Leaving feedback after dispute

[saraimelda]

Hi Everyone,

I just want to ask some advice on dealing with a seller and leaving feedback.

The back story is I do have some vision problems and I tend to rely a lot on verbal descriptions left by sellers.  I recently bought three dresses, if you can see my purchases they are orange, brown and purple sold by one seller.  Two were described as being in an as new condition and only worn once while the other one was described as being in a very good condition. 

When the parcel arrived at my workplace address I opened the parcel in front of a two work colleagues.  Both commented on the staining that was visible even to me upon looking at the dresses in person and then when I showed them the listings said they could see the staining, that with my vision difficulties had thought were shadows, in the original listing photos. One of the dresses was also described in the listing with an incorrect brand name.  That dress also seemed to have mould like crusted stains on it.

I contacted the seller saying I was a bit disappointed, politely described each dress with the damage as I wanted to talk about returning the dresses even though it meant I’d be out about $12 for the return postage, which I accepted.  This was within 1.5hours of Australia Post saying they had delivered the parcel to my building. I received an answer from the seller telling me I was offensive, not to ever contact them again and that I was abhorrent.  When I replied again and attached the photo she uploaded with the damage visible and mentioned the brand name difference  the seller replied that the dresses were sent in pristine condition and that I must have damaged them and she wanted them back to see how much damage I had done before she would consider if any refund was given.  She stated that the brand name she gave was for a website that she got a different brand name dress on and that it was okay to give the website as the brand name on ebay instead of the brand name on the article of clothing itself. 

I at first lodged a dispute with paypal which I upgraded to a claim as I don’t want to be out the return postage and registered post fee along with the money I paid.  From my understanding if they decide in my favour I will have the money I paid reimbursed to me once I provide proof of return postage and I advised the seller that I have lodged the claim so they could participate in the claim process however I’ve since received messages telling me to seek professional help, that I am a disgrace and a con artist, that my behaviour is disgusting,  I obviously don’t have any intelligence and need to get a grown up to explain things to me, that I am blackmailing her and so on.  I’ve also been told to return the dresses to an address in a different state from the one ebay says they were sent from.

Paypal is now reviewing the case as the seller has not participated in the claim.  If I do get my money refunded I was going to leave neutral feedback because the situation is resolved but should I be giving negative feedback due to the incorrect listing of clothing that is badly stained as being in as new condition and for the nasty emails? Should I be reporting the emails or not? I want to do the right thing, I’ve tried to do the right thing by getting her involved with the claims process, being willing to pay the cost of return postage but some of the emails she has sent me have me rather shaken with the sheer nastiness.    

[modestbods]

I just took a look at the negative feedback you left the seller. Very well & effectively worded, imo. 'seller unhelpful' was a good way of putting it, that shouldn't risk removal by eBay I would think.

Their rating hasn't suffered too greatly from the negs, due to their having so many purchases as a buyer themselves. But if a prospective buyer of their items takes the trouble of looking at their 'feedback as a seller' page, after seing 3 negs from only 9 sales, and after seing 'stained' on each of those negs, they will definitely think twice before bidding/buying a dress from that seller. It might not put everyone off, but I would be surprised if that seller hasn't just cost themselve's a good deal of $$s in lost future bids

Karma's a 'peach', aint it.

[cq_tech]

It's interesting you should mention that because I was thinking exactly the same thing after checking her feedback as a seller, and it occurred to me that because buyers can only receive positives (and not all sellers leave feedback anyway), I believe that eBay should consider doing away with feedback percentages for buyers altogether and giving them only to sellers.

Both buyers and sellers could still be given an accumulated total of all of their purchases, but only sellers would actually have a feedback percentage, and that should only be based only upon their total number of sales, but none of their purchases. If that was the case, the OP's seller would then have a feedback score of 66.6% which represents her 3 negs and 6 positives from a total of 9 sales, which is a far more accurate indication of her worth as a seller IMO.

As it currently stands, a really bad seller can very easily improve a poor feedback percentage simply by making a large number of low value purchases, which can be extremely misleading to buyers. A quick glance at the OP's seller's feedback of 98.4% from 163 transactions gives the impression that she's a reasonable sort of seller, when in fact one sale in three was completely unsatisfactory.

This should have happened years ago, at the same time that sellers were prevented from leaving negative feedback for buyers, because from that moment onwards, buyers could only ever have 100% feedback which is totally meaningless. In fact, it's only value now is to make it much easier for bad sellers to make themselves look better than they really are.

[modestbods]

+++++++++++.... 1 billion

I couldn't agree with you more cq.

 Tbh when I had initially looked at her feedback rating after learning the OP's negs had arrived, I was stunned. I had completely forgotten (probably because I had never really taken much notice of a buyers rating, rather only their fb score) that purchases count toward the %. I was expecting her % rating to be in the toilet where it belongs.

It struck me that perhaps I've been doing it wrong all this time ever since I started selling, by separating my buying from my selling through using a separate account for each. 

I've received 27 +feedbacks for sold items thus far this year in my selling account, whilst I've received 1837 feedbacks for purchases in my buying account in the same 12 month period.

This means that if I had bought & sold from just the one account during the last 12 months, even if every single one of my 27 sales showing in feedback were negatives I would still have a rating of 98.55%.

 It truly does make a complete mockery of the % rating doesn't it?

When you consider that there are a good many buyers that don't bother to even read the item descriptions beyond the landing page, what chance is there of them bothering to look through the sellers actual feedback? As it is,there's some that don't even take that 'quick glance' at a sellers fb% anyway. You add to that the huge & continuing growth of buyers accessing eBay via mobiles where they can't see/access that detailed feedback even if they wanted to... well... 

 You've hit the nail on the head cq, both the problem and the fix.

 We all know why ebay want buyers to have a fb %, it's the same reason ebay only allows positive feedbacks for buyers, it's to improve their eBaying experience by stroking their ego to help them feel good about themselves & their awesomness as 100% super dooper picture perfect scrumptilicious wonderful brilliant buying ebaying selves... weeeeeeeeeee !!!!... woooohooooo !!!!! yeeeeehaaaaaa !!!!I

... I wonder how the next buyer to be abused by the OP's seller will enjoy that ebaying experience? Probably about as much as the OP enjoyed her time with the same seller I'd bet.

[lyndal1838]

The 3 negs would only count as one as they were bought in the same week and feedback left in the same week.  They don't really have as much effect as they should on the seller's feedback.

[cq_tech]

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@modestbods wrote:

I've received 27 +feedbacks for sold items thus far this year in my selling account, whilst I've received 1837 feedbacks for purchases in my buying account in the same 12 month period.

This means that if I had bought & sold from just the one account during the last 12 months, even if every single one of my 27 sales showing in feedback were negatives I would still have a rating of 98.55%.

 It truly does make a complete mockery of the % rating doesn't it?

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It most certainly does, and I can't believe that in all the time I've been a member of eBay, it's only just occurred to me now. Earlier this evening I did a random sampling of around 20 or so feedback scores and not only were the majority of them buying and selling on the same ID, most of them had far more purchases than they did sales which meant that their feedback percentages were being artificially maintained at a far higher level than they would have been had only their sales been recorded, giving most buyers a false sense of security.

To be fair, there weren't many negs in my sampling and  I know there are some high volume sellers-only out there who are trading in the several thousands who've never scored a neg but the really dodgy ones who are scoring at around 1 or 2 negs for every 5-10 sales and should be sitting down around 80% are also buying so much that the guaranteed positives from those transactions are helping to bring their percentages up to considerably more respectable figures which are very misleading to prospective buyers.

As you quite rightly point out, most buyers seems to like their 100% feedback and wouldn't be too happy at all if eBay were to take it away from them, so the other alternative is to make buying and selling IDs completely separate. IOW, no buying on a selling ID at all and at least that way the feedback percentage will give a true and accurate representation of the seller's reputation and really keep them on their toes, as it would only take 3 or 4 negs per 100 buyers to drop their feedback to 96% or 97% which is below the level that most buyers feel safe dealing with.

As usual, I don't have the answer but I do know that something needs to be done as the current feedback system is incredibly flawed and doesn't give true representations of how sellers are treating their customers. There are already many sellers who only sell on their IDs and most of them have excellent feedback, many of them even at 100% so it's not as if it can't be done, but it does mean they'd have to work a lot harder to maintain that high percentage, which is as it should be IMO.

[cq_tech]

You're quite right Lyndal, and regardless of how the OP scored the DSRs, the seller will still only end up with 3 defects in total, or a maximum of just one for each transaction. Hardly seems fair, does it?

[modestbods]

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@lyndal1838 wrote:

The 3 negs would only count as one as they were bought in the same week and feedback left in the same week.  They don't really have as much effect as they should on the seller's feedback.

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That's a shame, as she deserves to wear all three.

I just did the math and it appears her % rating got hit with 2 of them... so I guess two out of three ain't bad. (131 x 1.6% = 2.096)

No idea why it was two if they should have only counted as one... who knows, maybe eBay owns a stake in Hungry Jacks also & applied the two for tuesday deal to it. 

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@cq_tech wrote:

As you quite rightly point out, most buyers seems to like their 100% feedback and wouldn't be too happy at all if eBay were to take it away from them, so the other alternative is to make buying and selling IDs completely separate. IOW, no buying on a selling ID at all and at least that way the feedback percentage will give a true and accurate representation of the seller's reputation and really keep them on their toes, as it would only take 3 or 4 negs per 100 buyers to drop their feedback to 96% or 97% which is below the level that most buyers feel safe dealing with.

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I don't think that would be an acceptable or viable solution. eBay have always been about making it easy for any ebayer (ie. buyer) to start listing & selling also (thus becoming yet another ebay/paypal/auspost fee paying slave wages indentured worker for them to add to their horde).

The 'other' other alternative would just be to have two % ratings alongside the ID & feedback score, eg. one on the right for your % as a seller, & the second on the left for your buying %. Or above & below, whatever. Each with it's own colour. Blue for buyers %. The sellers I'd start as bright green for 100% and have the colour change as the % gets incrementally worse.. ie. bright green; light green, purple, yellow, orange, and finally red (red for 'stop! don't go' ofc)... so use it exactly like a traffic light except with a few extra shades/colours.   If nil sales/buys in the rated period then it just says 'N/A' or 0.

[modestbods]

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@modestbods wrote:

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. The sellers I'd start as bright green for 100% and have the colour change as the % gets incrementally worse.. ie. bright green; light green, purple, yellow, orange, and finally red (red for 'stop! don't go' ofc)... so use it exactly like a traffic light except with a few extra shades/colours.   If nil sales/buys in the rated period then it just says 'N/A' or 0.

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Imo, I think it would look seriously cool if they actually did use a miniature graphic of a traffic light for it. it would certainly convey the right message to a prospective buyer very effectively at a 'quick glance'. 

[cq_tech]

As with all things eBay, once you start analysing and trying to solve what appears to be an inherent problem with something, the deeper you look into it, the more obvious it becomes that no matter what you do to try to solve (or at the very least simplify) the problem, you're never going to be able to please everybody.

I'm sure that eBay are well aware of the problems with the current feedback system but I suspect that like me, once they started looking into viable alternatives, they also realised that it doesn't matter what they do, there's always going to be a proportion of users who will feel that they're being disadvantaged by the changes, which is probably why they've tossed it into the 'too hard' basket and gone with the status quo.

I think that most of us would agree that there need to be changes made however, so to that end I used the 'tell us what you think' button to explain to eBay what I think needs to be done, warts and all, and have decided to let them have a few sleepless nights trying to figure it out instead. Problem is, I don't think I've told them anything they don't already know.

[i-love-my-sheep]

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@modestbods wrote:

 You add to that the huge & continuing growth of buyers accessing eBay via mobiles where they can't see/access that detailed feedback even if they wanted to... well... 

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You can see their feedback on the phone app. Scroll down to the bottom of the listing, click on the sellers name, scroll down to either 'recent feedback' or click (tap?) on the feedback score. You can see as a seller or a buyer. Just under the 'as seller' tab, you can adjust the dropdown to see positive, neutral or negs. The only thing I haven't found is feedback left for others.

I hate the new version of the app. Everytime they update it, it gets worse and worse.