Interesting article re Ebay and other sites. - confirming issues and Ebay direction

[dutchman48]

https://www.racked.com/platform/amp/2017/10/16/16473414/ebay-online-shopping-resale

[musicyouneed]

Very good article.  Thanks for sharing that.  

If I were ebay, I would get rid of the sellers that receive 100+ negative responses a month or more.  Sure these sellers sell a lot but that is 100+ people a month that have been turned off by ebay and they tell their friends and so on.  I have often said to people you should check out ebay as it might have what you want and more than often they have told me they had a bad experience.  

In this case, this seller has had 6,474 buyers that reported a negative or neutral experience in the past 12 months.  How many do you think continue to shop on ebay?  You multiply that by 100 sellers and you have 64,474 buyers that possibly shop elsewhere.  No wonder buyers are shopping elsewhere. 

Would you continue to shop with this seller or ebay if you were one of the buyers with a negative experience?

[pocomocomputing]

On eBay you can see the negative and neutrals of bad shopping experiences. But what about the 62000 good ones?

It is not just eBay when a bad shopping experience will turn off buyers. I have brick and mortar stores or restaurants I refuse to go in because of a bad experience. You just do not see a record of brick and mortar stores until they hit the news.  If you ever go to online review sites of stores or businesses, there can be many bad reviews too.

A fixed number like 100 is not a good measure. The current eBay method of a percentage threshold is a far better way to control and rate sellers. You can never get rid of all bad buyer experiences, real or perceived.

[musicyouneed]

Hi Poco, the good ones are not that good on this particular seller, they say things like, fast shipping or OK.  I wouldn't be too proud of the positive feedback either.  

You said it yourself:

"I have brick and mortar stores or restaurants I refuse to go in because of a bad experience."

Ebay has had years of buyers leaving ebay because of a bad experience.  Every negative should count.  I have had 2 bad experiences on ebay where I have returned the items as the DVD's were counterfeit and the necklace was very poor quality for the money I paid.  I will never shop with those sellers again.  In fact I would never buy a DVD or jewellry on ebay again because of that experience.  I didn't leave feedback for those 2 because I didn't want the reputation that goes with it. 

You only get one chance to make a good impression and ebay is missing the mark looking at percentages, look at the negatives they are what is driving the buyers leaving.  

[jt-libra]

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@musicyouneed wrote:

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I've often seen numbers like this and, at first, it throws me for a loop.  But I have read several articles about negative reviews of companies (not just eBay) and if it's 1% or less, evidently you should not conclude that this is a bad seller.  In this case, the negatives total one-half percent ... throw in the neutrals and it's almost 1%.

I have purchased from sellers with these numbers, using caution.  I review the negative comments and if I see anything related to shipping from China when the item location is stated as the U.S./Canada, or nasty reactive comments by the seller to negative feedback given or comments regarding poor or no communication, I'll pass.  I agree, however, that many of those 3500 unhappy buyers will not return to eBay but I believe the majority will continue to purchase, but from other sellers.  Having said that, I have no statistics to back that up.

[dutchman48]

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@musicyouneed wrote:

Very good article.  Thanks for sharing that.  

If I were ebay, I would get rid of the sellers that receive 100+ negative responses a month or more.  Sure these sellers sell a lot but that is 100+ people a month that have been turned off by ebay and they tell their friends and so on.  I have often said to people you should check out ebay as it might have what you want and more than often they have told me they had a bad experience.  

In this case, this seller has had 6,474 buyers that reported a negative or neutral experience in the past 12 months.  How many do you think continue to shop on ebay?  You multiply that by 100 sellers and you have 64,474 buyers that possibly shop elsewhere.  No wonder buyers are shopping elsewhere. 

Would you continue to shop with this seller or ebay if you were one of the buyers with a negative experience?

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Is he one of your competitors? If not, what does he sell?

From this negative person's view, he also has almost 700,000 positives in the last year. That is phenominal.

[musicyouneed]

The seller sells everything under the sun, electronics, video games, books, DVD, CD's (that is how I came across this seller).   They have 37,000 books listed; 100,000 DVD's, 400,000 CD's.  So their negative buyer responses can affect me as they will not buy on ebay again.

[recped]

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@musicyouneed wrote:

The seller sells everything under the sun, electronics, video games, books, DVD, CD's (that is how I came across this seller).   They have 37,000 books listed; 100,000 DVD's, 400,000 CD's.  So their negative buyer responses can affect me as they will not buy on ebay again.

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If you had 2 negs and 2 neutrals your rating would be equally as bad. I would venture to say even worse since it's generally easier for low volume sellers to avoid negs.

I would also guess that buyers who hand out negs don't leave eBay at the rate that buyers who don't leave any feedback do.

[jt-libra]

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@musicyouneed wrote:

The seller sells everything under the sun, electronics, video games, books, DVD, CD's (that is how I came across this seller).   They have 37,000 books listed; 100,000 DVD's, 400,000 CD's.  So their negative buyer responses can affect me as they will not buy on ebay again.

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Not necessarily.  I've had a few negative buying experiences over the years, both as a novice buyer and as an experienced seller.  Every bad transaction can be a learning experience.  I've slapped myself on the forehead and thought ... how in the world did you not notice that .... things along those lines.  At any rate, I'm still buying and, from speaking to friends who have had bad experiences, they're still purchasing.

[cumos55]

Success on eBay, whether as a ....seller or as a buyer ....is based on knowing what ... not... to do.

[hlmacdon]

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@musicyouneed wrote:

Very good article.  Thanks for sharing that.  

If I were ebay, I would get rid of the sellers that receive 100+ negative responses a month or more.  Sure these sellers sell a lot but that is 100+ people a month that have been turned off by ebay and they tell their friends and so on.  I have often said to people you should check out ebay as it might have what you want and more than often they have told me they had a bad experience.  

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That feedback record is nowhere near as bad as what you are making out when looked at in totality. If most ecommerce retailers could keep their unhappy customer records to that sort of metric they would be doing well. People who have a bad experience on ebay are more likely to have it with smaller sellers who have no grasp of customer service or online commerce standards. I do however think they should do a better job of responding quicker to sellers with a sharp upturn in complaints of a certain nature (INR or SNAD) as the current system is a breeding ground for scammers and they are more likely to turn off buyers.

At the end of the day eBay's problem is it doesn't know what the hell it is. The current handbag initiative only illustrates that to the fullest level. Until they actually build a marketplace that promotes a buyer/seller relationship and allows you to conveniently follow and see updates from your favorite sellers they will be stuck in a rut. The current SDI won't help as it gives merchants no reason to invest on the platform since it only encourages a race to zero. It is nothing more than a bandaid solution for years of getting hammered with SEO penalties from Google for stupid decisions that people in marketing made in hiring well known spam houses to fudge their SEO..

People need a reason to use the site, and when the outsourced, antiquated, frankly abominable infrastructure throws up nothing but roadblocks between buyers and sellers you are going to get an astronomical bounce rate. You only have to look at the recent "tests" they have been doing lately to see they have no clue how to operate an ecommerce site. In keeping with the musical themes in this thread, I believe there was an artist that had some lyrics that went something akin to move move get out the way.