E bay seller ratings

[quarefish]

How is it E bay gives a seller top marks as a seller who has only 72 stars  yet in the feedback left for a 1 month period he has 10 positive, 2 neutral and 8 negative reports. Plus he has shut down public viewing of his feedback's. How can this make him a top seller? How does this protect the buyer if cannot read the feedback to see where the problems came from?  Think Ebay does not care about the buyer at all and is only interested in getting their fees.

[momcqueen]

Without knowing specifically to whom you are referring, it is possible the seller has not yet hit the date of the month (usually the 20th to 21st) when the monthly seller standards are tabulated. Private feedback, as well as the specific feedback percentage that one would hit with eight negatives over a feedback count of 72, are red flags and this would likely be an user who I would choose to avoid for the present. 

[momcqueen · Accepted solution]

Also, users with Private Feedback are not allowed to sell. Your seller in this example isn't selling anymore. https://pages.ebay.ca/help/feedback/profile-public-private.html

Was the seller's feedback at 97.3 per cent when you placed your order? For future reference, anything less than 99.3 is subject to closer inspection and general wariness. 

[reallynicestamps]

For most purposes,"top marks" would be 99-100% positive.

Anything lower is "not very good".

Anything below 95% is bloody awful.

But: ratios.

If a buyer has 100 FB and one is negative - he may still be a decent seller who ran into an impossible to please buyer. Read the feedback (including neutrals and postives ) for patterns (poor quality, poor communication, slow delivery).

If a buyer has 100,000 FB and 100 are negative- he's a very good seller, if only because some people cannot be pleased.  Again --read the feedback.

Plus he has shut down public viewing of his feedback's.

(Feedbacks. You're welcome.)

Do you mean all his listings are 'private'? This may also be done in some categories where buyers do not want to be identified, because of very high values or naughty items.

protect the buyer if cannot read the feedback

Feedback does have some value for this, but remember only about 40% of transactions get any feedback.

And if a buyer loses a Claim, indicating a serious problem, she cannot leave feedback in any case.

So FB is an indication, but not a very good one.

[momcqueen]

"Do you mean all his listings are 'private'?"

No, the seller in question hid their whole Feedback. They cannot be selling anymore. I'd speculate they ran into some massive trouble fulfilling orders, and then just up and quit. How long does it taker to loose the badge, stamps? Did ebay promise in one of the last Seller Updates that it was giving sellers a grace period in situations such as this to get their (redacted) back together without public disgrace? 

No identifying marks to reveal the identity of this seller as per ebay Community Guidelines

[terryb5987]

Seems to be an ongoing thing, ebay building up sellers that deal junk, and making it almost impossible to leave negative feedback

[ypdc_dennis]

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@terryb5987wrote:

Seems to be an ongoing thing, ebay building up sellers that deal junk, and making it almost impossible to leave negative feedback

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Impossible??

Out of 100 feedback you have left 6 negatives and 3 neutrals -- does not appear that difficult for you to do. Only if you order slow shipping stuff from China will you have difficulty because of the 60 day limit.

[terryb5987]

Well you just have to check when those negative feedbacks were made and you will see that it was back when buyers had the opportunity to rate the seller completely.

I might add that I am more than happy when I have the opportunity to leave good reviews. Many times I have left 5 star rating even after having problems with a product, because the seller seemed genuinely concerned with having satisfied the customers.

[momcqueen]

“...back when buyers had the opportunity to rate the seller completely.”

Please explain what you mean. Nothing has changed with user ability to leave feedback since about 2008 when sellers lost the ability to leave reciprocal negative feedback for buyers.

[pocomocomputing]

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@momcqueenwrote:
“...back when buyers had the opportunity to rate the seller completely.”

Please explain what you mean. Nothing has changed with user ability to leave feedback since about 2008 when sellers lost the ability to leave reciprocal negative feedback for buyers.

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I understand his comment to mean the eBay 60 day limit to leave feedback is not sufficient today to leave feedback when shipping times for items bought internationally from China or other parts of Asia are taking longer than the 60 days to arrive.

For the past 2 years or so, Canada Post is making shipments from China low priority to process because it costs more to process them than what is paid for postage as well as Canada  Border Security checking packages more diligently for drugs like fentanyl.

As well, the eBay time limits for filing claims for INR (Item Not Received) or NAD (Not As Described) is too short for long shipping times. eBay has adjusted EDD (Estimated Deliver Dates) for listings to 20-30 days but it is not enough because Feedback time limits are fixed at 60 days.

A buyer can use PayPal to make claims since PayPal has the 180 day limit. But eBay should be handling claims since it was bought on the eBay site. Especially since PayPal will soon no longer be the main payment processor on eBay.

[femmefan1946]

poco-- You make two good points about Paypal and the coming changes.

First, that the PP Resolution Centre does give enough time for a Dispute. A full six months

And it seems like the Dispute can be filed within hours of payment too. I'm not clear on that.

And that the departure of PP as the primary payment processor will cause problems, even if the handover is seamless.

[momcqueen]

"I understand his comment to mean the eBay 60 day limit to leave feedback is not sufficient today to leave feedback when shipping times for items bought internationally from China or other parts of Asia are taking longer than the 60 days to arrive."

You could be right, as a buyer, I avoid this conundrum by not making purchases from the Far East. I suffered too many disappointments and learned the hard way. 

It is a good question as to what ebay plans to do about this after paypal gets the boot in favour of the coming in-house payment processing. We should ask Tyler at the Weekly Chat. 

[momcqueen]

Oh, but was there ever a day when a buyer could leave feedback on a transaction more than 60 days old? I don't remember that day, maybe it was before my time. 

[reallynicestamps]

A lot has changed since 1995.

By the time we were using eBay, around 1998, you could only leave feedback after a transaction with another member.

I have a vague memory that at that time we only had 30 days for feedback, but you'd have to ask someone like @pierrelebel about that.

[pocomocomputing]

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@momcqueenwrote:

Oh, but was there ever a day when a buyer could leave feedback on a transaction more than 60 days old? I don't remember that day, maybe it was before my time. 

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I was curious about the 60 days so I went back in time on the Internet using the Way Back Machine site and looked at eBay pages from Feb 2001

https://web.archive.org/web/20010118223500/http://pages.ca.ebay.com:80/help/basics/f-feedback.html

For how long after a transaction may I leave transaction-related feedback?

If you wish to relate feedback to a transaction, you must leave your feedback comment within 60 days of the end of the auction. Beyond 60 days, comments are treated as non-transaction related.

I don't know what the "Beyond 60 days" means. It sounds like you could leave non-transaction based feedback for other members.

[femmefan1946]

It sounds like you could leave non-transaction based feedback for other members.

That's right.

At first it was hilarious.

Then it got scurrilious.

And then feedback became transaction related only.

This is why we can't have nice things.

[momcqueen]

Non-transactional feedback. That sounds like a big ole can of worms. I somehow doubt that's what terr was speaking of, however, since that user ID goes back to June of 2006 which is right around the same time as I joined and there was no non-transactional feedback option then.  

[femmefan1946]

Feedback for anyone didn't even make the 20th century.

It was only allowed from 1995 to maybe 1997.

Our first account was in 1998, and even then the old hands were reminiscing about the good old days when eBay was fun and not all commercial and flooded with mega-sellers with dozens of listings.