Q~~_1.JPG?set_11.JPG?set_id=807 "mbselections00"){kind=avatar}
I've only been on eBay since 2008, my first foray into selling was 2009, and my store was opened late 2011, so I missed the early years. PayPal was mandatory when I started, so buyer protection was in play, and buyers couldn't get negative feedback, but I do feel that eBay is a different environment, and not necessarily because of the MBG, but that it has been a slow change.
You can see the difference most glaringly when you ask people who operate online businesses elsewhere, either via third party sites or their own websites. If you ask them how many INRs, returns, abusive / demanding / unreasonable buyers they experience compared to eBay, the ratio of poor experiences is always in favour of eBay. Many will actually tell you they've experienced nothing via other sites but plenty via eBay, which does suggest it's an eBay problem (well, there is some other problematic sites, ones with similar policies, and who eBay kinda look up to and copy).
The thing is, up until the last couple of months, I considered myself extremely lucky to have never experienced any of the behaviour I see spoken about on the boards. I don't know if it's the MBG or not, but up until Christmas last year, I had almost nothing but great experiences, wonderful buyers, people would nearly always contact me, and in fact I only ever had a couple who didn't. There were some I accepted as reasonable (neutrals that were fair because of the problem, but also otherwise complimentary), and a couple that were completely leftfield (a neg for INR - first I heard about it, so that's always been happening - and a neg that was removed because the buyer thought the item they bought was a different colour than it was described, who knows if eBay would remove such a neg these days). All in all, though, I never had a single PayPal dispute opened against me, nor a problem I didn't resolve to the buyer's satisfaction.
But, as I said, since Christmas, and a couple of months after the MBG, I have experienced the following:
- INR request, accompanied with a message that suggested I didn't bother to send the item or let them know.
- 4 neutrals, 2 of which are for things the buyer would have known if they read the description, 1 that is unfathomable because there was no contact from the buyer and the entire comment is just a single dot, and one that was essentially buyer error.
- One buyer who started messaging me daily to tell me how much my service sucked because they didn't get their item in a couple of days, and how upset they were about not getting the item. After 5 days of that, I gave up trying to communicate with them and refunded, suddenly they weren't upset they didn't receive the item or that I wasn't going to resend, then they just started messaging me about when they'd get the refund (already issued).
- One INAD request, buyer complained that one of my handmade products wasn't made from the materials they thought, in fact were highly insulting in their message, but the problem there was - the item was exactly as described, they just didn't read the description. However, they also claimed it broke, so I had no other choice but to accept their request and pay for the return postage
- And one buyer who did contact me, but their main message was to let me know if they weren't satisfied with the outcome, negative feedback would be left.
The last buyer I mentioned was in actual fact, wonderful. When I responded, in a nutshell I told them a couple of things about how I handle transaction issues, and that feedback doesn't influence that. Their responses to me showed that the original attitude was the end result of too many bad experiences where they have approached sellers and probably not gotten any result - I resolved the problem for them, and we finished the transaction in good spirits.
That leads me to wonder if changing seller attitudes contribute to things like this as well, like a vicious cycle. I know I was feeling pretty defeated by the time I got the message from that last buyer, and as a result my response was worded a little more strongly that it might normally have been (they were very apologetic, though, so I felt immediately guilty... 
) I have always believed that there are a lot of sellers who have contributed to the belief negs have so much power. Everywhere you look there are descriptions that reinforce the idea that negs and low star ratings are one of a sellers biggest fears, so it's little wonder to me that buyers believe it has that power. I understand it can feel like a double-edged sword, all of us have had defects from people who just don't understand their impact, and wouldn't have left one if they did know, but I think a lot of the attempts to educate highlight the wrong thing.
The MBG, and the defect system, has inevitably effected change for sellers, too. I believe that the more we fear buyers (or more specifically, their potential actions), the more they'll distance themselves from us and just go straight to the request system, or feedback. And, of course, it's getting harder and harder to try and bridge that gap, so the cycle goes on.
I do blame eBay and, to a lesser extent, PayPal for a lot of this. It serves both of them to undermine their member's credibility so that they look like the greatest service ever for fixing the buyer's problem - eBay and PayPal want buyers to trust them. The MBG banners are on every page, I use adblock and I still can't escape them unless I add them to the list on specific pages. So, everywhere you look, you see eBay telling buyers "we'll help you", with the underlying message 'cos when something goes wrong, your seller probably won't'. In other words, everywhere on the site there are banners telling buyers that tranactions are problematic.
Why not use TRS to show buyers something more like "we have amazing sellers, you probably won't experience a problem, but if you do, we know they'll look after you" *
*and if by some chance they don't, help is available
