ebay's Feedback Consipiracy

[hotan]

[dans]

As a frequent eBay user I can certainly agree with your observations, but exactly how would you eliminate the practice of "retaliatory" feedback?

[seria]

Hi, Ora, You're right of course - how to properly set up a fair system is, in my opinion, a research level problem. There are people who have addressed it, but building a good system is challenging.

I think there are steps that ebay could take. It would require gathering statistics on retaliatory feedback, but my theory is that some cases of mutual negative feedback would be straightforward to classify.

[bazak]

I've never used eBay so maybe I'm naive. eBay must know which users bought from which other users. Surely only users who bought from another user can leave feedback about them, and only concerning specific transactions?

[doper]

You are right, The feedback system lets buyer and seller leave feedback for one another on a given transaction. The problem is retaliation. If I leave negative feedback for the seller who sold me the fake item, they are likely to leave negative feedback for me - but I did nothing wrong! I paid quickly and rightfully requested a refund when I found out they sent me something different than they advertised. The seller can lie and say that I didn't pay on time or that I complained unjustly. That negative feedback they leave for me may make other people less likely to buy from me or sell to me, so I am disinclined to leave the rightful negative feedback for the bad seller in the first place. This is a very common tactic, and most people are extremely hesitant to leave negative feedback for this reason. Thus, ebay looks like a place where the vast majority of transactions are positive, when the reality is that the negative transactions happen and are just much less likely to be reported.

[royan]

The effect of bad feedback is disproportionately higher if you're a seller than if you're a buyer. On a personal level, you could maintain separate buying and selling accounts so that you're free to leave negative feedback without risking your selling reputation, but that doesn't help in the aggregate, since most people won't do that. Perhaps eBay could separate buying and selling feedback more prominently.

[debra]

That's totally true about buying and selling and the effect of feedback (and I like your suggestion about separating them). However, my real issue is with ebay actively discouraging negative feedback when it is deserved, as in the case of the email they sent me. There is no excuse for calling a two month dispute an amicable resolution.

[news]

You're so right.
I recently got a number of negatives from various bidders with no rating themselves, simply because they had not seen that we charged a modest packing/handling fee, they refused to pay and we filed a Non Paying Bidder (NPB) claim.
Then to add insult to injury, eBay suspended our selling privileges for 15 days "because of our feedback history".
Go figure.

[rabit]

In the early days, when feedback just started, one could leave as many negatives as one wanted. One fellow gave me three revenge negatives for one transaction and as of today, they still count in my rating. And to make matters worse, the negative feedback did not have to be transaction related either. One fellow gave me a negative because I had filed a complaint about him with eBay. That one still counts too and yet I have never done a transaction with this person.
Rather then giving negative feedback and getting revenge negatives in return, I simply hope that the expression "what goes around comes around" holds true and leave it at that

[wellard]

I'm really glad to have stumbled across this thread, as this issue is something I've considered quite a bit. To date I've purchased probably 10 items over ebay, and I think maybe three of those were as described. I have never left negative feedback, or even neutral feedback, however, because of fear of retaliation. So I totally agree, the system itself fully assists those who misrepresent themselves or outright lie.

On the flip side, I've gotten a lot smarter over the years, and now I read every negative/neutral feedback, check the feedback of the people who left negative/neutral comments and scan the positives to see if any actually contain real information. Combining all those factors paints a far larger and more helpful picture. And whaddya know, I haven't been screwed by an ebayer since. Of course, I also haven't bid on an auction since.

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[Steve.Hill]

I've been lucky as a buyer because I've only had to leave one negative feedback and there was no retaliation. Admittedly, most feedbacks I left were 4 or 5 stars. There are several reasons for this:

1) Most of my winning bids were low cost items, like books -- primarily chess and billiards books or literary biographies -- Out-of-print LPs and CDs, magazines, movie stills and posters, out-of-print VHS videos and kitchenware (e.g. Tupperware).

2) I usually contacted the seller to clarify any questions before bidding or purchasing. This was particularly helpful when bidding on used books to verify that they were graded according to professional bookseller standards. Not coincidentally, most of the used items I won, including LPs, were described accurately, and the new items I won from companies were always factory sealed.

3) With my check or money order I always wrote a letter listing the item I won, describing exactly how I wanted the item packed -- particularly important for paperback books which are easily damaged in the mail -- and lastly thanked the seller. Sellers almost always followed my instructions to a T. In other words, I took no chances. Interestingly, I even had a few sellers refund my money if the book was damaged or what I consider overgraded, which was rare to be sure. Some sellers even recommended I keep the book along with the refund. Of course, we are talking a total of $7 to $10, and that includes shipping.

4) Almost all my bidding took place from late 1999 to early 2003, before some of the real schmucks "discovered" eBay. Of course, I also bid in subject areas where one was less likely to be scammed because of the character of the seller as well as the low amounts involved. I would never bid on art works, antiques, or, not to put too fine a point on it, anything of real value unless I knew the seller.

5) I only gave 5 star feedbacks if the item was described thoroughly and accurately, packed as I requested, and sent media mail (for books) upon my request. You could tell that some buyers left very general, 5 star feedbacks out of courtesy or laziness. So long as the seller was alive and breathing he received 5 stars. Frankly, I never trusted feedbacks unless I read two or three pages of them and used a little common sense regarding the unsatisfied customers. Some buyers were well spoken and had a legitimate complaint, but others were just downright impatient, failed to read the item description correctly or failed to contact the seller by e-mail before leaving negative feedback. In other words, more than a few disgruntled buyers were injudicious.

Obviously, you had a legitimate complaint and the seller should have been bounced from eBay. Unfortunately, a seller has to ply his unscrupulous trade habitually to be bounced. And if they are bounced, some just sign up under a different user name.

Best to bid or buy items from large, legitimate sellers or ones you have experience with, particularly when it comes to valuable commodities.

Best regards,
steve

[chilout]

That pretty much sums it up for me. (Don't forget to hover over the image to see the title text.) I would rather see a graph of transaction activities than rely on people to objectively rate vendors. Quite simply, people lie. Public auctions and their resolution are a matter of public record, aren't they?

[tornob]

I hate to say it, but the ONLY way to correct these problems is a class action suite. That really will not help anyone here - only putting money in the lawyer's pockets, but eBay is obviously not listening.

It can be proven in court that the system could allow for much fairer solutions: 'double blind' ratings so sellers do not know specific people rating them. The problem is that bad seller obviously know they are doing something wrong

[Jeff]

I agree with these criticisms. I believe that if you pay it is possible to get access to ebay statistics. Would it not be possible for some one like you to do an analysis of retaliatory feedback? Or do ebay explicitly stop this use of the data?

[fusion]

I have a general solution for retaliatory feedback that I'll post soon. My real issue, though, is that eBay is telling people NOT to leave bad feedback that is deserved. That strikes me as a more open and obvious (and thus offensive) effort to manipulate the appearance of safety in the marketplace than ignoring a problem and refusing to fix it.

[dans]

There is an inherent conflict of interest in Ebay owning PayPal, which makes these issues worse. Ebay simply refuses to allow any PayPal competitors on Ebay, such as Google Checkout,for totally bogus reasons:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/accepted-payments-policy.html
"eBay will consider the following factors, among others, in making its determination:
Whether the payment model offers substantial financial, privacy and anti-fraud protection for buyers and sellers
Whether the payment service has a substantial historical track record of providing safe and reliable financial and/or banking related services"

Now who can claim that PayPal meets those criteria, and keep a straight face?

[fusion]

Seems odd, but you might just be reacting to a poorly written automated email. You'd be happier if they wrote:

"[If] this claim [was] resolved amicably...."

Send in the feedback, see what they say. If they refused to change the word then I'd say there is a conspiracy.