Seller Non-Performance Policy

[Arash]

eBay expects sellers to deliver a consistently high level of buyer satisfaction.

When a seller lists an item and a buyer purchases it, the seller and buyer have entered into a contract that both members are expected to honor. For sellers, this contract includes both formal requirements, as well as informal, common-sense obligations to provide good service to their buyers. 

Sellers who do not fulfill these requirements and obligations are not honoring their contract and create a bad buyer experience.  Sellers who generate excessive bad buyer experiences relative to their selling volume are at risk of violating the seller non-performance policy.   

Buyer experiences are reflected in areas such as Feedback (including overall s................s and detailed seller ratings), as well as item not received or item significantly not as described disputes.

Violations of this policy by a seller may result in a range of actions, including:

Listing cancellation

Forfeit of eBay fees on cancelled listings

Selling fee schedule adjustments

Requirements regarding payment options and potential holds on payments made through PayPal

Limits on account privileges

Loss of PowerSeller status

Decreased visibility in search results

Account suspension

Referral to law enforcement

[dans]

To sellers:
if you rip people off, expect complaints
If you sell a widget for a few dollars & charge $50 for shipping, you're going to have to expect people to complain & probably leave negative feedacks.

I buy on ebay too & always understand all of the costs involved, but there are always newbies that will not. If you have unprofessional business practices, you're going to get complaints. Duh...

[gnord]

Maybe so, but there are buyers who do not realise that the ratings system which describes four stars as good, will penalise sellers who s................s average less than 4.6.

There are also buyers who will send neutral or negative feedback maliciously, or new users who will send a negative rating for problems outside the sellers control. For example postal delays caused by bad weather, etc.

A bad rating for 'slow delivery' when the seller dispatched the item on the day of purchase is unfair, but even if the seller has proof of dispatch eBay would not remove a negative of this sort.

If buyers are worried about bad sellers on eBay, I advise that they take the time to read ebay's rules carfully, and also make sure they understand their legal rights and the law as regards distance selling.

These are not too difficult to understand, but some business sellers do not seem to understand them properly, or do not want to understand them at any rate. So as part of the buying process check things like does the seller show a true geographical address, does the seller try and limit your refunds to exclude shipping charged, or state that you won't be covered for postal loss unless you pay extra insurance. All these things are illegal.

Also ask yourself if the seller is following ebay's own rules. Eg, does the listing or thtile contain lists of different models, or makes? (This is 'keyword spamming', intended to make the item appear in as many searches as possible.) 

If you think the listing breaches eBay policy in any way, report it. A great many sellers get quite angry that so many cowboy sellers seem to get away with quite so much rule breaking, and one reason for that is that eBay does nothing unless a listing is reported.

Sellers do report other sellers who are breaking rules, but it's an extra job when they could be concentrating on selling, and time has to be paid for. So the buyer eventually pays! Also there is the suspicion that sellers who report competitors are just trying to harm their competitors, and the complaint carries less weight!

Also read the listings carefully. Listings with not much information may be quicker to view but often a listing has important information in the details. Sellers are often not trying to hide faults in these longer descriptions, but trying to point them pout as fairly as possible. Where the description is trying to hide something you will often find that it is written in capitals. This is because it happens that reading more than a few words written in capitals is more difficult than lower case.