Trust on eBay, and the feedback system

[damien_pw]

I'm a long time eBay user, and like anybody, trust is probably my main concern. Can I trust the seller I am purchasing from? Can I trust the buyer bidding on my item to follow through? As a buyer, we have the feedback system to help us avoid those bad transactions. As a seller there's probably a little less protection - the options to screen buyers are a little limited, but that's another discussion.

So, as buyers, we rely on the feedback system. Personally, I try to avoid dealing with any seller having below 99% feedback. You may say that's a little harsh, but I work on the assumption that for every negative feedback a seller receives, there's probably a few more that they've been able to avoid. In fact, in the past I have had sellers drag out resolutions to the point where my abaility to leave any sort of feedback has expired (I'm pretty careful about this now).

Case in point, I won an auction recently. It was an item I didn't particularly need, but thought I would have a go as I wanted to try it, and the price was quite low ($1 no reserve auction on a fairly niche bit of camera kit). The seller had 100% positive feedback, there were only a few bids, and in the end I won the item at a very good price indeed. Moving along to the payment screen then, and found I was unable to pay for the item. Within a few minutes, the seller had cancelled the order. Reason: "I'm out of stock or the item is damaged". Sounds like a generic 'tick a box' excuse to me. There was no other communication from the seller.

Within a week, I noted that the item had relisted - no longer at $1 no reserve, but for $99 buy-it-now thank you very much. Exactly the same item (it was used, there were photos - the very same photos from the earlier listing). Perhaps I have an overdeveloped sense of moral outrage, but to my thinking, a seller on eBay should not get away with doing this sort of thing scott-free. So after a little research (googling 'ebay Seller cancelled after I won' seemed to do the trick), I decided that eBay would probably be do little to address my concerns, and the recommended course of action would be to leave negative feedback.

Now, I didn't lose any money on this transaction, it was just a little inconvenient to go through the bidding process, get excited about my win, and then try to pay for ten minutes before realising I'd been ghosted on the auction. After some thought I concluded that leaving neutral feedback would be fair. The feedback was something like "Won aucton. Seller cancelled, then relisted at higher price. Poor form". I thought that was quite fair (my wife said I should have left negative feedback, but in the absence of monetary lost, I did not think that justified). Anyway, I thought that was quite fair, and left it at that....

...until, some time later I wondered if the seller might have responded with counter-feedback. Like a dog with a bone who can't leave it alone, I had to have a look. I brought the seller profile up, clicked through to their feedback, and…wait a sec...where's my feedback?!? It was there before - where did it go?!?!? Nooooo way? Did they remove my terribly fair and factual, 80 character limited feedback?! DID EBAY ACTUALLY JUST REMOVE MY FEEDBACK, WITHOUT TELLING ME!!?!?!?!

I was pretty fired up after that. On to live chat then with my righteous indignation! I explained the situation, and how I felt that this was an abuse of trust and that the seller should at least face some form of penalty. Very quickly I was passed from one consultant to another, who informed me, "I did check the details [...] the seller appealed on the feedback which the system removed as there was no payment made."

"What?!?!", I choked out (well, this was a text chat, but I became livid in person)..."they cancelled the order within two minutes of me winning the auction, so of course no payment was made!!!! How was I supposed to pay?!?!?!". The conversation went on for a short while longer, but the general gist was, sorry, we can't do anything now, but we will put in a report as we can see that what you say is true. Can't tell you anything else...blah blah blah, privacy, blah blah blah. Case closed.

I should point out, I've over 1,000 transactions on eBay now...the vast majority as a buyer, and very rarely have I left negative or neutral feedback. In fact, after scrolling through the 1,106 feedback ratings I have left for others, I found two negatives and two neutrals. "Wow", you may well say, "you've been super lucky on eBay"! Well, it's not so much that. I have had more negative experiences than these few. Usually things are resolved, or the experience simply wasn't bad enough to drive me to diss on a seller. Sometimes I will simply not leave feedback at all. Only when there is truly bad behaviour on the seller's part will I go the mile and leave less than positive feedback.

So, how does eBay increase trust? If it's so easy for a party to (and let's call a spade a shovel here) lie, and have feedback removed on appeal with no communication whatsoever with the complainant, then how can we trust the feedback system at all? How many buyers and sellers are able to have negative feedback removed so easily? It could be argued that negative feedback impacts sales and adversely affacts eBay's business, but I'm sure that if the feedback system is not robust, then surely that also has a negative impact?

No easy answers I'm sure.

I should give some credit to eBay for live chat...the ability to get onto live chat now is a much better thing than we ever had in the early days of eBay, when it was very difficult to get any sort of answer to a question at all. At least there's some small sense that you may be heard by eBay.

[padi*0409]

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@damien_pw wrote:

Case in point, I won an auction recently. It was an item I didn't particularly need, but thought I would have a go as I wanted to try it, and the price was quite low ($1 no reserve auction on a fairly niche bit of camera kit). The seller had 100% positive feedback, there were only a few bids, and in the end I won the item at a very good price indeed. Moving along to the payment screen then, and found I was unable to pay for the item. Within a few minutes, the seller had cancelled the order. Reason: "I'm out of stock or the item is damaged". Sounds like a generic 'tick a box' excuse to me. There was no other communication from the seller.

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eBay encourages sellers to start auctions at 99 cents and this can be a trap for newish sellers, in the old days it was almost the norm that there would be bidding wars happening on auctions - that is not usually the case anymore with auctions often getting just a few bids on the items.

Was it a new or inexperienced seller ?  If so then as a seller of camera gear yourself cut them some slack and just move on. You have said yourself that you won the item at a very low price, put yourself in the seller's shoes, if you started an auction at 99 cents and only got a couple of bids would you let the item worth over $100 go for a few dollars ?

[damien_pw]

Thanks for the comment Padi.

I guess I have exacting standards. I have in the past sold items when the winning bid was far less than I hoped for. One in particular I remember was a rather nice bicycle of my son's, which was about $300 new, a year old, and in beautiful condition. The bid of $1 won the auction. I followed through with the transaction politely and with a smile on my face. Win some, lose some.

This seller in particular has been a member since 2006, and appears to have been selling for a while (currently has 14 items listed). Whilst they obviously haven't transacted as often as myself (120 feedback), I wouldn't consider that a newbie account. Sure, the price was good, but it was not overly surprising to me and easily foreseeable I think (obviously the seller felt differently).

Perhaps to redeem myself, I can tell you that recently I saw an underpriced BIN item that interested me. I immediately snapped it up - but I could see that the seller account was quite new - so I forwarded the seller a message asking if they had meant to price the item so low, and that I would be happy for them to cancel if that was the case. I hope that I may appear a demonstrably reasonable person by this example.

I suppose there were a couple of triggers for me on this transaction in particular. It was an experienced eBayer, who cancelled my order without any personal communication. Then on top of this, they were able to have my feedback (and keep in mind, it was only neutral, not negative) removed, again without any communication to me. Personally, I would prefer not to have such members on eBay at all. All in all, I know it was a small thing, but the experience got my ire up.

But yes...maybe I'm being harsh....but then, per my post, I've left very little negative or neutral feedback in the past.

[imastawka]

I hear wah, wah, wah.

There was no payment  =  no transaction.

It happens.   Move on.

Oh, wait.   I'm being harsh

[damien_pw]

Had been hoping to have some discussion about the feedback system, how it works, and if it's reliable.

The experience I describe is a prop for this discussion - it's less about me missing out, and more about how such practices (and others) are handled by the feedback system on eBay. Your argument could be that I should have moved on and not even bothered leaving feedback. So be it.

[kopenhagen5]

Feedback is voluntary and more members are not leaving feedback any longer especially when accounts are in the thousands.

Personally I always leave feedback for those deserving, as I consider it a courtesy and finalises a transaction.

However I don't put so much weight on feedback anymore unless I need to see if a seller is misrepresenting item location as many Asian sellers do.

[joztamps]

You were perfectly justified in your disappointment at the seller's morally bankrupt behaviour, in your decision to leave appropriate feedback, and in ebay's totally unjustifiable decision to remove your accurate feedback; you are also, obviously, correct that this sort of misbehaviour by both sellers and by ebay understandably lessens the trust of buyers in the system and is, therefore, something that all sellers should also object to.

[damien_pw]

Interesting point. I also leave feedback most of the time. Noticed with one of my buyers recently that they hadn't left enybody feedback for about six months...some folks are giving up on it? When I sell (infrequent relative to my buying 😕 ), I kind of like to see the feedback otherwise I'm wondering if something went wrong. When I buy, I like the seller to leave me feedback first (seems fair, I've paid and thus finalised my part of the transaction). I try to treat other parties in the way I like to be treated.

I noted a seller recently where feedback was quite good, but when I checked them out via third party review channels, the picture was completely different. This is a bit of a worry I think, as it implies that maybe the eBay feedback system is not a reflection the true experience.

[fixnwear]

damien_pw,

You have hit the nail on the head!

Feedback on Ebay is unreliable. End of story.

Weather is positive, negative, neutral - no matter - for the best part it's not worth the paper it's written on!

And for negs, it'll be even more dificult for buyers to leave them, (depending on the wording) because of the Federal Coput's decision that  the company that fasciliates public f/backs IS very much responsible for the reputation of individuals - and refusal to remove anything even remotely damaging to that person business is an offence.

Now, I wasd rather surprised to read that you acyually not only reaD  F/BACKS OF SELLERS, BUT ARE LIMITING YOURSELF TO THOSE WITH 99%!

I do the oposite - providing they sell the item I need, I'll find one with number of negs as they desrve most help - and not even once  I came to regret that decision and choice of seller!

After all, the worst it can happen is they will either post something or they won't. Item will be either just fine or it wont. Either way, we are all covered by Ebay as well as PP - which renders the seller's f/back irelevant!

And when it comes to trust - on online shopping sites there is no such thing, how can it be - we don't KNOW any of those people, that is why  there is consumer protection in place.

As for the no sale neg - How could you??????
You are not blind, notr of limited intelct - you could have seen that the poor seller couldn't afford to sell anything that cheap - how would you have known if he didn't depend on that sale for food for kids (that is the first thing I always think of) .
To me, it's like a day light robbery - taking advantage so blatanly of someone's low end bids! I don't care what reason there was for that (usually it's Ebay, telling everyone to start the auctions at 99c. and people do!), I would be the first one to either offer them more money or abide and respect their decision not to go ahead with the sale.

There is a name for people who greatly profit on other people's bad luck/misfortune. And it ain't a pretty one!

Please don't think that I think that of you - on the contrary - your write as a perfectly sane and logical person, so just think about the effects (we should all do that) our actions may have on people that we don't even know, nor do we know really WHAT happened every time we the neg - and decide, - "no way I am shopping with them".

[damien_pw]

Kudos fixnwear for taking a chance on low feedback sellers, I'm not quite so adventuresome. I very much dislike having to follow up on transactions gone wrong.

     "I wasd rather surprised to read that you acyually not only reaD  F/BACKS OF SELLERS, BUT ARE LIMITING YOURSELF TO THOSE WITH 99%!"

I probably over-simplified this. It is not a blanket rule for me. Obviously a seller with little ongoing feedback can have their rating tanked by one vexatious negative. I take this in the context of volume, and actual comments. If I'm scanning through a plethora of sellers offering me a particular item, and all are businesseses with many '000's of feedback ratings, I will usually try to find one with 99 or above. Sometimes, this is difficult. If I'm looking at something from a seller who has 20 feedback ratings in the last 12 months, and one negative amongst those, then I will check out that one negative and see what it says (and more importantly if the seller has been rude and/or resorted to personal insults in a reply - it does happen). Sometimes people complain about postage taking a week - which of course would be a terribly petty claim in these times.

    "As for the no sale neg - How could you??????"

You mean the first auction example I gave? I didn't neg them...just neutral...that's barely a slap on the hand.

As you point out, some may be struggling to feed a family. I don't really want to put somebody down, but if you're an experienced eBayer, at least contact me to let me know what went wrong. Simply cancelling and then saying nothing...(then relisting at a higher price later)...well...really I don't think that's acceptable. Anybody with reasonable experience can avoid the $1 start thing, or at least contact a winning bidder when the auction closes ("I'm very sorry, but I did not intend to start the item at $1" etc). There of course remains the course for a seller to cancel the auction PRIOR to ending. This seller had an entire week to realise the mistake. Please take also into account...this was not a $99 item selling for a dollar. There were around half a dozen bids - it finished at market value, but in my estimation could have gotten some more through better description and photos (now that's a whole other discussion). I'm getting a little off topic.

More to the point is that eBay removed said feedback no questions asked. That points to what you're saying about eBay feedback being unreliable. 

Your point on the legal decision around defamation and the ramifications for feedback and reviews is interesting. I hadn't been thinking of this. Is this the death of feedback and review sites? That's a little sad. I can't imagine how a provider could possibly cross-check the veracity of every review they publish. Hmmm.