Should sellers be able to leave negative feedback for non-payments?

[2011emc2]

As a first-time seller, I had a buyer who didn't pay and didn't bother to contact me or respond to my emails. I opened an ‘Unpaid Item’ case, which again got no response, and closed the case today.

Yet the only feedback option available to me was to leave 'Positive' feedback for this buyer.

Really, eBay???

This 'buyer' still has a '100% positive' feedback rating on eBay. How is this honest or fair? Shouldn't a feedback system allow members of a community to comment on their actual dealings with people in that community?

Little wonder some sellers try to sneak in negative comments using the positive feedback option, to try to warn other unsuspecting sellers. Yet eBay deletes these from buyers' profiles.

I think eBay should change its feedback policy in order to allow equal footing for buyers and sellers. So sellers would be allowed to either: (a) leave negative feedback - if only for non-payment; or (b) automaticallly note non-payments into each buyer's feedback profile, so these are clear for all to see.

It's not a problem to demonstrate that a buyer hasn't paid. Why not give sellers the same rights as buyers to leave honest feedback? Wouldn't everyone benefit?

I didn't ship the item because payment never arrived or cleared.  Still, what a negative experience, especially the shocking attitude toward sellers whose fees sustain and enrich eBay.

What is your opinion on eBay's feedback policy for sellers?

(Newbies: FB = feedback, NP = non-payment)

[*kazumi*]

It is totally and utterly impractical to read and verify the feedback of buyers before they prurchase. So, even if that buyer had 1,000 Negs, you couldn't stop them from buying from you.

However, EVERY seller has the ability to block non-payers. The blockage works for ALL bad buyers, and it's completely automatic. You don't have to read feedback, you don't have to do a thing!

When a particularly bad non payer or nasty person is outed on these boards, I put them on my BBL, which is rather long now.  Yet, not one of these people has ever tried to bid on my item.  🙂   I also have general blocks in place, and there are always several bidders in the log showing as being blocked because of too many strikes.

[viewmont1071]

I think most regular boardies do Kazumi, that's my point, If those same blockers/advocates really trusted the automatic buyer "control" system, and what they write in its defence, they would not have the time or the inclination to troll that members feedback and then make a conscious decision to manually block an ID. 

The anecdotal evidence when a thread occurs here or especially on the p/s board shows that other sellers thank the OP, note the id, do some fishing and manually block,

Same goes for shill bidding selling IDs and the cohort IDs also involved.

Although this internet trading thingamabob is really only in its infancy remote sales have been going on for an age and the adage whether you are a buyer or seller that  "word of mouth is  your best or worst advertisement" is still current and applicable (albeit that for sellers those protestions are a tad muffled) Ebay can try and change that till they are blue in the face however I am sure human nature will prevail

[happyshopping20091118]

The most important thing is that the buyer could not leave negative feedback for buyer!

The only thing is to leave positive or leave nothing.

[lane-ends]

If Ebays default setting was for seller blocks to be 2 unpaid item disputes (sellers can choose to override if they wish). Then these buyers would not have heaps of pos feedback, because they wouldnt be able to accumulate it, becase they couldnt buy anything, untill they learnt to behave.

Those that have no respect for paying, would have no respect for fb or UPID rankings, and would simply snipe items they wanted. Only blocks will stop them, and only sellers setting them up will enable that to work.

[viewmont1071]

If NPB strikes were recorded and everybody could view them a member had more than 2 NPBstrikes in 6 months should not be a member....simple.... they should be zapped and their name blackbanned.......................... That would stop them bidding.

Blocks won't work unless sellers initiate the dispute and ebay issues the strikes.

The idea of making strikes public by linking a count or a remark to a succesful NPB dispute is not intended to affect a NPBs mindset....... as some appear to argue

It is intended  to affect and modify a specific seller type and their actions. the ones that need to see the "mark"(let's just call it revenge or justice as some seem to see it) 

ie. to see the "mark" they need to raise a NPB dispute.....simple carrot and stick by

The reaction that a public note of a NPB strike has a a non buyer is inconsequential. the important thing is that strikes are recorded.

The fact is that more NPB disputes would beraised and recorded and therefore the blocks would work better.

Has anybody got a better idea re modifying sellers actions?

[suitcase_of_memories]

Ebay will NEVER allow sellers to be HONEST about bad bidders.

They take our fees & offer us NO protection nor VOICE regarding NUISANCE bidders !!!

I always state NOT POSITIVE etc.  in my NPB feedback. Unfortunately that doesn't affect their 100% rating.

If ebay are unscrupulous on that one it begs the question.....

[the3coopers]

I always state NOT POSITIVE etc.  in my NPB feedback. Unfortunately that doesn't affect their 100% rating.

You can do that if you wish, however be aware that if any of those buyers (or anyone else reading your feedback left) actually reports you to eBay, then it will be YOU who ends up being restricted and/or banned from using eBay.

Personally, I would never recommend that kind of thing to anybody, since it's silly to provide ebay with more ammunition/power to get rid of sellers. Non-payment, shoplifting, damages in delivery, etc are all facts of life in retailing... it's far better to focus attention on building new business, and spend your time on things that you can actually control.

[punch*drunk]

Is it still really easy to get the first couple of strikes overturned?

If ebay made the strikes public, they would have to stop overturning them so easily, so it will probably never happen. Its easy for people to say "if all those sellers followed procedure and issued strikes, they wouldnt be able to bid" when, in reality, none of us knows how many strikes a buyer really has.

[the3coopers]

I've been a member for a long time (not on this ID). In the past (for the majority of eBay's life) it was open slather for Feedback, and in fact at the beginning there wasn't even a requirement to transact in order to leave feedback!

Let's say for discussion's sake that 2% of buyers are "baddies"... Now, what is the most common thing that a "Bad Buyer" can generally do - not pay? OK, that is an annoyance (and what our discussion is about), but not really the end of teh world.

But the idea is that when a seller gets a bad buyer, they can Neg them, so that they are "shamed". But as previously discussed this does extremely limited "harm" due to the practicalities of the sale process. At the end of the day, the real motivation is really just an antagonistic attack to attempt to dent the Buyer's ego. Let's say that ALL of the Sellers do this, issuing Negs for NPBs. Let's also make it that all the Sellers block people who have NPBs recorded against them - cool, that works well.

But what happens when a LESS THAN HONEST seller uses this Neg or NPB Strike as a way of retaliating against the remaining 98% of good buyers?

The perfect example is when the GOOD buyer was unhappy with a product, and didn't get a refund or service from a BAD seller, so they negged them. This is a great way of warning other potential buyers who use Feedback BEFORE purchasing to decide if they should buy.

But if that seller could Neg the buyer back, and just write "Not Payer - Unfair Neg - AVOID"... how could future buyers possibly determine who was right and who was wrong? Especially when there is such strong "Non Payer" sentiment from sellers?

That was EXACTLY what used to happen before the recent changes a few years back - the VERY FIRST thing that sellers did when the copped a Neg was to Neg the buyer back and claim "Non Payer" or some similar rubbish. Then they would go into negotiations to mutually cancel the 2 negs... bribery and extortion are 2 words that come to mind.

And the people who primarily copped those unfair Negs were the 98% of GOOD Buyers who were doing the RIGHT THING and reporting about bad transactions. And those Good Buyers really REALLY didn't like that. So what they did was to not leave Negatives for sellers - irrespective of how bad they were!

I remember clearly us on the eBay Forums pleading with Buyers to leave Negs for sellers who'd ripped them off, but they were too scared of losing their "perfect 100% rating". In many cases these GOOD buyers were GOOD sellers too, and to cop a Neg as a Buyer did heaps of damage to their eBay Cred.

The problem with allowing Sellers to leave Negs for Buyers was that the sellers abused it. They abused it really Really REALLY badly. And that drove away the good buyers, but didn't do one tiny thing to prevent the bad buyers who couldn't care less about feedback or paying or anything.

Non-Payment is an annoyance, but it doesn't really "harm" the seller. So, why should that have an equally weighted "Neg" to one left by a buyer against a Seller who took $200 and never delivered anything?

And in the past we had (maybe) 30% or maybe 50% of sellers using the Feedback "tit-for-tat" as a way of resolving problems (or maintaining their FB %), yet the system actually only provided (extremely limited) benefits against 2% of buyers who actually did the wrong thing!

---

That said, I kind of agree that NPB Strikes could be made more publically viewable, if only for the reasons that Viewmont pointed out - as a kind of "norti corner" display for sellers who actually thought that it mattered. In fact, Bid Retractions are displayed publically and they are not really as "bad" as non-payment, eh?

[gssk_today]

i personally do not have many buyers that leave me unfair feedback and when the do i generally just don't give them any feedback in return. if ebay won't let sellers give negative feedback to buyers maybe ebay could introduce Detailed Buyer Ratings similar to Detailed Seller Ratings then sellers could leave positive feedback but give the buyer a low star rating. ebay then could also allow sellers to block buyers based on DBR's