving FB, but frankly it's useless.

You did the right thing by opening a Dispute and getting your refund.

The seller is now out his profit, the cost of shipping (both ways if he was required to pay for return shipping) and I believe his selling fee. And that's only if he voluntarily refunded in the Dispute. If eBay refunded you , he also got a Defect on his account, eBay forced him to repay the refund you got, and he may find his selling fees have risen, the number and value of his listings are restricted, and he may even have his account closed if he gets "too many" Defects.

But FB is just an opinion.

Sellers can have hundreds even thousands of negs in a year, while still maintaing Top Seller Status, because eBay does not use FB as a measure of a member's account.

The seller doesn't really care about your feedback. He knows what you thought of the transaction.

Most buyers never look past the FB "score" and believe that 95% is an A grade. (Never buy from a seller with less than 98%, 99% if they are overseas.)

Actually, most buyers don't look at feedback at all.

So it's okay to be annoyed, but you had a greater effect by winning your Dispute than any feedback you could leave.

reallynicestamps · ‎07-02-2020

@esclyons

This is a bad seller and the OP was the unhappy buyer.

Our equivalent as sellers is the Unpaid Item Dispute, which automatically blocks deadbeats with Strikes from buying from sellers who have set up their Seller Preferences/Buyer Requirements.

Sellers usually can't see who is buying until they have bought, again making FB useless. The exceptions are auctions, which are only about 15% of transactions and Offers. We can see those customers and cancel their attempts to buy if they don't meet our standards.

Both buyers and sellers can also Respond to any feedback, their own or the other member's and do so indefinitely. There is less restriction on Responses.

But sellers are warned that since the only reader will be their future customer, it's not a good idea to use Responses.

arhirii2007 · ‎07-02-2020

"So How are we as seller's able to warn other seller's about bad buyer's??? If you bought from an overseas seller, they aren't able to ship within the time limits, with covid, so they probably re-actively remove any negative feedback.."

Oh please, what total nonsense. You can't blame everything on Covid-19, reputable sellers make it work even with Covid, disreputable & unethical scammers, oops, meant sellers, hide behind it. End of story.

reallynicestamps · ‎07-03-2020

If you bought from an overseas seller, they aren't able to ship within the time limits, with covid,

The better wording is the seller is able to ship within the given Handling time, but cannot trust that the carrier will be able to complete the shipment within the delivery period.

And that can be blamed on CONVID.

It doesn't change that your seller was probably scamming (based on the 80 day vacation from responsibility he requested).

But I personally had an Expedited Canada parcel (BC to ON) shipped on June 4 that was not delivered until June29, just under the wire before my customer would have been refunded.

Expedited is usually four to six days for delivery anywhere in Canada, including Iqaluit.

Reputable sellers are having many problems with slow delivery times, to the point where many of us, while still shipping on a same or next day basis, have moved our Handling time to be as long as 30 days, which gives us a breathing space before an eBay Dispute can be opened.
Most postal services use passenger flights to carry at least some of the mail.

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-international-airport-2019-passenger-statistics

Those 26 million passengers were on some 100,000 planes, most of which carried at least some mail.

With the pandemic, there will be perhaps a tenth of that number this year.

We may see the revival of the mail car on freight trains by fall. Perhaps even trains that are entirely carrying mail.

lovemybolt · ‎09-12-2020

Hey new here just showed up to add my bit.

I bought from a seller in the US. Asked several questions before buying. Said all the right things. I wanted them to actually look at the product but they didn't seem to want to. But I went ahead and trusted the seller rankings.

Got the product after 6 freaking weeks...wrong. If they had looked at the box I would have taken my business elsewhere.

So I gave them a negative feedback saying as much as I could that made sense in the very short text box.

They tried to get me to remove it. I said no. That was that, right? No.

They whine off to ebay and get it removed.

I ask ebay wth.

They say they're protecting their big time sellers.

So mr big time seller gives wrong information and no one gets to be aware of that.

So yes...a complete joke (and a scam too) because clearly it can't be trusted to help buyers know who is really actually a good seller. For all I know this seller has completed all kinds of wrong transactions. But can buyers be allowed to be aware of that? No. Ergo...scam.

Yes...another rant...what are you going to do?

Thanks for reading.

Edit: sorry...new here...another Khoros forum I'm on doesn't say who you replied to when you click the reply button under a post.

femmefan1946 · ‎09-13-2020

So I gave them a negative feedback

Wrong.

since what you ordered and what you got were not the same thing you should have (and may still have) time to open a Not As Described dispute and received a refund.

You have 30 days from delivery for this.

If you are having trouble finding the transaction number to start the Dispute in the automatic Resolution Centre at the bottom of this page

Even if the seller has a No Refunds policy.

No Returns does NOT mean No Refunds.

So start the Dispute if you are still within the 30 day deadline.

If you missed it by getting upset about FB (which is useless and not used by eBay to assess member accounts) you are still covered by Paypal, for 180 days from purchase.

And if that fails for some reason, if you back your PP account with a credit card, you also have access to the card's chargeback policy.

And hindsight being 20/20.

wanted them to actually look at the product but they didn't seem to want to.

Because they don't have any in stock.

They are dropshipping.

The seller may be in the USA but the product is overseas.

He is taking orders and then having your purchase shipped from (probably) China.

Got the product after 6 freaking weeks..

Yep.

Dropshipping.

And shipped Surface at that.

negative feedback saying as much as I could that made sense

There are things we can't mention in FB, including "scam thief fraud", vulgarity, and mention of eBay intervention.

Personally, I think the entire FB system should be dropped for exactly your problem.

Only about 40% of transactions get any FB at all, mostly left by sellers, and it is completely voluntary.

And all too often, naive buyers go to FB, which cannot do anything but show complaints, instead of the Resolution Centre which not only gives refunds, but also punishes bad sellers with higher fees, restrictions on number and value of listings, and even will close down really bad actors.

But, @lovemybolt , go now to the Resolution Centre and open that Dispute.

GET YOUR MONEY BACK FROM THE SELLER.

lovemybolt · ‎09-13-2020

Oh dear. In all that ranting I didn't mention that the seller took it back at their cost and refunded my money (except the additional indignity of losses from exchange). So they're done and done. I placed the negative feedback after I got my money.

After the negative feedback they asked what they could do to have the negative changed. I said I think it should stay. Little did I know that what do they care, they'll just whine off to ebay and get it removed anyway. That's the problem. And the fraud is that buyers would judge multiple sellers selling the same thing based on their scores. That's the fraud scam part. Not only is that a fraud to buyers but it's unfair to those honest sellers who put in the right information in their listings and answer questions truthfully.

My very short feedback due to the text constraints was something like Seller doesn't answer questions truthfully or something like that. No vulgarities. Nothing offensive. Just the truth. Like I expected from them.

All the drop shipping part may very well be but the tracking went from IL to of course KY and then sat in Chicago for 3 weeks going nowhere and finally came across and made it's way to me.

Thanks for reading.

femmefan1946 · ‎09-13-2020

What I am reading is that you got a refund, but what you wanted was revenge.

The seller is out his costs on the sale including return shipping.

This is business, not personal.

And the fraud is that buyers would judge multiple sellers selling the same thing based on their scores.

If multiple sellers are selling the same thing, they are all using the same supplier to dropship the product. And their customers will get the same poor quality goods and bad service.

That "truthfully" is probably why the seller was able to have the feedback removed. Feedback is a pretty garbage method of dealing with problems. The Dispute, and the notes eBay keeps on sellers with Disputes, even resolved ones like yours, made a much more important effect on the seller.

the tracking went from IL to of course KY and then sat in Chicago for 3 weeks

The original post did not mention this was a GSP item.

There are multiple differences there.

The seller may actually have the items in hand, and not be dropshipping.

The USPS is in a mess these days, partly because of the pandemic and partly because of political interference. It would be interesting to know how long it took to get to KY which is usually a USPS shipment, although the GSP doesn't usually use USPS for shipping to Canada. Very recently there have been some reports of items moving from KY to Canada via USPS.

lovemybolt · ‎09-13-2020

I wanted feedback to be feedback. I wanted the rest of the buying world to know that the seller may not properly provide all the facts of the item they're selling. When directly asked. And asked to look at the actual box of the product.

The shipping exacerbated the frustration of waiting for an online purchase to arrive. Only to open it and find that, after the seller repeatedly told me and reassured me that they were selling what they were telling me, was in fact the wrong thing that I would NOT have purchased.

Why I'm this mad about the situation is that the feedback was removed. Obviously they went whining to ebay to remove a negative feedback. Ebay complied. The seller keeps their stellar scores. No other buyer can know that the seller may not always be so stellar. This renders the feedback system an untrustable, manipulated fraud.

If the system was not fraudulent then other buyers may have had problems too and left negative feedback and all other buyers can be wary of the seller. Then I come along and see some of the negatives and maybe take the chance that I won't have a problem. Because surely not everyone would have a problem. So surely there would be a good number of positives. But the negatives should stay. That they can be removed on request of the seller makes it ALL fake and fraudulent.

Wording could be changed, slanders and libel can be removed, but if the negative feedback is the truth then it should stay.

Thanks again for reading.

akabbdoll · ‎09-22-2020

FEEDBACK is now used by buyers, as a hammer, over the sellers. They cannot receive negatives, so use the threat of same, to advantage. Leaving negatives over issues he creates. not paying for a $1 item. EBay should be BANNING these people, as well as bad sellers!