@ra157 wrote:
Thanks for your well thought out perspective.
What is missing though is the question of the penalty to act as a deterrence for the small number of times it happens. I don't see an effective one existing at the moment.
A life-time ban to an individual seems pretty reasonable to me.
To the big shops that you mention being culprits on occasion, well a month, two month or three month ban will most probably cause them sufficient financial loss to act as a deterrent, the total value of which will be far greater than the individual's life time ban.
If left to fester, the problem will only get worse.
Regards,
Renato
Just to clarify, I am not a regular seller now. I was back about 14 years ago but times & ebay have changed drastically since then.
So I may need to be corrected on this, but it is my understanding that sellers who do cancel a transaction can in fact suffer a penalty on their account. It seems to depend on the reason, but if they claim out of stock etc then it is a defect as that is under the control of the seller?
If it can be put down to the buyer, such as the buyer wished for the cancellation or the address the buyer gave was faulty, then no defect.
I'm a great believer in consequences so i understand what you mean by the need for a penalty, but what i would also say, after a lifetime teaching & having to deal with dozens of disputes every day, is that there also has to be some flexibility and for a first offence (depending on what it is of course) a discussion/warning of future consequences is usually appropriate.
What ebay should be looking out for, and what we in the school particularly would look out for, were patterns of behaviour.
So when we're talking about a sales cancellation, if someone who had a previously perfect record or who was brand new to ebay cancelled a sale, citing an error or item damaged or whatever, they could be given the benefit of the doubt. After all, accidents do happen. But they should also be sent a notice that basically says okay, you've got one defect, you can still sell but be careful as if this happens again any time soon, you will find yourself blocked from selling on ebay for a time. in other words, they need to be forewarned there are consequences & they are being monitored.
It's those who repeat the pattern who should start to feel the wrath of ebay.
I don't know that I would make a second offence a lifetime ban but this is the sort of thing that can be hard to judge without knowing exact details-what was cancelled each time, how close the cancellations were to each other, whether it was for the same item etc
All this needs a human to examine & judge & from what i can gather, humans are light on the ground at ebay & those who are on the help lines aren't always great either.
What i suspect though is ebay would never dream of banning any of the big shop sellers for even a month, not unless they did some really over the top bad stuff. They are going to look after their big money earners, not ban them. Ebay I think is probably not going to be keen on lifetime bans for either sellers or buyers. That's just what I suspect.
