New eBay seller rules suck

[Altimus]

Seriously, they take away the option to leave negative feedback for buyers and now neutral feedback counts as negative points? I have over 300 transactions, 1 neutral, and 0 negative and now by score has changed to 99.4%. This doesn't make sense; neutral should be what it always was.

No big deal but now I can't post 100% feedback in my auctions anymore.

Not to mention instead of calculating based on the full life of the account, they only do it now in the last 12 months.

[Heelfan71]

Re: New eBay seller rules suck

they give any reason for the changes.

[Altimus]

Re: New eBay seller rules suck

The only thing I got from them is that we trust our members to give honest feedback. That's all I got from them regarding the new feedback policy.

I don't understand why they did this. People can just buy things, never pay or pay whenever and you as the seller take all the responsibility since feedback can't be left.

[Brandon13]

Re: New eBay seller rules suck

I read about this before. I bet Ebay eventually ends up changing it back to the old way or something similar.

[TheGamingChef]

Re: New eBay seller rules suck

Seriously, they take away the option to leave negative feedback for buyers and now neutral feedback counts as negative points? I have over 300 transactions, 1 neutral, and 0 negative and now by score has changed to 99.4%. This doesn't make sense; neutral should be what it always was.

No big deal but now I can't post 100% feedback in my auctions anymore.

Not to mention instead of calculating based on the full life of the account, they only do it now in the last 12 months.

Instead of 100% feedback just say zero negative.

[SqueakyD]

Re: New eBay seller rules suck

Ok, so here's a short story on why I like the new rule.

A while back I purchased Lumines for the PSP from a guy who claimed that it was brand new, still in original shrink wrap. Really cheap too, like less than 10 bucks. I went ahead and BIN'ed it.

The product came in, and I noticed that it wasn't even in it's original shrink wrap that new PSP games come in, but a different kind where the the plastic is a bit harder and has a top flap with a line of self adhesive on it so it seals itself like an envelope. Definitely not done by Sony or whoever usually seals the games.

I open it up and saw thumbprints all over the protective PSP UMD, AND the disc itself...

This shiznit ain't new as listed, so I, ofcourse, ask for a replacement but as time went on I didn't get a reply... I went ahead and cleaned up the prints and the game was like new/played fine so I didn't feel like escalating it to ebay or paypal or whatever.

So I went ahead and gave the guy neutral feedback, because the product shipped on time, and the game worked anyway... In retrospect, I was being REAALLYY lenient on this, almost too much... but then the weird thing happened...

The seller sends me this long *** email threatening me to take down my neutral feedback, or else he would give me a negative. He went into detail, noting my perfect 100 percent rating and saying that he will damage it if I didn't withdraw it... He also was like "well, you got it for cheap, so what do you expect!?"

WTF? I replied, stating that I stand by my neutral, and the only reason why it's not a negative was that the shipping time was better than expected and the price was good. Hours later he shot me a negative rating that said "I give negative feedback for neutrals. Now you know."

So the new rules help prevent sellers from threatening people like that.. why should I get the damage when I did my part of the transaction, while the seller doesn't? I shouldn't have to be scared to drop a neutral to a seller that deserves it ya know?

[NYJets]

Re: New eBay seller rules suck

Does it really make a difference if you have a 99.4 compared to 100%?

Not trying to be a dick, just a serious question. When I buy stuff if they have 1 or 2 negative feedbacks out of a hundreds I give them the benefit of the doubt, but maybe most don't?

[SqueakyD]

Re: New eBay seller rules suck

Does it really make a difference if you have a 99.4 compared to 100%?

Not trying to be a dick, just a serious question. When I buy stuff if they have 1 or 2 negative feedbacks out of a hundreds I give them the benefit of the doubt, but maybe most don't?

I'm sure there are plenty of folks that do take pride in having a perfect score. Especially for those who have worked hard at it. Different strokes for different folks that's all.

In my case, I could care less about buying stuff from a one or two or ten negative seller. But there's the population that do care about it and that's already a handful of people that decide not to bid --> less money that could be made by the seller.

[Moses Shuttlesworth]

Re: New eBay seller rules suck

Yeah this crap won't let me stay at 100%

[Altimus]

Re: New eBay seller rules suck

Does it really make a difference if you have a 99.4 compared to 100%?

Not trying to be a dick, just a serious question. When I buy stuff if they have 1 or 2 negative feedbacks out of a hundreds I give them the benefit of the doubt, but maybe most don't?

SqueakyD mentioned a few reasons why.

I sell a lot of custom work that I do for people that want to retrofit xenon lighting into their headlamps. This costs anywhere from $600 to over $1,200 so people are investing a lot of money into. A below 100% score looks badly upon me and might take sales away. Plus I worked hard to make sure to have that score stay at 100%.

Many other people are pissed with this as well. One other guy told me that some people leave neutral because they are too scared to leave negative. Okay, that makes sense but what about when it really is neutral. This makes neutral feedback the same as negative and now is pointless. It just doesn't make sense. A lot of sellers are displeased with this and they forget it is the sellers that keep eBay up and running.

[The Chef]

Re: New eBay seller rules suck

I can appreciate your reasons for liking this SqueakyD but now all ebay is doing is sticking all the power in the hands of the buyer, or in other words, taking a problem and sticking it on the other person. Personally I think they did this so they could boast about how successful their service is and use feedback as an example of this, this whole thing stinks of bs. Eventually ebay will go back, but they really dont care about the sellers or buyers, they only care about the bottom line and most people are only going to complain but will keep doing business with them, myself included, and unless ebay gets hit in the pocketbook they arent going to change anything. I used to care about my rating as well as my percentage but Ive gotten to the point where there are far bigger things to worry about then something I cant really control.

EDIT- For anyone who wants to know why a buyer/seller has negative feedback without going through possibly years of feedback, use the following website, it allows you to type in their username and shows you all negative feedback they have ever received....

http://toolhaus.org/

[Altimus]

Re: New eBay seller rules suck

What is worse that their system doesn't even abide by their rules:

How Feedback works

For each transaction, buyers and sellers can choose rate each other by leaving Feedback. Feedback from buyers can consiste of a positive, negative or neutral rating, and a short comment. Feedback from sellers can consist of a positive rating and a short comment. These ratings are used to determine Feedback Scores. With some exceptions, outlined below, Feedback works like this:

• A positive rating increases the Feedback Score by one point.
• A neutral rating does not change the Feedback Score.
• A negative rating decreases the Feedback Score by one point.

Which it does. I don't want to make this out as a huge issue but it just ticks me off as I've paid eBay lots of money over the years and instead of truly improving the community, they make it worse.

[stewaat]

Re: New eBay seller rules suck

The rating system always seemed shady to me.

You should have the ability to dispute a negative/neutral rating with a moderator IMO.

[bkfount]

Re: New eBay seller rules suck

I have bought and sold on ebay since 2003, and have a 100% feeback rating as both a buyer and seller. So yeah, it would kind of piss me off to get it hit when I do my best to make every transaction smooth.

I recently bought two games from a big power seller who kept bugging me for feedback. The problem was, that I never got them. The total was only a little over $10, and looking through their feedback, they looked to be very ticky tack with feedback. I left a positive feedback with a sarcastic negative complaint, and they still gave me a positive feedback. If I had left them a negative, they would have given me one for sure, calling me a scammer or fraud. They do hundreds of transactions a day, so the comment got buried quickly, they just wanted the positive feedback points.

I've pushed things like this to Paypal before, and it's just not worth it. All the sellers had to do was provide a tracking number to show they shipped it, and ebay sides with them. It's not worth the fight for things worth so little.

I don't mind Ebay wanting to stop sellers getting positive feedback based on fear of retaliatory negative feedback on buyers. All the buyer has to do is pay, so if they don't, you file a complaint. There's no need to hold feeback hostage until the buyer leaves a positive feedback, it totally devalues the point of it. However, I still think the move is shallow. Buyers would be better served if ebay looked at how they deal with complaints like mine above. I also take issue more with their new fees than feedback rules though.

[mgoblue]

Re: New eBay seller rules suck

I have bought and sold on ebay since 2003, and have a 100% feeback rating as both a buyer and seller. So yeah, it would kind of piss me off to get it hit when I do my best to make every transaction smooth.

I recently bought two games from a big power seller who kept bugging me for feedback. The problem was, that I never got them. The total was only a little over $10, and looking through their feedback, they looked to be very ticky tack with feedback. I left a positive feedback with a sarcastic negative complaint, and they still gave me a positive feedback. If I had left them a negative, they would have given me one for sure, calling me a scammer or fraud. They do hundreds of transactions a day, so the comment got buried quickly, they just wanted the positive feedback points.

I've pushed things like this to Paypal before, and it's just not worth it. All the sellers had to do was provide a tracking number to show they shipped it, and ebay sides with them. It's not worth the fight for things worth so little.

I don't mind Ebay wanting to stop sellers getting positive feedback based on fear of retaliatory negative feedback on buyers. All the buyer has to do is pay, so if they don't, you file a complaint. There's no need to hold feeback hostage until the buyer leaves a positive feedback, it totally devalues the point of it. However, I still think the move is shallow. Buyers would be better served if ebay looked at how they deal with complaints like mine above. I also take issue more with their new fees than feedback rules though.

It's this aspect of eBay that makes me not want to participate. eBay isn't about people selling stuff to other people, it's about pimping your score and annoying people until they give you a positive rating. If you give negative (even if your transaction was horrible) then some guy is going to e-stalk me into changing it....

If something wrong I should be able to say something on the site without fearing some e-nut coming after me and never leaving me alone. A user based system that has absolutely no quality feedback you can trust is flawed at its core.