I have about 7 or 8 persons that have not left feedback. Some people are just lazy.

[8113jack]

I have about 7 or 8 persons that have not left feedback. Some people are just lazy.

[countessalmirena]

Being  a GOP (if you are) doesn't make you anything less than thoroughly engaging.

[k1ooo-slr-sales]

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@countessalmirena wrote:

eBay, after all, during its infancy had this feedback system, where buyer and seller both had a vital role to play in validating each other's integrity in a transaction. It wasn't a case of being courteous, but a very real, very recripocal way of signalling trustworthiness.

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I have only been on eBay since 2009.  I once read somewhere that in the very early days of eBay you didn’t even have to have had a transaction with a member in order to leave them feedback. Can’t remember where I read that, or who wrote it . . . and my memory may be playing tricks on me (I blame the drugs . . . legal drugs for a genuine condition).

Maybe someone who has been on eBay since the very early days can shed some light on this.

Spoiler

less of a GOP than I used to be . . . and that is due to the drugs . . . and will be for a couple of years to come.

[lyndal1838]

You are right about members being able to leave feedback for each other even without a transaction taking place.

It had been stopped by the time I joined but several very reliable sellers have been mentioning it regularly over the ensuing years.

Another reason for a discrepancy in feedback left/received is the fact that for a long time ebay only counted one transaction in a week in the feedback score and did not even show more than one feedback in the count.

I used to buy regularly from a seller......3-5 items every week.  She would hold the items until they filled a foam box.....usually every 3 or 4 weeks.  I left feedback for one item each week as did she.   When ebay announced that they would be counting ALL transactions in the feedback score (and backdating where they could)  her score jumped by hundreds......and mine went up substantially too.

[yeoldecoinco]

Stawks summed it up perfectly - "Careful what you wish for"

No feedback is much better than nasty, negative feedback.

As a long time seller, I probably get a higher percentage of feedback left than some others, however, I never chase it or solicit it in any way.

Never have I included a note with the item asking for feedback and that will never happen.

It is nice to get positive feedback and it is appreciated, but the world won't end if people don't leave feedback.

What I try and do on every transaction is sell the item for a fair price, leave feedback once the buyer has paid, send the item/s quickly and answer any questions or queries regarding sold items ASAP.

This probably helps with being left a reasonable percentage of feedback.

Feedback is voluntary, I leave it once the buyer has paid mainly because it simply takes too much time to chase it up later - need to spend time listing items and selling stuff, not checking who has left feedback.

Unless feedback is negative or neutral, I hardly ever read it. A green dot means go on to the next sale or customer.

If it IS a negative or neutral, I try to find out what has gone wrong and correct it where possible.

As far as feedback goes, silence is golden and no news is good news.

People are very quick to tell you if they are unhappy, if they haven't said anything or left any feedback, that is all right, it generally means that all is well...

[yeoldecoinco]

When buying things on eBay, after it has arrived and is satisfactory, I always leave positive feedback as a courtesy to fellow sellers.

When I purchase any item or use a service online from other sources, one always get some customer survey form to fill out.

That I rarely do, unless it has been a bad experience.

Recently, I submitted by intention to claim a tax deduction on 2 super policies to AMP.

They managed to misplace one form, only sent me a letter regarding one policy, then refused to acknowledge their mistake, which caused delays and my accountant having to re-do my tax.

Their customer feedback form got filled out, but not as they would have liked, that's for sure..

Also, that was the final straw for shifting my super to another company...

If everything has gone smoothly, good, on to the next thing that has to be done.

That is just a matter of taste, I don't feel it necessary to pat people on the head for doing their job.

Am fairly sure a lot of other people probably feel the same...

[springyzone]

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@lyndal1838 wrote:

You are right about members being able to leave feedback for each other even without a transaction taking place.

It had been stopped by the time I joined but several very reliable sellers have been mentioning it regularly over the ensuing years.

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The mind boggles!

I had no idea people could do that. Times like this i wish I had a time machine so i could go back to the early days when we started and see what it was like.

We could have had some of our friends give us a glowing report to get our selling account started, but we did it the hard way. LOL

Seriously though, with feedback, it did matter in the early years. It still counts but isn't quite as vital (for buyers) and in the next few years, who knows, the system might change drastically again.

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I wouldn't say that people who don't leave FB are necessarily bad mannered. Some newbies may not even realise it is a thing, others haven't paid much attention to it so it isn't on their radar and others, others might just be sick of doing surveys.

Behaviour can change over time. For instance, I once used to say that there was no need to be rude to cold callers on the phone or hang up on people, a polite no thank you wasn't too hard.

But as time has gone on & I get endless scammers or people ringing about surveys, the camel's back has well & truly been broken and i am usually not prepared to do free surveys. I hang up on people now. I still do FB on ebay but there might be other buyers who are just suffering survey overload.

[brerrabbit585]

I've occasionally bought from sellers who are the only one with what I want, but their response to negs has been appalling so they get no feedback from me. Sellers who go the extra mile always get feedback.

[brerrabbit585]

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@shoppingbag* wrote:

I disagree, it only takes a moment to leave feedback, or say "thank you", surely "busy" isn't an excuse for bad manners.

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I assume you send a personal message to all of your buyers and not just mark the item as posted. If you don't, then you're exhibiting bad manners - based on your criteria.

Feedback is NOT a message to a seller, it's a message to other potential buyers, so it's not bad manners towards the seller if it's not left, only to other buyers (if it's bad manners at all).

If a seller has a good product and is honest and efficient, and if their product isn't a scam-prone one, then if they already have good feedback a lot of buyers wouldn't feel any need to stroke a seller's ego. That's all leaving feedback would do if the seller already has great feedback - stroking their ego.

I doubt I'd read my own feedback more than 5 or 6 times a year now because the novelty has long since worn off. I'm not going to get upset with my buyers and think they have bad manners if they don't go out of their way to write comments I'll never read, and that a lot of my buyers will never read.

A lot of buyers would probably assume that if a seller already has good feedback there's no need for them to say exactly the same thing everyone else has already said.

If a seller hasn't got any negatives the buyers would assume that the seller is honest and isn't likely to get any negs, so assuming they even understand how the system works, they wouldn't think the seller needs them to give positive feedback to cushion the effect of any negatives (that may never happen).

A lot of buyers obviously never read feedback so they probably never give any thought to leaving it.

Frankly, I owe my buyers far more gratitude than they owe me (which is why I do send a simple thank you message after I mark each item as sent).  They didn't have to buy from me but they did choose me, so you could say they went out of their way to do something for me.  The same doesn't apply to me - I just do the minimum that's required of me, which is to send the goods they paid for in a timely manner.  Why should my doing what I owe them anyway mean that the buyer should go out of their way to tell the world how wonderful I am?  I really can't understand why it would be bad manners if they don't praise me to others?  If anything, it's bad manners for a seller to expect (or demand) praise from a buyer just for fulfilling their obligations.

[*tippy*toes*]

I don't really give a hoot about feedback. I actually find it an inconvenience now if buyers leave me feedback, because then I feel obligated to go and leave it for them.

I used to buy a LOT of things on eBay, sometimes 40 or 50 items from one seller. I would leave feedback for each item as I opened it, purely to check off the item and make sure I'd received everything. There were a few instances where one thing had been missed. A quick message to the seller saw them either send it straight out, or hold it for the next parcel. If I didn't leave the feedback, I'd never had known those items were missing.

These days, I don't buy much at all. Sometimes I get around to leaving feedback, other times I don't. If the seller has high feedback, I don't tend to, but if it's a newish seller with low feedback I always try and leave it for them. Sometimes I forget as I don't see it as being important.