First Negative In Twenty Years

For me?... You shouldn't have... I will treasure it always.

"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."

That is true of any rating system. Only the people who feel strongly one way or the other feel the need to leave a rating. Most inbetweeners don't bother.

Hi Dan,
If I recall ebay removed the ability of leave negative customer feedback over 13 years ago (2008) because it was primarily being used as retaliatory mechanism. Any buyer who left a negative on a seller would almost guarantee that the seller would leave a negative on the customer. It was a cluster and made the ebay feedback system even more of a joke than it is today (if that is possible). But in the early 'trading' ebay days it made some sense to leave feedback in both directions.

But when the ebay platform moved away from supporting 'trading' and more towards a typical retail selling platform, rating a customer became inane. Can anyone here give a brick-and-mortar example of a customer rating system?

A local business can refuse to offer goods or services to a customer for 'legitimate' reasons but doing so can open the door to being sued for discrimination. But refusing to do business with a person is not a customer feedback mechanism and online venues offer the same functionally (mechanism to block a buyer and choose to not do business with them).

I also do not know of any other online venue that supports negative feedback on customers; it simply is not a part of any customer service-related approach to doing business. I cannot think of any customer service book, theory, or approach which includes reviews or the rating of customers.

Imagine walking into a local hardware store and red light goes off, the store owner says "hey you, get out! You have been identified as a 'bad customer' by the dry laundry store down the street". I understand the desire, in retrospect and as a retailer I can recall a number of transactions where this would have come in handy.

I finally closed our retail store after having to come to my wife's rescue after a male customer spit in her face. This happened after she refused to allow him to place a special-order item (he had refused to pay for a special-order item once before.) Would a system which allowed us to ID this customer before doing any business with him prevented this or would he have just split in her face when she refused him at the door?

The bottom line is that there are just as many bad sellers as there are bad customers (as a percentage). But for centuries companies have done business without any kind of customer feedback system. Customer service is supposed to be about continual improvement and is meant to provide businesses with data that can be used to improve their products and services. Do customers care about becoming a better customer?

A case can be made that all feedback systems are flawed and open to abuse. Even Consumer Reports, as a supposedly independent organization, has had critics who say they are flawed and biased. But let's assume that we could form an independent organization that monitored both sellers and buyers fairly and was bullet proof against being abused (huge assumption since virtually any system can be gamed). Would it be free? Of course not, a service like this would be costly. Would everyone here be willing to pay for this kind of service?

I can see the argument for totally abolishing the flawed ebay feedback system; I do not see the point of adding support for what would clearly be used as a retaliatory mechanism (and just make a flawed system even worse). For me, I do not use the ebay feedback system and do not understand why anyone uses it.

As I mentioned before, online business is different than a local business because local businesses typically depend heavily upon repeat customers. But online business can be done for years without ever having a single repeat customer; there are literally billions of new customers available 24/7/365. And a hobbyist-turned-seller certainly does not need repeat customers to move out their extra material. In this kind of business world good customer service is not as important. If this is the 'brave new world of online retailing' than we have the answer for every post and thread that whine about bad customer service from sellers, "sit down and shut up, no one cares if you buy from this seller again or not".
Don

Those who haven't worked behind a shop counter, particularly where money is being disbursed, may find it hard to understand just how awful the public can be. From my years selling records, I can recall physical violence, threats of violence, a wide range of insults, shoplifting, pecuniary deceit, bomb hoaxes, obscene phone calls ... the ebay buyer is light relief in comparison.

Sounds like being a stamp forum Moderator (without the shop lifting)...
Don

For comparison purposes, both Hipstamp and Delcampe support positive, neutral and negative feedback both for sellers and buyers. Delcampe uses 0%,25%,50%,75%,100%, and also "comment only" - used in cases such as mutual agreement to cancel the transaction. Delcampe also support blocking sellers & buyers (put into the "blacklist" is their excellent term), Hip does not (not sure why, I've seen it asked for on their forums).

In Delcampe, feedback on buyers can actually be useful to sellers. The odd buyer has a tendency to order stamps and then never pay. If you see that other buyers have thrown in the towel, so to speak, and cancelled their invoices after trying to contact the buyer over a few weeks, that is useful as seller in the same situation. If enough sellers do this, Delcampe will actually close the buyers account & notify any sellers involved - I've seen this happen now twice. (Of course, the buyer can then just open a new account, not sure if Delcampe has any procedure to tackle that issue).

GeoffHa,

Well I'm retired now and basically the only complaints I have to listen to are from the better half!

During my working life I had a number of jobs including military, university lecturer, law enforcement, Australian Federal government,and finally prior to retirement, working in a retail establishment.

Of all of those jobs the worst one was in the retail establishment. Not only did I take crap on a daily basis from the customers, but also the managers.

Worst job I ever had and worst pay to boot.

I paid more in tax at my previous job than I made in pay at that job.

In my first position with that establishment I had 5, yes FIVE, different bosses in one year!! Most of them treated the employees like scum except for one who only lasted a couple of months.

I switched to another position at that company and had daily contact with customers - even more than in the first position and I had the exact same litany of experience as you did with customers, but the manager and assistant manager in the new position were just as bad.

The 2IC was a thieving, lying, lazy SOB who would come in late, leave early, and take 2 hour lunch breaks when the boss was gone. The guy would actually swear at customers and even walk off and stop talking to them.

A while after I switched positions they canned the boss and brought in a new guy to 'fix' things. He spent most of the time talking on his mobile phone.

He implemented a bunch of new crap including weekly bonuses and conditions for part of the staff (I wasn't included) that were so onerous that not once were any bonuses paid. (I wasn't included for some reason..........) Christmas Party cancelled and all sorts of other crap as well.

One day I ended up being called in the office for a 'talking to' in which he started yelling at me about a customer complaint (first one I had during the entire time I worked there).

No explanation, just yelling, threats, and derogatory comments. He even suggested that I undertake illegal actions to keep my job. Not once in my working lie had a superior ever talked to me like that - not even in the military.

Called the better half and told her what happened and she said:
"QUIT".

SO I did.

Walked back in, handed the company car keys to him and said "I quit.". Walked up to the head office, said a few goodbyes, took the train home, and sent an email to the company owner telling him that I couldn't work with that person anymore.

Never heard a thing from the company. I got paid my hours worked from the previous pay day and the 5 weeks of annual leave that I had accumulated. Lost a huge amount of sick leave.

About a year after I left I got a call from the company asking what I was doing and they told me that my previous boss and that 2IC were "no longer working for the company".

I asked who was the new boss and hearing the name, said, "Oh, that p***k". Told them I was retired and don't bother me again.

Here in magic Oz, the unemployment benefits are 'means tested' which means if you have income and assets they are taken into account to determine how much the government will pay you when you stop working or lose your job.

Too much income (dividends interest, pension, capital gains, etc) or too much in assets (cash, investments, real estate other than your own home)and you can end up getting nothing.

So no unemployment bennies for me.

I really felt sorry for the people that had to work for those two dills on a daily basis and put up with the bs they dolled out. I was fortunate that at that time I was able to walk out of the job and not to have to put up with the crapola. First job that I hated to go to.

Some of the other jobs I had were really, really good, but spoiled by 'politics'.

I really enjoyed working in the Homicide Squad and applying my experience and knowledge gained from my former military work.

My real 'customers' in that job never had a complaint......However, there were some real 'winners' working there and I won't bother telling stories, but of the 30 plus people that were hired around the time I was, in less than a year there were only 5 of us left.

One guy left the first day another, a retired Australian Air Force Major, left after a couple weeks at work and wrote a 30 page missive to the Chief Commissioner.

A bunch of good jobs with good workers destroyed by idiots.

I said nothing to my wife but filed a complaint after he called me a pig. That was Friday. Utter silence since.

This guy's been around since 2002, had a good feedback record with almost no negs either way. In the past few years he went all to hell. Not sure what his problem is but hope he gets help for it.

I will never forget one experience I had, not the worst though. I was in retail and repaired electronic equipment. Mostly camcorders and video equipment. It was a Saturday, lunchtime and I was in the breakroom when all hell broke loose out front. A customer had ordered a chain for a chainsaw, and brought it back for a refund because it would not cut correctly. The cashier called a lawnmower tech to save a sale. The customer proceeded to cuss out the tech from top to bottom and back; the whole thing must have lasted some ten minutes and everyone in the whole building stood behind the doors watching the whole thing.
The technician stood quietly listening to the tirade, and when the hothead customer was finally through he pointed at the chainsaw and said with a cool expression on his face: "You put the chain on backwards".
Needless to say, then customer did not apologize but turned purple and left, without getting his refund


Peter

The old phrase "you can't please all the people all the time" is completely apropos here. Two people having the exact same experience with a seller can easily leave 2 opposite feedbacks. There are lots of people today who are experiencing delays in receiving their purchases and they leave (+) feedback a week later after the item arrives, because they know delivery times are out of control of the seller (assuming it was shipped on time). Yet, there are other buyers who leave (-) feedback after an item is later than ebay says it 'should' be. What are you gonna do?? When ebay says it ought to be a certain way, some people actually believe it to be true. Believing the man behind the curtain is a problem - it just shows how gullible people can be.

Some vendors have worked very hard to get a high feedback score. Others have used the system to get a high score. From the POV of a buyer, they look the same. I LOOK at feedback scores, but I know I cannot trust them completely. If I see a high # of (-), I will look at the (-) entries. If there is an underlying theme, then I will believe that there is a problem with the seller. That is pretty rare, though, especially nowadays with the 'new' and 'improved' feedback system. The ebay feedback system has been carefully engineered and developed into what is currently a giant steaming pile. It is all but worthless to buyers and sellers. Dare I say, it is virtually (literally???) worthless to everybody except ebay itself which probably gets marketing advantages out of it. As with so many other aspects of their business, ebay is using human behavior to their advantage. It would be nice to believe that they have created a system that would benefit all of us, but they haven't done that. The idea that they use the 'metrics' generated by their own flawed system to offer advantages to some sellers is simply ridiculous.

I got my first neutral last year after several thousand positive feedback. The buyer, a retired fart, complained about transit time. (I mailed it next day).

There were auxiliary markings showing misdirection.

I suggested his feedback was better directed at Canada Post, who mishandled the item, but the adamant buyer insisted he was justified. I took it on the chin and moved on.

Sometimes you try your best, do everything right and it doesn't matter.