I Don't Understand the Compaints about E-bay's New Feedback

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Posted By: Hagar Henderson

I posted this as a side note on another thread but I've heard so many gripes in other threads that I thought it deserved it's own thread. (Sorry Leon, I know this isn't about vintage cards but it is highly relevant as this deals with the major source in which we obtain our cards, vintage or otherwise)

I don't understand why people are complaining about the new feedback for E-bay. The buyer's only responsibility is to pay for the item. How can a buyer screw up unless they did not pay? If they didn't pay, the seller should obviously still have the merchandise. There's not really a loss in that case except for the hassle of re-listing. You can even offer it to the next highest bidder. However, there's a lot of ways that a seller can screw up. Plus, seller's can report this to E-bay and E-bay takes action. So, a buyer has a lot more to lose than a seller. It takes a great leap of faith to send a money order to someone for hundreds or thousands of dollars for cards that you haven't even seen in person. However, once the seller has that money order in hand, there is nothing the buyer can do except click on the negative feedback button.

The old system guaranteed that each party would receive the same feedback, which is pointless. That's why there are sellers with tens of thousands of transactions and 100% positive feedback. Think about it logically. Is that realistic? Are these sellers so good that they had 10,000 transactions and NOT ONE of their customers had a gripe? The old feedback system did not work due to sellers using feedback to retaliate against a buyer. The only time I've received negative feedback was because the guy forgot to ship my order and I emailed him 3 weeks later asking where my order was. He put it in the mail the next day. I left negative feedback. Then he responds with negative feedback against me! How did I deserve a negative? I paid via Pay Pal 5 minutes after the auction ended! In my mind, sellers abused the system which led to it's demise. The entire feedback system has been a joke. Having 99.9% positive feedback means nothing because everybody gave everybody else positives for fear of retaliation. If you look at average seller feedback you would think that there is never a problem transaction on E-bay.

The result of this will be a shift in what is considered "good" as far as feedback. Everyone won't have over 99% positives. It may end up that having 95% positive feedback means you are a top notch seller, whereas now, I won't go near you if you "only" have 95% positive.

Sellers, if you operate like a true business and shoot for customer satisfaction, I do not think you will find your sales hurting due to this change. You may lose business due to absurd oil prices that are hurting disposable income, but that's a different issue.