Ebay Neg!

About 10 days ago I got a negative feedback from an ebay buyer.

The buyer emailed me and said that their item had not arrived after 2 week and I replied yes it is over time for the items arrived so I will refund you.

I refunded within minutes and was very polite but they neg me because the item went missing in the mail and that is what the feedback said.

After 5 years and over 4,000 feedbacks......

Contacted ebay no way they can help as it does not fit their rules for a removal of a neg feedback.

ebay's 1st response:
"I understand that it is not your fault as to why the buyer was not able to received the item. However, before we removed feedback, we need evidence to take against the buyer's claim.The comment place buyer is very subjective and opinionated.

My last reply:
"I have 2 ebay businesses and you tell me that any psychotic unbalanced buyer can do as they please to my perfect 100% feedback even when common sense says the feedback in question is out of order and does not fit the situation? I pay $500 + fees and another lot of fees for another store every month. So that is about $700 per month. There is something very wrong here. 5 years as a seller and now my page position for listings will be page 50,000 than the 1st couple of pages. Is it worth paying the very high ebay cost for O feedback protection even if it is obviously a very unfair neg feedback? This is the question I am asking myself.

ebay's last reply:
"Thanks for contacting ebay about the negative feedback left on your account. I understand your situation, as a seller myself; I know how important feedbacks and feedback ratings are to my seller's account. Let me help you with this.

I'm happy to inform you that I've removed the feedback from your account since it was clear that this buyer already had a refund for this sale. Rest assured John that this feedback can no longer be seen on your account and will no longer affect you as a seller.

Thank You ebay!

ebay has changed a few policies and seem to be making some effort to protect sellers. I get messages that ebay has changed some ratings in my favor once in awhile but with no explanation beyond that. But I've never had to go thru what you did. I did get one negative feedback, but the buyer left it before ever contacting me. He changed it after he got his refund. Glad you got the change! But the deck is still overwhelmingly stacked in favor of the buyer no matter what.

KGV Collector - KUDOS to you for going "ABOVE & BEYOND" from the beginning; it's nice to hear ebay can do something right.

KGV

Well done. How did you get a real person to respond? All I ever get is automated junk.

Geoff

nice!

sometimes it is easier to just get the buyer to revise the feedback if it ever happens again.

As a buyer the phone call to ebay seems the best way to go if you have an issue.But if there is good cut and paste info the email is better choice.

But as a seller the email seems to be best. An email can be well constructed with cut and paste info so that the ebay accessor has as much info as possible to make the sellers point of view stand out from the very beginning.

KGV

Thank you. I think I've got stuck in the "Report buyer" function, which doesn't seem to lead anywhere.

Geoff

KGV, you must be a genius!

Would you be willing to speak to my cable company?

The buyer would not respond to an email unfortunately.

The scary thing about it all is if you neg a buyer after payment.

Did you know the seller has?

1. Full names of the buyer.

2.The buyers address.

3. the buyers email.

4. Can google the address.

Not that I would ever do anything but to neg the wrong type of seller.....

Had a deal go sour out of SE Asia from ebay as a buyer.

Approx 4 month later the pay pal Lady said to me that she can see all the history that belongs to this case and you have told your story 27 times. Now go and look at your pay pal account. I did and the full refund was finally there. At the end she said you can now go back to having a peaceful life.

Why wasn't this topic entitled: ebay Pos?

KGV amazing you got it removed, well done. The only thing I wish is sellers could leave negs on buyers to that would make it a fair game. BTW KGV can I have the ebay id of this person as I want to block them, I don't want to sell to thieves who steal items online. Its xmas period rush mail time to so things take longer than normal to get there. Always tell buyer to wait a little longer before refunding them as often mail can be slow, held in customs etc. Esp this time of the year. D

Thanks Duncan I will email you no worries.

They live about 15mins from here by water in a very poor lit quiet area.

2 weeks is heaps of time from here.

Our mail goes into the do not have to cancel bag so can get next day Sydney or even Melbourne. 2 days for sure!

eBay's feedback system is horrible and full of ways that it can be misused and abused. A good seller's reputation can be easily be trashed by a malicious buyer. It is common for one person to seek revenge on another by simply buying something with the purpose of leaving a bad feedback. On the other side of the coin; others buy/sell multiple ebay accounts and manipulate the system to build misleading positive ratings.

Is it legitimate for a seller to have 100% feedback when they have 100,000 transactions? While this may be possible in extremely rare cases, chances are that any seller will have some clown leave a negative feedback. Not all people will try to jump through the hoops to resolve this stuff.

But what kind of quality metric is it when the data is allowed to be modified after the fact? Imagine your company builds widgets. Your QA manager presents you with the monthly metrics which you use to determine any issues on the manufacturing floor. But then you find out that the manager is backing out some information (no matter what the reason). You are being left in the dark as to what information gets left out but do you want to make costly decisions based on the cooked metrics or do you want all the information?

The truth is that in a normal system, any person with more than a few hundred transactions might get a few 'less than perfect' feedbacks. We should expect this and not hold it against a person. The local Better Business Bureau doesn't filter the information or emphasize a negative feedback. Instead they value the fact that a seller cares enough to respond and tries to address the issue. Additionally the business is allowed more than 12 words to present their side of the story. Others are allowed to formed their own opinions based upon both sides of the story, not some 'feedback tweak' versions.

The best thing that can happen is if people did not place marketing value on ebay's feedback rating. This sucks for those sellers and buyers who have faithfully tried to use it properly. But the fact that we can all find what we feel are great sellers with unfair feedbacks, or bad sellers with perfect ratings, is enough to prove that this system is badly flawed. I wish they would just dissolve it, having nothing would be better than what they currently have.
Don

I must admit that I've had negative feedback removed on two occasions without too much trouble. The second time, the case I remember best, a guy left negative feedback for me even though he wasn't the actual purchaser of the item. I cancelled the order because he wanted to pay with a form of payment I don't accept. I offered the item to the second highest bidder and he bought it and left positive feedback for me. Then, out of the blue, about 3 weeks later, the guy whose bid I had cancelled left nasty feedback for me. I persuaded ebay - although it took two attempts - that someone who didn't in fact purchase an item shouldn't be allowed to leave any kind of feedback at all, let alone negative feedback.