Primarily Petroliana Shop Talk Forums Shop Talk Petroliana Forums Online Auctions, eBay Craigslist Petroliana My First Brush With The New Ebay Policies

I have an ebay store, where I sell many of the items in my catalog, mainly globes/decals/signs. Anyway, a lady in Texas purchased a conoco globe thru my ebay store. She completed the self-checkout all on here own and indicated that payment was on it's way. Obviously, when you do self-checkout, you get a pre-generated invoice with your total and where/how to send payment. Anyway, I saw that she had marked payment sent on 1/23, so I just figured like always, it would show up in the mail or thru paypal. So a couple days ago, I log into my account and see I have a new negative feedback, left by this lady. She indicated that she hadn't received the globe nor had she been contacted. Anyway, I finally got here phone # thru whitepages.com and asked her what her deal was. She said she wanted to pay with credit card and was ticked that no one had called her for her cc#. It clearly states on my ebay pages that you can pay via cc# by calling my toll-free number, which is then listed. Anyway, I went to leave her negative for not paying and not following instructions and guess what?? CAN'T LEAVE A NEGATIVE ON A BUYER FOR ANY REASON. I filed a complaint thru ebay which of course they said they can't remove feedback unless I got a court order requiring them to. The guy then says, most people will read your reply to the feedback and understand that she was in the wrong.

I was shocked, a multi-billion dollar corp, tells a customer that spend over a grand a month in fees & commissions, every month for years that MOST PEOPLE WILL UNDERSTAND AND WILL WILL PROBABLY STILL PURCHASE FROM YOU?!?!?!?!?!??!

Needless to say, I'm glad my dad's a pastor, as I'm going to need lots of confession about the language I used on the ebay rep.

Seth: I know you are getting ready for your auction, etc. But, when you have a minute, go in and look at the changes they are making to feedback. Sellers will only be able to leave positive feedback after the 20th. Yes, you read that right. Oly positive. If you hit the discussion boards you will see people are livid and several have closed up t heir stores. Ebay said they were reducing fees, (they did) but raised them onthe back end on the final value fees.

The 20th is BS!! I tried to leave this lady a negative and it would only let leave a neutral or positive. I kept trying to make it negative, but it would just keep reloading the page.

Boy that really sucks. I think I am going to take a break from selling on ebay untill they can learn to leave a working system alone.

Ryan

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ebay screwed up everything they need to go back an leave it alone

HOW IS LEAVING ONLY NEUTRAL OR POSITIVE FEEDBACK FOR A NEGATIVE TRANSACTION ANY GOOD? BIDDERS AND SELLERS ALIKE HAVE TO HAVE AN HONEST RATING DON'T YOU THINK?

GLAD I'M NOT ANY PART OF IT YET!

That's just it Doc....as a seller you can be left a negative feedback FOR ANY REASON. My stated policy, is that I ship items the next business day after payment is received. I had a guy send me a payment that I received on a Friday. I sent his decal on Monday (the next biz day) and he received it on Wednesday. The whole transaction from his purchase to his receipt took 7 days and he leaves a negative stating that I took 3 days to ship instead of my promised 1. Again, I turned it in to ebay, and again, they just blew me off.

I feel your pain Seth.

With this new system how is a seller to know if a buyer is BAD? I thought that is what the feedback system was for? I have a LOT of people I personally want to burn on ebay and now as a buyer I have a way to do it!!! I can now buy from these people that have burned me in the past and leave them a – feedback just for spite and they can’t do a darn thing about it!!! Heck, I can buy 10-20 things from their auctions in one week and really burn them! HA HA!!! Do see an opening for abuse with ebay’s new system now?

About 6 years ago I was making 13 grand a year on ebay selling only condoms. It seemed every 10th person that would buy tried to leave a – feedback to try to get me to send them more product for FREE. I was only able to counter their stunts by sending a - back to them and offering to jointly remove both theirs and mine. It leveled the field and stopped the thieves.

I learned early on ebay to NEVER leave feedback until they leave feedback for you. It seems someone always wants to burn you, and once you left yours you were… (well you just dropped the soap!!!)

My wife had the same problem with some people that would leave a – just because they wanted more product or were not happy with the sale because they had buyers remorse or something like that.

Seth your right, people just look at the number of –‘s and decide that if you have just 1 you are BAD… No matter how many +++++’s you have!!!

Ebay has opened up the door for the gun sites to start selling at www.auctionarms.com and www.gunbroker.com and now it looks like they are going to shoot themselves in the foot again. They are getting so BIG they have forgotten that it only takes competition to put them in check!!!


Travis E. Towle
Topeka, Kansas

Oh yea, on your opening post you said:

" MOST PEOPLE WILL UNDERSTAND AND WILL PROBABLY STILL PURCHASE FROM YOU"

Key words (MOST) & (PROBABLY) Not all people, just MOST and MOST will PROBABLY PURCHASE!!! Yea, thats bad business..... They don't care because if your items don't sell they still get paid.


Travis E. Towle
Topeka, Kansas

How’s this for scary… There is this one vender that has really ticked me off and there is no need to mention who it is because most of you know who they are… (NOT SETH) With eBay’s new feedback policy I can really slap them into the wall and the best thing is they can’t do anything about it but leave me a + feedback or cry. Here’s how.

When I am ready for my next major parts purchase here’s what I will do in 1 week.

I will personally buy 10 items from them on my account.

THEN USING MY FAMILY:
I will buy 15 items from them on my wife’s account.
I will buy 8 items from them on my father-in laws account.
I will buy 13 items from them on my mothers account.
I will buy 4 items from them on my sisters account.
I will buy 12 items from them on my brother-in laws account.
I will buy 2 items from them on my brother-in laws girlfriends account.

THEN USING 4-16 OF MY LOCAL FRIENDS (depending on how many more items I will need):
I will buy at least 2-5 items on each of their accounts.

I will pay for it all and have it shipped to their places using their paypal accounts. Then when I get all of the items I need for this restoration from that one vender in the mail, I will have everyone leave that freaking vender total NEGITIVES all the way down with various reasons! The best part, all they can do is cry and leave us POSITIVES!!!

HA HA HA, this will be GREAT!

Revenge is SWEET!


Travis E. Towle
Topeka, Kansas

I don't know you Travis, but did you get dropped on your head when you were a baby

this does really stink.i have only just become a seller and now i will be more nervous.

KZ1000

Just trying to make a point and it has been made clear as day. This new system of ebay's is going to be VERY abused.


Travis E. Towle
Topeka, Kansas

Wow. I was reading through these "policies"

I can't figure out the reasoning behind that "only the buyer can leave negative feedback"

??????????????????????????????????????????

I would have choice names as well. Trying to deal or reason with ebay is a waste of time from my past experience.

Whomever came up with that gem should be fired.

Anyone that wants to leave negative feedback had better use a different buyers name than what they sell under. Who wants to buy from a seller that leaves only negatives when they are a buyer ?
There will always be a few that will & do abuse the system, just because they can [same with taxes]. No system is perfect & ebay just got worse, not better for both sellers & buyers.
With the recession, now was not a good time for change & it will show with less items listed.

Ya know, this whole feedback change is a poor idea in every way. Of course the sellers are now going to have to put up with buyers that'll hold that negative feedback over their heads for free items or whatever they want without any way for the seller to protect themselves. If you're a seller and sell over 10 items a month, expect some negs to come your way real fast.

But this is the exact reason why these "improvements" are going to hurt the buyers, probably even more than the sellers. With all these honest sellers now getting negs, how are the buyers going to be able to tell the good eggs from the bad? And I do feel smart buyers try to avoid the bad eggs.

Besides, what difference does it really make if a buyer has a few negs anyhow? Most snipe, and if they pay the transactions goes through no matter how poor their rating is. Honest sellers, some who use ebay to put the food on their table, rely on their reputation, which is reflected in their feedback.

Lose/lose for sure.



[This message has been edited by lurker (edited 02-06-2008).]

I'm not saying this change is any better but I learned you could never leave negative feedback due to retalitory feedback. You could buy an item listed as new or perfect condition, pay immediately by paypal and get a piece of garbage. You then leave negative feedback telling the gods truth and the the seller responds with another pile of garbage saying your a bad buyer or should have asked questions or even worse attack you personally. I don't know what the answer is but it was broke the other way too. I wouldn't leave negative feedback even when deserved because I did't want my stellar feedback record tainted buy some jerk.
Jeff

[This message has been edited by jrwienri (edited 02-06-2008).]

[This message has been edited by jrwienri (edited 02-06-2008).]

Not allowing sellers to leave negative feedback is bad enough but it gets worse. Have you ebay sellers seen this recent change?


"Search Visibility
Search visibility will be tied to customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is reflected in a combination of DSRs, Feedback, and fewer complaints filed of an item being "significantly not as described" (SNAD) or "item not received" (INR). In March 2008, Best Match will become the default sort in search to give more buyers the results they want and will:
Increase exposure for sellers with DSRs 4.6 and above and at least 95% customer satisfaction in the last 30 days.
Decrease exposure for sellers with low customer satisfaction or Shipping & Handling DSRs."


It sure looks like a couple of buyers with an agenda can hurt a (good) seller's feedback rating without fear of the seller retaliating and in turn ebay will bury that seller's listings!

Slowly but surely I'm convinced that the best way to go in the long run, is to buy & sell from reputable people that deal on this Oldgas site. I'm somewhat new here (year & half), but have dealt with great folks. Feedbacks aren't really necessary to be posted here. Word of mouth has a good way of weeding out the "bad apples". My only hesitation on selling here, is that I sometimes honestly don't know the values of items & how to price them. Thus maybe getting some sarcastic remarks from someone for the whole world to see! I value my reputation & integrity higher than any earthly piece of merchandise. I feel that I know some of you very well from this site, but have never met you personally. Thanks for listening! Sam

Here is eBay's response:

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We believe that we will reduce any imbalance in the Feedback system with these changes. Buyers will be able to more accurately assess sellers and sellers will be protected from buyers who violate our policies without risking a cut in good buyer activity.
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I am not sure how sellers will be protected? Maybe most of you don't know but if you as a buyer get 3 or 4 –‘s in a row you are reviewed for suspension.

I have used peoples feedback before to ban them from my auctions or even cancel their bidding because it just waist my time and money when they don’t pay plus when they don’t pay you still owe eBay for the auction cost and closing fees!

This is the time for Microsoft or Yahoo auctions to pounce on eBay and put them out of the biz for good. All these major players have to do now is start advertising and pushing their auction sites and eBay will have a major problem.

From looking over the eBay forums 100% of the sellers are tweaked off and 100% of the buyers are tweaking them more by laughing about how they are going to use it to get even with people.

Talk about an imbalance!

Travis E. Towle
Topeka, Kansas

"This is the time for Microsoft or Yahoo auctions to pounce on eBay and put them out of the biz for good"

You couldn't be more correct! I went over to Yahoo auctions after I heard of all these "improvements" and found they closed their doors months ago.

When eBay made minor changes in the past and jacked their fees up 1/4% at a time, people got mad but got over it quickly. These are some major changes this time that directly hurt the people that are putting the money in eBay’s pockets - the sellers. The only problem is, since there are really no competitors (meaning options) to speak of, then this is just the way it has to be. But as Travis said, if some other big spender ever has the guts to go up against eBay, now is a perfect time to do it.


[This message has been edited by lurker (edited 02-07-2008).]

Death by a Thousand Cuts?

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* “Following eBay's announcement last week, the Overstock (OSTK) team worked through the weekend to design a new strategy highlighting its lesser-known auctions space, said Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne. The result? Overstock, in Salt Lake City, will redesign the header on its homepage to direct more traffic to its auctions tab. It plans to accelerate a software rollout that will beef up its auctions community message boards - and it's laying plans to produce 15-second Internet commercials to get the word out. "We think the time is right to position ourselves in this category," Byrne said. “Even Amazon has noticed an uptick in new seller accounts in the last week. Best known in its early days as an online bookstore, Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) expanded into consumer electronics and other categories, and in 2000 began allowing third-party sellers to list their wares alongside Amazon's offerings. All products are offered at a fixed price.Today, 26% of all items sold on Amazon come from its 1.3 million third-party sellers, who range from mom-and-pop vendors to Target Corp (TGT) (Fortune 500).”

* Yahoo Stores, Independant WebStore platforms, eBid.net, Play.com, Etsy.com, Google (GOOG) Product Search, Google and Yahoo (YHOO) paid search and BuyBack sites are going after consumers who may become casual sellers.

* “OnlineAuction.com, based in Grants Pass, Ore., reports that roughly 7,500 new sellers have opened accounts since eBay announced its new policies last week. That's a 15% jump in the site's user base, within a matter of days.”

* “Another contender, eCrater, has registered 1,400 new sellers within the last few days. That's more than double the site's average weekly total.”

* “Another upstart attracting attention from fleeing eBayers, San Francisco's iOffer, is built around a focus on friendly engagement between buyers and sellers. Sellers can transfer their eBay feedback scores to iOffer. . . iOffer has accumulated 75,000 sellers and nearly 1 million total users since its 2002 launch.”

* Another auction site, Chicago-based uBid, targets bulk sellers liquidating excess inventory. Its 7,000 participants include Sony (SNE), Motorola (MOT) (Fortune 500) and Dell (DELL) (Fortune 500). All sellers submit to a 10-point financial exam to ensure they're qualified to do business on the site: "That's part of our stringent anti-fraud stance," said uBid CEO Jeff Hoffman.”

* “… the auction site Bidville, which uBid purchased in 2006, does focus on what Hoffman calls "consumer-to-consumer" sales - the market eBay now dominates. More than 350,000 sellers are registered on Bidville, but 25,000 active accounts provide most of the site's 1 million listings, Hoffman said. “

=====================

Not one of these cuts will be fatal, but when you add them up they are beginning to drain the lifeblood of eBay, the seller.

I'm not predicting the imminent demise of eBay, but if they don't do something quickly to stop the bleeding, they may find themselves as just another marketplace and my guess is that this 800 lb. gorilla is going to weight a lot less.

Has anyone been watching eBay's STOCK value this week?


Travis E. Towle
Topeka, Kansas

Thanks for the info Travis , interesting reading;;;;;;;;;;;;;Ron

Please, ebay is not going away. Yahoo is fighting for it's life from being bought by Microsoft. Amazon has been bleeding money, for years now. Overstock is going to put out 15 sec "spots" at over a million dollars each and they are going to be able to keep costs down?
In last 3 years I have checked out atleast 10 different auction sites, none are around now. Ebay, is the biggest and is the "bully on the street". I don't sell on ebay, so I don't have a "dog in the fight". The new policy towards feedback does seem to be self defeating. It doesn't seem to be even close to being the correct answer. I can't understand anyone who wants to hurt a seller just for the hell of it. But it will happen, way too often under this new policy, as there doesn't seem to be any check and balances. I do feel for all that get caught up in this...........

[This message has been edited by Bob Richards (edited 02-07-2008).]

Again fellas...ebay is not interested anymore in people selling antiques. The real money is in getting people to open stores like mine. I've got over 1000 listings that self-renew every 30 days. Each listing has an inventory amount, so when one sells, if you have more in stock, another "listing" starts up with one less in inventory. You pay a small fee, say .10 for each item every 30 days UNTIL someone buys your item. I believe ebay would rather see the high-value antiques and stuff like it to just go away. There is so much more risk involved for fraud and buyer-dissatisfaction, that I believe they are basically just trying to move into an "internet" within the "internet", where people basically get online and never leave ebay. To a lot of people, ebay IS the internet.

Hey Seth you’re very right about the Internet thing, my mom talks about how she gets on the Internet everyday for hours.

BUT.

My wife and I tell her all the time that the Internet is OUTSIDE of aol.com’s networked chat rooms…


Travis E. Towle
Topeka, Kansas

Ebay hit a 52 week low the day after they announced the changes and all the analysts lowered their ratings on the stock, so its pretty apparent that the market doesnt think the changes will be positive for business.
Ebay is obviously the biggest in the biz, but GM was once too and with internet businesses, fates change a lot more quickly than conventional businesses. I think ebay is vulnerable...not to going out of business, but losing its total dominance. If that happens, then they are in real trouble.

Vermonter, I agree, e-bay is probably not going out of business but I welcome other options. Lets see what happens.

Email them a letter, telling them your thoughts and tell'em your going to refuse selling on their site, and "DO IT" !!!

What can it hurt ?

The reserve not being refunded, after it hits is what really *******.

Edit to remove unacceptable language

[This message has been edited by Oldgas (edited 02-09-2008).]

Wow !

This all very interesting- i start just about everything at 9.99 with no reserve- so that part wont affect me- i really beleive I get more bidders and a higher price without it- My starting cost will go down a little with no charge for Gallery- I have sold and bought through 10 years of changes etc- and have looked but never found a better place- also once I broke down and opened up a pay pal account many more international buyers showed up- Just an old ebay customers thoughts- thanks Don

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