does anyone else think it would be a good idea for sellers to see how many times a buyer has receive

[coastal*rose]

Does anyone else think it woud be helpful for a seller to see how many times a buyer has received refunds to gauge buyers credibility.

[lyndal1838 · Accepted solution]

It probably would be useful but ebay is never going to give out that information.

All you can do is read a member's feedback and see if there is anything in it to indicate the buyer is less than a model buyer.

[enigmabear · Accepted solution]

Yes I do, but eBay would never do anything that would be helpful to sellers 

[springyzone]

I think that would be a huge breach of confidentiality. Just because you sell something, it doesn't give you the right to know about a person's past purchases. I think if ebay started down that path, they could lose a lot of customers.

However, there is a way around it that is more neutral.

As we know, not everyone (buyer or seller) gives feedback at the moment.

Maybe the number of completed transactions could be shown.

Perhaps a better idea then might be that immediately after a completed sale,  ebay provides an automatic positive generic feedback comment from sellers  eg Thankyou for your custom. This feedback would remain pending for 3 months and then if the seller had not retracted it, it would roll over to permanent.

If a seller felt that they had had a bad transaction for any reason, they could delete that positive feedback immediately. They couldn't post a neg or a false positive, they could not re post a different positive feedback-all they could do is delete a positive or reply personally to any neg given in a buyer's feedback.

I realise some sellers would use it as **bleep** for tat but it wouldn't really hurt a decent buyer, just take one off their score. And i realise paypal can pay out up to 180 days so it wouldn't cover every sale but I think it would cover most.

If a seller could see that a person had eg 180 transactions but had a feedback of 15, that might send a message that something was far wrong.

if showing number of transactions was considered a breach of confidentiality, then even keeping the 'pending' system for seller feedback might help, in that if you saw a buyer with a score in the hundreds at least you'd know they were most likely fairly safe.

I am currently on another site which has a pending system. It's not for feedback, it's for money back. Each transaction where I access a shop (including ebay) through the site, I get a % back in an account, but it is pending for 3 months till they know I didn't get a refund etc

[digital*ghost]

I agree that information, or even statistics of previous transactions, is likely crossing a line, but fraud / risk analysis, which would look at a variety of non-personal data and provide a general assessment to sellers, is not.

In order for eBay to provide something like that, they would need to be willing to admit that buyers can pose a risk to sellers, though. I get the distinct impression they have had their eyes shut and fingers in their ears, chanting la la la I can't hear you for so long, it has become their natural state of being on most matters. 

It's probably why hardly anything ever gets done around here, their hands are otherwise occupied. 

[misty_blue_treasures]

Sounds good but I wonder what the benefit to the seller realy is, 

In most cases before the seller even knows who the buyer is, they have purchased the item, so knowing how credible the buyer is doesnt really help, as you have already entered into the sales contract.  Maybe I have missed something.

[springyzone]

I think you are right, but my impression was touch of class felt that if they knew how many times a buyer had had a refund or raised a case with ebay, then they would be able to privately gauge how honest or otherwise a new claim might be.

I get the impression they may have been in the situation where a buyer has made a claim against them & touch of class is doubtful if the claim is genuine, suspects he is being cheated.

I agree actually that past form does give you a bit of a hint about a person's likely behaviour but it isn't usually allowed in a court of law and I doubt if ebay would be willing to show that sort of detail about a buyer's transactions. Number of transactions or pruchases maybe, but realistically, they won't be showing how many claims a person has opened or how much money they got back.

Even if they did though, it still doesn't expose those who privately angle for a refund or partial refund & get it without ebay stepping in, and I suspect that happens a fair bit. Sometimes for honest reasons & sometimes it seems (from feedback) that some buyers have made it an art form.

That's why i think some form of seller feedback that is automatic, given immediately after payment  & which is visible but is actually at 'pending' status for 3 months might be better. It would not show a buyer in a neg light, but if a transaction didn't go well or was cancelled, the seller could delete their positive & the buyer score would just go down.

[brerrabbit585]

All it'd do is raise a seller's stress levels if they knew how many refunds a buyer had had. We might worry unnecessarily - there are a lot of shonky or careless sellers out there and a buyer could have deservedly got a refund, but their reputation is shot to pieces if such information is publicly displayed. Ebay are never going to disclose the sort of info some sellers want because of the privacy laws.

[cr.love]

....Feedback rating as a buyer and a separate rating as a seller ??

[jamecos_1]

Maybe I am off track as I am not a seller but there is a way of limiting parameters of your buyers. Maybe by the amount they have purchased?

I ran into this last year, cheapest 1TB SSD's I could find in Australia on EBay and I could not buy them. From what I could tell going into some old threads here seller likely had his settings set higher than I was as a buyer. I had not purchased much at the time. Oh well his loss.... I had to go to the next seller 2X $449.00..... I wonder where I will look first at getting my next lot of SSD's from?

Sorry, I can not remember what it came up with or where it stopped me but there was no way of paying for them.

If they are chronic complainers I would think they should be updating the ID's regularly. Maybe it is in your settings, but you may miss some sales also.