Is there a flaw in Ebay's feedback system?

[undermind]

If this shouldn't be posted here in the for sale section, feel free to move this thread..

I've always thought that there's a problem with Ebay's feedback system. I'd like to see if people can shed some light on this if they have experience in this matter..
Say I win and pay for an $800 item on Ebay and get screwed over and the seller doesn't send me the item. He stops responding to my emails and doesn't refund my money. Basically he rips me off for $800. So I leave him negative feedback. The seller, being a loser leaves ME bad feedback just for retaliation..

Is there something in Ebay to prevent this?? What about in lesser circumstances. I've dealt with deadbeat sellers and buyers on Ebay that deserved bad feedback for some really crappy stuff, but I've always refrained from leaving feedback in fear of retaliation and losing my 100% positive rating.

I'd like to hear about your thoughts and experience on this..

 

[nukeitout]

I agree that this is flawed. My girlfriend had a problem with a seller who wouldn't answer her emails. He just left her neg feedback and never actually tried to resolve the situation. It's a little different than your situation, but it's along the same lines. There should be some sort of system in place to have the negative feedback removed.

Personally, I would never give negative feedback for the reason you are stating. Typically, bad sellers will end up losing in the end anyway, and I don't risk my rep to be the one to take them down... I guess you could get a seperate account specifically to attack people with for an anonymous way to retaliate... Bid high on stuff, don't pay, then leave neg feedback, hehehe.

There are many reasons why ebay sucks. This is one of them...

 

[tnjazz]

No it's not a flaw - you're just focusing on the wrong thing.

You need to file claims to recover your money and report the seller for the violations. If you've done it successfully, the seller will be suspended (either temporarily or permanently) and unable to leave you any feedback.

If he does manage to do so following a suspension, it's removable under the terms of the service agreement.

All of the information you need to do these things successfully can be found on Ebay's discussion forums (particularly the Feedback Board). I hung out there for about 3 years when I was doing a lot of buying and selling a couple of years ago. Needless to say I learned a LOT.

Feedback is relatively unimportant. Not losing your money is the really important thing.

 

[nukeitout]

No it's not a flaw - you're just focusing on the wrong thing.

You need to file claims to recover your money and report the seller for the violations. If you've done it successfully, the seller will be suspended (either temporarily or permanently) and unable to leave you any feedback.

If he does manage to do so following a suspension, it's removable under the terms of the service agreement.

All of the information you need to do these things successfully can be found on Ebay's discussion forums (particularly the Feedback Board). I hung out there for about 3 years when I was doing a lot of buying and selling a couple of years ago. Needless to say I learned a LOT.

Feedback is relatively unimportant. Not losing your money is the really important thing.

Yea, I totally read that too fast and overlooked the fact that $800 was being lost. Thanks for the good info, tnjazz, I agree with you.

 

[valverec]

It goes both ways though. A lot of times buyers won't follow through on the sale, the seller leaves negative feeback, and then the deadbeat buyer retaliates with negative feedback. There's no realistic way that eBay can police this stuff though. If they had to investigate every transaction and try to figure out who was telling the truth they'd have quadruple the fees they charge, lawsuits up the ass, and that would make it a lot more expensive for everyone. I think their system actually works fairly well.

The REAL flaw is that if you get angry with someone over a transaction, you can sign up for multiple accounts and bid on items and leave them more negative feedback. This actually happened to me once. I sold something, the buyer came back at me 3 months after he had had it, and then said it was broken. I told him, too bad, you've had it for three months, it's a used item and for all I know he did something to break it. So he left me negative feedback, and then he signed up for another account, bid on something else I was selling, and left me more negative feedback, saying that he paid and I never sent him anything, which was total bs. Ebay investigated, but because the guy wouldn't admit he was the same person, they wouldn't do anything about it.

 

[apl]

I've never had occasion to use it, but there seems to be a feature that allows on to reply to neg fb received, somthing like, "Tried to work it out, but..." Another thing to sort of protect yourself is to only use PayPal on larger transactions and use PayPal based shipping. That way eBay and PayPal have a paper trail and the non-payment or non-shipment argument is hampered.

 

[tnjazz]

It goes both ways though. A lot of times buyers won't follow through on the sale, the seller leaves negative feeback, and then the deadbeat buyer retaliates with negative feedback. There's no realistic way that eBay can police this stuff though. If they had to investigate every transaction and try to figure out who was telling the truth they'd have quadruple the fees they charge, lawsuits up the ass, and that would make it a lot more expensive for everyone. I think their system actually works fairly well.

The REAL flaw is that if you get angry with someone over a transaction, you can sign up for multiple accounts and bid on items and leave them more negative feedback. This actually happened to me once. I sold something, the buyer came back at me 3 months after he had had it, and then said it was broken. I told him, too bad, you've had it for three months, it's a used item and for all I know he did something to break it. So he left me negative feedback, and then he signed up for another account, bid on something else I was selling, and left me more negative feedback, saying that he paid and I never sent him anything, which was total bs. Ebay investigated, but because the guy wouldn't admit he was the same person, they wouldn't do anything about it.

If someone buys and doesn't pay, why even bother with negative feedback? File for your fee refunds, etc. and issue an NPB against them. 3 NPB strikes and that Email address is permanently suspended from Ebay. That hurts more than a random "you suck" comment on a feedback profile.

If you get hammered by someone creating fake accounts, you report all of the accounts for invalid contact information and request the negatives be removed as a result. If their account info is valid, then they're in violation of the terms of service and the feedback can be removed. If their account information is not valid, it's in violation of the terms of service and can be removed. It's as simple as that.

Feedback is almost TOTALLY irrelevant unless you are a seller. If you are, you should have two separate accounts for buying and selling (this is not illegal as long as they do not interact).

 

[valverec]

That's not true, it's 3 unpaid bidder strikes in a short period of time and you MAY be suspended. Also, you don't get all of your fees refunded if someone doesn't pay. You ONLY get the final value fee refunded. So if you sell something for over $500 and some douche bag uses buy it now, then doesn't pay, you lose about $5.50 that you can not get back. How that's fair, I don't know, but that's eBay's policy.

So someone that basically causes you to lose $5 because they bidded on something on a whim, then backed out certainly deserves negative feedback.

And I did all of that with the guy who signed up for multiple accounts, and after a month eBay did a half ass investigation and closed the case without doing anything. Believe me, I tried my damned hardest to nail the guy, but ebay wasn't able to do anything about it.

Policing feedback would be enormously expensive for eBay, and we're the ones who would pay for it.

 

[undermind]

No it's not a flaw - you're just focusing on the wrong thing.

You need to file claims to recover your money and report the seller for the violations. If you've done it successfully, the seller will be suspended (either temporarily or permanently) and unable to leave you any feedback.

If he does manage to do so following a suspension, it's removable under the terms of the service agreement.

All of the information you need to do these things successfully can be found on Ebay's discussion forums (particularly the Feedback Board). I hung out there for about 3 years when I was doing a lot of buying and selling a couple of years ago. Needless to say I learned a LOT.

Feedback is relatively unimportant. Not losing your money is the really important thing.

Filing claims to recover your money is easier said than done. It depends on the circumstances. I believe Ebay only refunds up to $200. If you pay via Paypal, they'll refund up tp $2000 ONLY IF the seller is a 50 or more with a positive rating of 96% or better. There are a lot of good sellers with 100% feedback but are under 50, in which case you'd only be refunded $200. So filing a claim in this situation would work only if the seller decides to actually give you the money back, which likely wouldn't happen. But that is good information about the seller not being able to leave you feedback if he's violated the rules. And that's the reason I posted this is to find that out..

I still think it's flawed. There are many situations where buyers or sellers deserve bad feedback. But the risk of retaliation keeps people from doing it. So there are a lot of people that should have it but don't get it. And that defeats the whole purpose, which is creating a reputation for your practices. If I'm considering spending my hard earned money on something and risking losing it, I want to know if this guy is a deadbeat or not. But based on the fact that people in this thread are saying "it's not worth leaving negative feedback" or "don't bother leaving negative feedback", the seller could very well be a deadbeat and I could lose my money based on the fact that the feedback was never left. So therefore the system IS flawed. The whole concept of Ebay is based on reputation. That's what we seem to be forgetting here.

 

[valverec]

If you pay via paypal with a credit card, your credit card company, if it's a decent one like citicards, will refund your money and go after paypal. I've done this on two occasions and it's worked perfectly, and I got every last penny back.

 

[dgatwood]

It goes both ways though. A lot of times buyers won't follow through on the sale, the seller leaves negative feeback, and then the deadbeat buyer retaliates with negative feedback. There's no realistic way that eBay can police this stuff though. If they had to investigate every transaction and try to figure out who was telling the truth they'd have quadruple the fees they charge, lawsuits up the ass, and that would make it a lot more expensive for everyone. I think their system actually works fairly well.

No, their system sucks. A monkey could do a better job. Just five little changes would fix it:

1. A user cannot see any pending feedback about an auction until both sides have left feedback.
2. A buyer cannot leave feedback unless the buyer has paid for the goods (which means either paying through eBay or the seller clicks the "buyer has paid elsewhere" button).
3. After 30-45 days (once feedback can no longer be left---I forget the limit), pending feedback shows up even if only one side left feedback.
4. Buyers and sellers can challenge false feedback. This should not require mutually withdrawing feedback because retaliatory feedback no longer occurs. Upon a challenge, the opposing party must provide proof of guilt to the satisfaction of the reviewers, or else the feedback is revoked.
5. The count of revoked feedback MUST be shown. Otherwise, eBay could reward their power sellers by simply siding with them in revocation proceedings....

Nothing huge, just a brain-dead simple way to prevent retaliatory feedback.

 

[brich2929]

I totally agree with the fear of ruining your perfect 100% positive rating because I've done that. I've also had sellers when I buy something, and it happens very often, will not give me positive feedback even after I've comppleted my end of the deal and paid in full. They are waiting until I get the merchandise and give them positive feedback first.

 

[tnjazz]

I totally agree with the fear of ruining your perfect 100% positive rating because I've done that. I've also had sellers when I buy something, and it happens very often, will not give me positive feedback even after I've comppleted my end of the deal and paid in full. They are waiting until I get the merchandise and give them positive feedback first.

Just paying for the item doesn't mean your end of the deal is done. What if it arrives damaged, or never even gets there at all? Feedback is intended to be a comment on the satisfaction of the OVERALL experience. If you haven't received the item yet, the deal is not yet done is it?

As a seller, I always let people know to contact me when the item arrived. When and if they did and there were no issues, I gave feedback then. I don't require them to give me feedback first - all I ask for is a quick Email acknowledging they got the item and everything is good. I don't ask for feedback, and when I buy I always send this Email to my seller, followed by feedback (assuming the transaction went smoothly).

Your part as a buyer isn't over and deserving of feedback once you've paid. Some give feedback first, some wait to receive it first. There's no right or wrong, nor any hard and fast rule. It's completely voluntary, of course.

I've got a guy I bought some things from back in December who never gave me feedback. I gave him a positive, but he never did anything in return. You know what though? I don't really care, because I got the items I bought (in mint condition, even). Only reason I comment on it is because I see it every day when I log onto "My Ebay". It will be gone in a couple of weeks, and it won't really matter if I ever get feedback from him.

It's just like this site, with the whole "rep" thing. Why does it matter so much? The only thing I'm really concerned with is the merchandise. If the feedback comes that's great, but it's not why I'm there in the first place...

Your opinion may differ from mine of course. The age old "who should leave feedback first" argument has been going on from day 1, and will go on as long as Ebay's around I'm sure. They were pretty smart not to set any rules on that, actually.

Is it flawed? Maybe. Will they "fix" it? I doubt it. Just do it the way you think is right. You might get dinged along the way a time or two. That's life though, ain't it?



By the way, why is this thread in the For Sale section?

 

[apl]

I base feedback on timely payment and shipping.

 

[valverec]

1. A user cannot see any pending feedback about an auction until both sides have left feedback.

Here's the flaw in that, sellers would never leave feedback then.

2. A buyer cannot leave feedback unless the buyer has paid for the goods (which means either paying through eBay or the seller clicks the "buyer has paid elsewhere" button).

Sellers would not click this button once they had a decent amount of positive feedback, so buyers wouldn't be able to leave feedback. Or they'd wait until the buyer lets them know they got the item and everything was great.

3. After 30-45 days (once feedback can no longer be left---I forget the limit), pending feedback shows up even if only one side left feedback.

It's actually 4 months I believe. There again though, how do we know the buyer paid? How do we know the seller delivered? It's the same problem we have right now, just delayed 3-4 months.

4. Buyers and sellers can challenge false feedback. This should not require mutually withdrawing feedback because retaliatory feedback no longer occurs. Upon a challenge, the opposing party must provide proof of guilt to the satisfaction of the reviewers, or else the feedback is revoked.

Everyone wants to challenge their negative feedback, so again this would be a monumental task requiring hiring thousands of customer service reps to handle it. It would end up costing us. It would be better if eBay spent this money on foolproof security measures to protect people from fraud.

5. The count of revoked feedback MUST be shown. Otherwise, eBay could reward their power sellers by simply siding with them in revocation proceedings....

And there again, this hurts sellers who've done nothing wrong but been ripped off $5 by a dead beat bidder.

The one good thing about eBay's feedback system is that everyone understands it fairly well. A few negative feedbacks on the buyers end don't hurt him in any way. Unless you have an overall negative feedback number, you can still buy and bid on any item on eBay. eBay will not block you from buying, so who cares. On the sellers end is where it really sucks. EBay is much more buyer driven than seller driven. They don't give power sellers special treatment. They make it very hard for sellers to choose their buyers based on feedback score etc. You can't block bidders with no feedback (most of the people who don't pay) and they rarely if ever overturn feedback, even when it's clearly suspect.

 

[valverec]

I totally agree with the fear of ruining your perfect 100% positive rating because I've done that. I've also had sellers when I buy something, and it happens very often, will not give me positive feedback even after I've comppleted my end of the deal and paid in full. They are waiting until I get the merchandise and give them positive feedback first.

When I sell something I always wait to get feedback first. Otherwise joe blow out there can come back 3 months after the sale and say, OOPS it's broken, I want my money back, or money for repairs, and if you don't, I'm giving you negative feedback. I've had this happen to me too, and that's not fair.

Positive feedback does NOT have rules governing how it's supposed to be given. EBay doesn't say, you MUST leave positive feedback after a buyer pays. It's just not based on that. Feedback is subjective, and it's up to the seller and buyer to determine when they are satisified enough to leave positive feedback. The only rule eBay has on feedback is that once it's left, you really can't touch it, it's there forever. Just being paid doesn't mean I'm satisfied with the buyer. If that buyer then comes back at me saying he doesn't want the item because it doesn't do what he wants, then I'm screwed. Feedback is the ONLY thing there to protect me, and to keep both sides in line.

 

[dragonworks]

as a buyer I always wait until the merchadise arrives to give feedback, who wouldn't. As a seller I never ask for feedback and don't rightly care.

 

[undermind]

It's just like this site, with the whole "rep" thing. Why does it matter so much? The only thing I'm really concerned with is the merchandise. If the feedback comes that's great, but it's not why I'm there in the first place...

It's NOT like the "rep" thing here. If you're just here for information, then rep doesn't really matter. But a reputation DOES matter on Ebay. I'm making a decision to send money to someone I don't even know in good faith that he's going to actually send me something in return. Like I said before, reputation is the foundation of Ebay. If you find 2 identical items on Ebay for the same price and one seller has 100% feedback with a rating of 45 and the other has no feedback whatsoever, are you going to buy from the guy with no reputation?

 

[Rick Shepherd]

I have been selling on ebay for quite a while! The system is definitley flawed. Case in point:

I sold an item to someone, but received and email from them a month later, stating that the item was not working. No problem, I said, I am happy to provide a full refund. I then checked my feedback and noticed that that he left negative feedback before even allowing me to respond or make things good for him. Then I went to his listings and he had already relisted the item for sale himself as a working item.

Needless to say, I contacted ebay about it, stating that this person was listing an item for sale that he was supposed to return to me, an item which he told me was defective. I thought this would be considered a form of fraud.

He then retaliated, launching a counter complaint against me stating that I would not refund him, when in fact I was more than happy to provide a refund as soon as I received the item and verified it as being defective. He stated to ebay that I was verbally abusive in my emails to him when in fact I was very professional. In fact, I sent ebay copies of his verbally abusive emails to me which contained profanity.

To add insult to injury in this matter, he also used my original photo to relist the item. Needless to say, he pulled the item off his listing to return it to me within the 10 day period he had to return it. I tested the item and it was fully functional, no doubt about it.

Ebay refused to do anything in this matter, in fact, I was at the whim of the buyer and I had no choice but to refund him in full, whether the item was functional or not, it didn't matter.

After all was said and done, I still had the negative feedback that could not be changed.

 

[dgatwood]

Sellers would not click this button once they had a decent amount of positive feedback, so buyers wouldn't be able to leave feedback. Or they'd wait until the buyer lets them know they got the item and everything was great.

Then they'd get busted by eBay for never shipping the item. It needs to be set up so that no progress can occur until the previous step is complete. If they haven't checked the "buyer has paid", they can't click the "seller has shipped" button, and thus eBay could quickly determine that they weren't following the rules.

In my experience, the system is heavily biased against buyers currently (though sellers can definitely get screwed by bad buyers, too). I've done both, and I felt a hell of a lot more comfortable selling a PowerMac via eBay than I would have buying one. That needs to change, IMHO.

The idea of showing the count of revoked feedback is that small numbers of revoked feedback would be normal, but if you started seeing somebody whose revoked count was half their feedback score, you could reasonably assume something was wrong.

As for challenging negative feedback, the reality of the matter is that eBay is liable for libel if they knowingly publish false information or fail to retract provably false information in a timely fashion. Their current feedback system is legally treading on very, very thin ice.

As for the additional expense for eBay, so what? I'd rather have a legitimate marketplace where I felt like I was protected as a buyer or seller than eBay, which basically amounts to a glorified flea market, caveat emptor. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

That said, what we really need is a non-profit eBay replacement. Instead of making a quick shareholder bucks off of its customers, it would actually spend its profits to provide customer service that doesn't suck....