Feedback from buyers suggestion..... MIRIAM check it out.

[stevec8858]

Just a thought on the feedback system. I notice allot of buyers prematurely leave negative feedback without contacting the seller first. I was wondering ,since we as sellers have to file a 7 day dispute which ends up being 14 days to claim final value fees, perhaps buyers should be forced to file a dispute for 7 days with the seller before being able to leave negative feedback. This gives buyers and sellers a chance to solve the problem and perhaps avoid premature feedbackulation. I am tired of getting a negative without any notification from the buyer what so ever. I can't solve it if they won't communicate.

Those are my thoughts ... and idea.

Regards,

Steve

[faerywishes]

I am in total agreement with this. So many buyers when leaving negative feed back are clicking they have contacted the seller to work this out and they haven't contacted the seller at all.

We should have the opportunity to make things right for the seller before they can leave feed back. I believe you would have more buyer and seller satisfaction.

I have been saying for months in here that there needs to be a dispute system for feed back that offers more reasons to dispute.

A buyer not letting us know first there is a problem should have to dispute first or they should receive the same feed back they give us as they are a poor buyer.

As a seller we need to know that about certain buyers that do not contact the seller first.

Colleen:-D

[cajunfox]

Ditto. It is utterly ridiculous when I see negative feedback from a buyer who never emailed me, never contacted me, just randomly left negative feedback on a transaction without giving me any chance to address their concerns. If eBay is going to punish us for having "unsatisfied buyers", then the buyer should be forced to contact their seller to resolve the issue together before leaving negative feedback. The buyer already has all the power in a transaction, they have paypal, they have any number of methods to force us to refund them whether their claim is valid or not.

My last 3 negs are from

- A buyer who REFUSED to send me back an item they claimed was defective, emailing me and going "don't worry about it", then weeks later I see a neg from him
- A buyer who never contacted me about any problems
- A buyer who received exactly what was in the auction description, but who realized it wasn't enough for her needs, then demanded I send her additional upgrade parts that weren't a part of the auction

And the last neutral is from

- A buyer who ordered a $25 computer, I misplaced the computer in inventory, and I sent her a computer four times better than what she paid for. All that and I get a neutral which reduces my "satisfied buyer percentage" just a little bit more, although now I see neutrals won't be counted against us for feedback percentage anymore after August.

All of these could have been avoided with such a system and all four buyers could have left eBay as "satisfied buyers". So hey, eBay/PayPal can continue to get the $25,000 or so a year in fees I pay them which I sure won't be paying if I can't sell here anymore, and more of my customers are "satisfied". How can anyone lose?

I am not willing to hand-hold customers through every transaction and send a dozen follow-up emails to ensure that they are satisfied with a $10 item six weeks afterwards, just to ensure that they are "satisfied". No bricks-and-mortar business does that or has to do that, so why should we have to? Buyers should be FORCED to inform their seller of concerns they have about the transaction before they can destroy our reputation and ability to use this site with their feedback. Feedback is vastly more serious for sellers now than it was six months ago.

Miriam, or whoever from eBay is reading these comments, ask your higher-ups this question: If you're going to give buyers innumerable tools to force sellers to make them "satisfied", does it not stand to reason that sellers should also have tools at their disposal to ensure that THEY are satisfied?

[miriam@ebay.com]

Hi stevec8858,

Thanks for the suggestion. I believe if you are an active Powerseller who has been on eBay for at least 12 months, buyers are already prevented from leaving negative or neutral Feedback for 7 days after a transaction. That was announced here: http://www2.ebay.com/aw/ca/200805071232082.html

We've also added an interstitial page to the Feedback flow to encourage buyers to contact the seller prior to leaving a negative or neutral feedback, which may also help cut down on some of those "surprise" neg/neuts.

And we've just announced that we'll be introducing a new method of Feedback Removal. That announcement is here: http://www2.ebay.com/aw/ca/200807101459322.html.

Do you feel that these measures have/will help in this particular type of situation? I think these are reasonable steps to help sellers deal with customers who may be difficult. The idea of forcing all buyers to enter a dispute flow just so they can leave their opinion of a transaction seems inappropriate in today's customer service environment. I don't know any other ecommerce site where this happens, but please let me know if you have examples I could offer up.

Thanks,

Miriam

[stevec8858]

I knew that already however they should be forced to file a dispute first and forced to contact us. They just get a little pop up that says "Are you sure"? Thats not good enough and alot of times they don't even get the product in 7 days so that doesn't mean anything especially for over seas. It needs to be a screen that says you can't leave negative feedback without contacting the seller about the problem and once you have made contact with the seller then after 7 days you can file negative feedback or the matter will be resolved. Like we have to for non payment. You guys have the idea but it isn't agressive enough and sellers are suffering because buyers are dropping negatives without contacting the sellers at all with the problem. We can't deal with it if they don't tell us so you guys should force them to contact us first!

Regards,

Steve

[faerywishes]

Again I agree.

The first link you provided I am aware of but by the time they receive the item or not that time frame has passed.

The second link you provided I am also aware of as I stated in my first reply on this thread. Obviously some are not contacting us first and clicking that they have. It is a good tool for those who choose to work within the system.

The third link I am aware of also and this applies to f/b left because of an UPI. There are several more reasons why buyers leave this and the buyers don't contact us to allow us an opportunity to correct.

If Ebay has a rating system in place it is definitely appropriate. Buyers would have a choice. Contact us first or the neg or neutral f/b may be reviewed if the seller requests. There would be some sellers that would abuse this as well as you have buyers abusing what we have now. You would need to come up with policies for that.

For any business decisions there must be policies that are in the best interest of the business & customers. We are your customers as well and we are not being protected.

Give us more ooportunities to dispute the negs and neutrals. I know it is time consuming and costly for Ebay; however, I believe with more seller satisfaction you would more than make up for this.

I agree with you about buyers having to go through a whole other system just to leave f/b is not in our best interest. I am a very active buyer as well and I am already fed up with having to rate my purchases esp the dsr's. It is too time consuming for me. For buyers like myself and those who purchase much more than I it is very frustrating and time wasting. I wish we could leave feed back like we can as sellers.

If we could select to issue the same f/b for 1 item, several or all items for a seller then I would bet more buyers would leave it and process the dsr's. We can cut & paste the statement we leave but must select everything else one at a time. Please make this more user friendly. However; I beleive it should only be for when a buyer wants to leave positive feedback. For neg and neut it still should be 1 at a time so there is less room for error.

[cajunfox]

This new buyer concern resolution system has one big concern with me:

Will a buyer be able to change their positive feedback left, into a negative, instead of just changing negative into positive? The wording is rather vague.

Because if a buyer will have the ability to change their positive feedback into negative, it's even worse for us than what we have now. If I sell a guy a computer part with a 7-day guarantee, and it dies at day 59, can he then change the positive feedback he left into negative feedback despite it being completely undeserved?

If so I'll be done with this selling venue and many other sellers will likely leave as well.

[cajunfox]

Also the feedback not applying if the buyer doesn't respond to a UPI is kind of useless, because most of the UPIs I've filed have had the buyer respond to me, either with inane questions or responding to say "i dont want to pay for this item blah blah". Then the buyer still doesn't pay, but can then leave me a negative ANYWAYS. What good is that? Where's the arbitration that allows me to get such unjust feedback removed? If the buyer never paid, they should have no right to leave feedback at all.

[miriam@ebay.com]

Thanks everyone for the contributions to this thread. There are some interesting ideas here.

cajunfox, the new Feedback removal system is still being developed, so we don't have a ton of details at this point. I grubbed around for an FAQ on your question re: changing positives into negatives and found this:

"The current plan will require the seller to submit a request to the buyer to revise the rating, comment or Detailed Seller Ratings. Therefore, if a seller wishes to enable a buyer to edit a positive Feedback, they may. In some circumstances, this may be desirable. For example, a buyer may post a negative comment with a positive rating accidentally and wish to change it. While details may change, the current design would only allow this to happen if the seller began the process."

The seller is the one who starts this process so you could just decline to start the process for a buyer who already left a positive.

On UPIs - at eBay Live, Brian Burke said he and his team were looking at changes in three areas: neutrals in the positive Feedback percentage, a way for buyers to change their Feedback and the circumstances under which buyers can leave Feedback where there's a UPI. So we've announced our intentions on the first two items, and I know they are working on the UPI issue. Hopefully we will see something in the coming weeks on that.

I hope that helps clarify.

Miriam

[cajunfox]

Thank you for responding,

I'm glad to hear it would be a seller-initiated process, that enables us to have some leverage to get unjust feedback removed.

On UPIs IMHO the buyer should simply have any feedback they leave removed if the UPI was closed by the seller, regardless of whether the buyer responded or not. eBay's policies on payment have always been crystal clear - "your bid is a contract". If the buyer responds to say "my kid made the bid sorry" or "i can't pay because my grandmother's sick dog's cousin needed surgery" or whatnot, it is obvious that they have zero intention of paying, but if I close the UPI and issue them an unpaid item strike, as they SHOULD BE GETTING for being irresponsible with their account, they should not then have the ability to issue me a neg / low DSRs. Their feedback on the transaction is false because no transaction actually occurred! To prevent sellers from abusing this functionality, starting of the UPI process -after- feedback has been left wouldn't result in the feedback being removed. Simple as that.

I realize eBay is making these changes to make the buyer experience more safe and pleasant. It should just be kept in mind that by taking all of the seller's leverage against buyer fraud and unjust complaints away, the seller is then forced to tighten their policies up and view every buyer who hasn't left feedback as a potential reputation-ruining individual, as an "enemy" as it were. I've never had to do that before now, but whenever a buyer emails me demanding things or having concerns, I now have to scramble to find ways to protect myself from them. That means their buying experience with me is going to be WORSE than it was before, and I sincerely doubt I'm the only seller who thinks this way.

Maybe eBay views me as one of those "bad sellers" that these policies are designed to get off of the site? I had no trouble maintaining 98.5-98.7% positive feedback before, was always in compliance with site policies and never screwed anyone. These changes are murdering me. I can't even list anything right now because my account is "restricted to 75% of previous volume". I'm sitting here twiddling my thumbs after having dealt with all buyer concerns, shipped all items.. I don't understand how this has benefited anyone, buyers included. Forgive me if I'm rather frustrated!

[miriam@ebay.com]

Hi cajunfox,

Unfortunately, it's not always clear who's at fault in a UPI process. Maybe the seller added an unexpected handling cost that wasn't disclosed in the listing. Maybe the seller refused to accept a method of payment they originally offered in their listing. There are any number of good reasons out there why a given buyer may not have paid for an item. This is why buyers who have UPIs filed against them are allowed to participate in the Feedback process.

In recent years, eBay has blocked buyers who haven't participated in the UPI process from leaving neg/neut Feedback. That has helped, but it hasn't solved the whole problem. So we await the next step in improving the process.

In terms of your current selling restriction, this probably isn't the right venue for discussing it. I can connect you with Seller Outreach in the US where you can set up an 1:1 appointment with a consultant to walk through your listings with you. They might be able to make suggestions to improve your Feedback percentage and buyer satisfaction. If you're interested, my email is miriam@ebay.com. That invite goes for anyone here on the boards who is a PowerSeller but is at a level that doesn't include a personal rep.

Hope this helps ...

Miriam

[cajunfox]

I realize that there are situations where a buyer should be able to leave feedback despite a UPI filed against them. However, in my experience on eBay these are a very small minority of situations, meaning that the system is tilted way too far over in the buyer's favor. Example:

Buyer wins a computer motherboard from me, for about $78.00. I was somewhat surprised it got bid that high, I had expected it to sell for no more than $40. Buyer has a good feedback record. Buyer then does not respond to me whatsoever for 7 days afterwards. I file a UPI. A few days pass. The buyer then responds to the UPI saying that he cannot find the company's support website for the motherboard. I give him the manufacturing company URL and explain that the company does not sell computer parts at the retail level, they only sell boards to computer manufacturers, so they don't offer direct end-user support. He doesn't respond after that and I finally close the UPI and issue him an unpaid item strike. Right away after closing it, I get negative feedback from him saying I am selling a "counterfeit motherboard".

How is this, in any way, fair? Is there any conceivable way that this is fair? How do you even counterfeit a computer motherboard? The guy delayed for two weeks, refused to pay, then leaves entirely false feedback for me.

Do I have to worry about this occurring with every damn buyer who I file a UPI against? Because right now I appear to. About ten of the negative feedback comments I have received have been from buyers who I issued unpaid item strikes to, and every single last one of them was unjustified, I've never changed my auction terms or refused a specific payment method afterward and can document that, yet eBay has no venue for me to do anything about it now. How does this eliminate bad buyers from the site, and how does this make sellers try to provide better customer service? If "bending over for buyers and letting them out of every transaction they decide they don't want to pay for" is "providing better customer service" then the entire concept of selling on eBay is defeated since now buyers can back out of deals whenever they want, knowing that sellers will be in fear of their ratings being ruined if they don't allow buyers to back out.

[itemsdepot]

The invoice may have to include an expiry date, after that date it's over and it's a no-sale, 'poof' end of invoice, listing fees reimbursed, item automatically re-listed, buyer dinged. No feedback would be involved in a non-transaction.

This would fix no-sale nothing happens transactions and eliminate the associated feedback issues.

Regards,ItemsDepot.

[itrecovery]

"In recent years, eBay has blocked buyers who haven't participated in the UPI process from leaving neg/neut Feedback. That has helped, but it hasn't solved the whole problem."

Of cause it didn't. Because all you need is to respond, not to pay. That was half-thought invention.

Everything should be in balance. E-bay has unbalanced system that will continue to failue.