First Negative In Twenty Years

In a former life (before retirement) I worked decades face to face with the public and came to know there are some people who simply cannot be pleased. Common sense should tell one that if the overwhelming number of comments about a business are positive with, say, one pct negative, the neg leavers are most likely among those "who cannot be pleased"

In a honest review system, I believe that having no negative feedback suspicious since some buyers are unreasonable.

In an honest review system, sellers would be able to leave ratings for problem/scam buyers rather than ebay touting buyers with 100% feedback as somehow being an achievement when they cannot receive anything except positive feedback. The entire system is flawed.

P.S. I find the multiple implications above that any ebay seller with 100% feedback is suspicious more than just a bit offensive. Believe it or not, some of us actually make an effort to provide quality service, communication, and merchandise to our buyers.

The system would be more fair , if a buyer had to contact the seller to explain a negative before a negative can be registered .

Negatives can not be given for something out of the control of the seller . Poor postal service is not the sellers fault .

There should be a extra star given if it is a repeat customer . Some stamp sellers have 15 repeat orders from customers that tells you a lot more than a one time low feedback negative from a buyer .

" I thought the U.S. mixture lot would contain a inverted Jenny for the $10.00 I paid for the lot ,so I am giving a Negative "

So, the entire system is flawed and a 100% rating for a buyer (like myself) cannot necessarily be believed, but a seller with 100% rating is always beyond suspicion. Ok, got it.

Oh please.

The reason 100% ratings for buyers cannot be believed is because SELLERS ARE NOT PERMITTED TO LEAVE NEUTRAL OR NEGATIVE FEEDBACK FOR BUYERS. Buyer feedback cannot be anything EXCEPT 100% due to the way ebay's feedback system is currently implemented.

The implications above that a seller should be suspect SOLELY for having 100% feedback is what I was commenting about.

Stop taking my words completely out of context and twisting them.

I think most ebay users understand all positive and one neg is down to a chance dealing with the odd crank. We all get them occasionally. Best thing to do in my opinion, leave a calm, reasonable response, no anger or retaliation, and others will observe your integity and ignore the neg.

I have been on ebay since July, 1998. I used to sell stamps weekly, and several of those years were when I was stationed overseas in the military and mailing through the APO system. Buyers all got a free APO cover with their purchase.

I have received 3,616 positive feedback. 1,035 as a seller, and have provided 4,039 feedback according to my ebay page.

I have NEVER received a neutral or negative feedback.

I always attempted to mail the lots the next day at the latest, used stiffeners and scanned front and back of the stamps for the lot.

Never had a return either.

Do it right, and you should have no problems. Your job is to do a good job and that should be the expectation.

I do bristle at comments assuming I should have negatives. Never have and don't expect to get any in the future.

Why did I stop selling? I used TurboLister and when some moron at ebay killed that and didn't replace it with an equally easy to use system, I couldn't be bothered. I hope some day in the future to get back into sales but for now it just piles up...

The point is, there are a few jerks out there that will neg you at the drop of a hat whether you did anything that a reasonable person would consider wrong or not and if you sell enough stuff you are likely to get hit by ne. I once got a neg by a guy bent out of shape because I charged sales tax (this was before ebay started collecting it for most states). My listing clearly stat6ed I charged sales tax, but this guy hit me with a neg and an F bomb.

I find the entire Positive/Negative = Good/Bad premise ridiculous. There can be nuance in every transaction and even the simplest transaction can have multiple components to evaluate or should if you wish. True reviews would be so much more helpful if they were not corrupted as with Amazon.

How about "The stamp was even better than described in my opinion. The listing could have been more descriptive but it sufficed for me. I asked for a scan of the back and the seller happily obliged. The seller (Frank) communicated effectively and overall I am happy. PS: The shipping was on the slow side but it was out of the seller's control." Along with this I would leave 4-5 stars.

Instead I have 72 (?) characters to explain the transaction and two choices, Pass or Fail. Inane and ridiculous is what it is.

And no, neutral is not an option since everyone sees it as a negative.

This is also partly ebay's fault. No data on how many use the mobile app when looking and bidding but I'm sure (in my own mind) that many, many never even bother with looking at the description. They see what they want, bid, win, receive it and then throw a tantrum because it has A B or C that was in the description that they can't be bothered to read.

I receive plenty of messages asking questions that are precisely and directly pointed out in the description and I'm guessing it's because they don't click on "read more..." or whatever it says on the mobile app. I simply answer the question nicely, glance at their FB given and if I see a bunch of negs handed out like candy from a van down by the river, I just preemptively block em and move on. Not worth the trouble for a simple sale on ebay.

I don't know that it's necessarily "can't be bothered to read" as it is ebay having diabolically engineered an app that encourages quick purchases and obfuscates details. I've used the app when on the road, and it's rage-inducing. The listing details are an afterthought that take deliberate additional actions to disclose.

ebay doesn't want buyers encountering ANYTHING that might dissuade them from buying. You know, those pesky details that they claim every seller should provide. DON'T ASK QUESTIONS, JUST BUY, D*MMIT!

ebay is in it for the quick buck, and it's left to the sellers to deal with the consequences after the fact. It's absolutely machiavellian: hide information from the buyer and make the buyer think it's the seller's fault.

For anyone who might want to learn more about feedback systems (both the history and their current, online form), I recommend this Atlantic article "The Problem With Feedback"
https://www.theatlantic.com/technol...work/575455/

The ebay feedback system is a marketing tool for ebay and is fully controlled by ebay. This fact alone disqualifies it from being considered objective; the system is controlled in a way that benefits ebay.

I have also read studies which concluded that statistically most feedback is from customers who feel strongly one way or the other and that 'ambivalent' customer experiences are grossly underrepresented.

RE: customer service
I am old school so perhaps my opinion and decades of customer service experience are passé. Books have been written on 'the customer is always right' which of course does not mean that every customer is always right.

Instead 'the customer is always right' means sellers should embrace the concept of the customer experience. In other words, understand what kind of customer experience your business is providing.

In the retail store next to one my wife and I owned and ran for years, there was an older couple with a 'miniature' store. Not only did they have an incredible display of doll house miniature works of art, but they also had a very impressive display of antique salesmen samples.

But talk about seller 'burn out'…they had a big sign on the front door which began with "DO NOT COME INTO THIS STORE UNLESS YOU ARE GOING TO BUY SOMETHING" and then listed about 15 things that were not 'allowed' in their store. There was also a diatribe about how even just 'browsing' in their store actually cost them money (i.e. we pay rent, we have to heat/cool the air in the store, etc.)

This is what I think of when I see some the threads from some of the ebay sellers whining about the customers. Retail is a hard job and is certainly not for everyone; turning your hobby into a business can suck the fun and enjoyment right out of it.

So I try to cut slack for a lot of seller since I know that they are really just hobbyists and have little or no emphasis on customer service. I assume that some are just reselling their extra material in an attempt to offset what they spend on their hobby.

That said, I am pretty sure that wanting 'revenge feedback' on customers is not considered good customer service. In my old school experience, learning how to hold my nose (and tongue) as I did business with some customers was simply a part of doing business. I tried to increase my business; I wanted to encourage folks to come into my store. Telling the 'jerks' what I thought of them as they walked out the door would not have been productive in any way. Countless numbers of the 'jerks' turned into many transactions over time, any emotional feelings I had were washed away as I added their money to the nightly deposits.

But perhaps in today's online commerce customer service does not really matter because return customers are not needed; just rely upon a ebay marketing tool to keep attracting the new customers.
Don

Who said anything about "revenge feedback"? The point of a seller being able to leave REAL feedback and not the candy coated positive only feedback is to warn other sellers of potential scammers and/or problem customers, not revenge.

Way back when, feedback on ebay was a 2-way system rather than the 1-way system we have today. What ebay should have done was just remove buyer feedback ratings completely. Instead we have meaningless buyer feedback, the Lake Woebegon of feedback "where every buyers rating is 100%", and even knowing the system is worthless, there are still buyers that complain when they don't get feedback or feedback fast enough. Since the switch to positive-only, I just automate the fluffy warm fuzzies and forget about it. It makes no sense for a seller to spend any time on buyer feedback at all, and it makes even less sense for a buyer to be concerned about their feedback.

Yet even today, when someone sends you a Best Offer, ebay has the unmitigated gall to put in the email "XXXX has a 100% feedback rating!" There must be a lot of stupid people out there if ebay's studies have shown that the statement matters one whit. $5 says that the percentage rating message is hardcoded in the email template since buyers can only have a rating of 100%.

Why ebay continues to cultivate the notion that buyer feedback means anything at all is beyond me. Does it make the emotionally fragile feel better that somebody gave them as positive rating on an anonymous sales transaction?

Dan - I am leaving you positive feedback for your comment.