The new “Report a Buyer” links have gone live on eBay! As promised eBay have beefed up Seller Protection and now should you run into an unreasonable or abusive buyer you can highlight them to eBay.
Be warned eBay aren’t going to come running back to you telling you that they’ve suspended the buyer and kicked them off the site, that’s not what it’s all about. However they will investigate if there’s a pattern of unreasonable behaviour and actions could include including buying restrictions or even suspension of the buyer’s account.
What eBay may do is when they find cases where buyers have acted unreasonably remove feedback, DSRs and resolution cases from your seller record. You’ll receive a monthly email informing you of actions that eBay have taken to protect your accounts.
eBay list the reasons you may report a buyer as: The buyer made unreasonable demands; The buyer left inappropriate Feedback; The buyer abused the eBay Buyer Protection process; The buyer misused returns; The buyer hasn’t paid; and Other problems.
You’ll find links sprinkled around eBay to report buyers including when you go to leave feedback for a buyer. Watch the video below for more details:
105 Responses
Excellent news, and not before time!
Ebay should have introduced this system right back when they took the option to leave feedback away from sellers?
ebay did not take the option to leave buyer feedback away from sellers. Feedback can still be left.
The law does not permit negative comments to be left for those that make a purchase. And that is on any site not just ebay.
The fact is poor sellers attract more than their fair share of allegedly “poor” buyers.
I received a package today that had soft wrapping when I would normally have expected the wrap to be stiff card. Fortuneately the contents were not damaged but what if they had been?
Am I to be marked down as a problem buyer?
I hope ebay take this into account and check out seller terms and seller history when a seller uses this “report a buyer” function.
I’m looking at the list and the only one that I can honestly say I come up against are the buyers who are slow to pay. And in this situation I am asked to move to another page so it does appear that it is a new system that I won’t be using!
smoke and mirrors
Why not just go back to the old system. For being able to leave feedback for buyers.
The ebay focus groups didnt like the fact sellers could do this so it was removed.
Now imagine what that same buyer focus group will say about this, which seems far worse.
Under the DSR I can take 28 days to deliver.
Does this mean i can report any buyer who expects faster delivery for having unreasonable demands ?
wont make the slightest difference , we have had outrageous buyers ,ebay support ignore or insult us when we contact with our concern ,every large ebay seller will have a similar experiance
ebay could save a lot of effort if they treat every negative feedback as a reported buyer lol
I do suspect that this may be something of a placebo for sellers, using the function will make us feel better, but whether there will actually be any consequences remains to be seen.
The main issue we have is with “unreasonable behavior”
Picking up bad ratings for things that are so easily fixed with a simple email.
I understand that a buyer might have had a bad experience in the past and feels that leaving a neg is the only thing they can do / cant be bothered with an argument over a £4 refund etc
eBay have made it easy for buyers to complain via resolution centres etc but some still don’t/wont/cant
These are the buyers I would like to be educated via such systems (not removed from site completely)
Going to be interesting to see how this pans out – I have already reported 6 buyers for unwarranted feedback but have yet to see any action from ebay…….
My issue is with the items “lost in the post”.
Due to the relaitvely low price but bulky nature of my parcels a tracked service is not viable – my customers just wouldn’t pay for it. So I ship most things untracked.
With an untracked shipping service I accept that a small percentage of parcels will get lost or even stolen by the shipper (Royal Mail & international mail services) but I am always suspicious of buyers who claim not to have received one of my packages.
I can’t tell if they are genuine or not but if a buyer is a serial claimer a trend would appear if I was allowed to report “buyer claimed item was lost by the shipper”.
But that option is not there and I wish it was. I am sure that amongst the genuine buyers there are those that take advantage of the Buyer Protection to fleece people like me and you.
unless some tangible result is evident many sellers will just not bother using the feature
The seller dashboard provides info relating to any DSR and feedback adjustments made by eBay on the back of action they have taken.
They don’t say who they have taken it against but they do make amendments.
Small sellers will almost certainly use the feature. Large outlet sellers probably won’t bother.
So there is tangible evidence if you check.
Mr Crook.
ebay do pass information on to us.
Your nicked!
Dont be Daft!, no one ever gets prosecuted by either ebay or the law for claiming item not received
I’m confident that if they did it would make the front page news of The Sun.
The fact we have never heard of a case implies that 99% or more of buyers on ebay are actually honest.
And as long as that stat is maintained then ebay is a great marketplace to sell in. I’m happy to write off 1% of my sales if 99% go spiffingly well.
Too many winge about the negatives and overlook the positives.
It may well be that the percentage of rogue sellers who don’t comply with basic legal requirements is actually higher than the percentage of rogue buyers?
Has that ever been considered?
Look at that report list. A rogue seller who does not operate within the law may not understand that “an unreasonable demand” is entirely reasonable, “innapropriate feedback” is entirely appropriate, “buyer abused the buyer protection programme” when buyer is entitled to full refund and does not have to return the goods, “buyer missused returns” when buyers have a legal right to cancel their order up to 7 days after they receive the goods, “other problems” very likely as a result of the sellers own innapropriate terms and conditions.
Before ebay start checking buyers they need to take a look at the seller who is doing the reporting. If they have a history of placing reports then why is this?
It is certainly welcome, but doesn’t offer anything really useful to me other than making the process much easier, previously I used to bounce around the contact ebay system endlessly looking for an appropriate subject heading. My main problems are sellers leaving feedback because they don’t understand delivery times, and reluctant payers who later cause problems in a variety of ways. I don’t think the system will help much here.Basically, my feeling is that it is the rules that need changing, eg, where buyers agree to cancel they may not leave feedback. But there are 2 important things here:
1. Ebay is now actively profiling poor buyer behaviour, eg, buyers who repeatedly report INR.
2. (For me)rogue buyers are often also sellers playing the system and will be aware more than others of these new rules, and it will get many in to line. I expect a big drop in problems from this category of buyer.
A step in the right direction for sure.
Apologies in advance if this is a stupid question.
It says on eBay “The eBay Fast ‘N Free logo will be displayed when the listing offers free shipping and there is a high probability that the item will be delivered within 4 business days or less.”
Had a look at one of items after reading this, it has same day dispatch and 1st Class postage so I ticked the Fast n’ Free box and it said it didn’t qualify?
I would have thought there is high probability of same day dispatch with 1st class arriving within 4 business days.
ebay needs to start trusting its sellers for INR fraud to reduce ,not automatically find them guilty
ebays methods and system is the root cause for much buyer abuse,
savvy buyers know a well worded email with I await your response before leaving feedback at the end ,
can result in a discount or refund with only the click of a mouse
It’s a numbers game so it doesn’t matter. Just keep selling and plonk the occasional “savvy” buyer that you encounter on your banned list.
“I sit on the fence with this argument but what does interest/worry me is what happens when the “occasional” becomes more and more common?”
Thats why you put “offenders” on the banned list. To keep it occasional.
“we know all about the numbers game every long term seller on ebay knows the score or they go down the pan. but it dont mean we should suck it up and enjoy it”
I don’t enjoy it but I don’t let the short term negative emotion outweigh the overall positive experiences and benefits.
“its not feedback that bothers us
its the manipulative cynical item not as described claim that instantly freezes your money”
Sellers make mistakes and more often than not the customer is right (my experience anyway – the nature of the numbers game is that things get overlooked). You can spend and awful lot of time examining everything that is sold and describing every last detail and fault. Well I don’t! Best to hold up your hands and move on.
I have no idea what market some of you are selling into but some of you seem to have a lot of really carp experiences compared to moi. Am I unique?
It is often said that the more you say the more you get yourself into the deep do do.
So don’t describe every last detail!
Just say “item not perfect please refer to the 5 large images below and bid on what you see” or words to that effect depending on how you set out your html template.
How can a winning bidder claim “item not as described” against such a listing unless the seller is absolutely hopeless and puts an elephant in the package when the item was a mouse?
How can a winning bidder claim “item not as described” against such a listing unless the seller is absolutely hopeless and puts an elephant in the package when the item was a mouse?
SIMPLE, nothing to do with Elephants, just click a mouse , regardless of what you receive, and ebay/paypal pull rabbits out of a hat and give you your money back
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INR:
I am not sure if this still exists or I have just not been in a situation where it is needed.Some years ago Paypal, somewhere in the claims process, asked the writer [me] to make a statement of truth, that what I was writing was true.
There would be NO REASON, why ebay or paypal could not reintroduce such a system for buyers claiming INR/or any other claim, and indeed sellers making a similar statement regarding dispatch.
Such a statement would then be copied/forwarded to the seller/buyer, for use in any claim.
We’ve just a Neg for ‘poor service’ [oh, for the 11 emails], from a buyer who claimed INR, but declined to complete the statement, and ‘suddenly’ the item arrived yesterday…
there are quite a few signed for and tracked mail services ,
that could solve most INR problems, they are just not cost effective
for some products and sales, so in reality INRs are a cost of doing business on ebay,
its the ease that ebays system can be manipulated by buyers to hold a seller to ransom we find unacceptable
Regarding inappropriate, serial use of the report buyer button, an ebay pink discloses the following on the seller central board/shiny new feedback:
r1j2XXXXXX wrote:
I can imagine that all those sellers will be pressing the report button.
They can report them but we will be monitoring the system for abuse and will take action around abuse of that feature. What action that is.. I can’t discuss
It’s expected that report numbers will be up while people get to grips with the new reporting options available to them but that in turn should help identify and tackle the issues we’re providing reporting options for. Overtime then more experience is built up over the types of reports that are valuable and which are not. We wouldn’t be putting report buttons around the place if we weren’t aware of the potential impact.
if any seller starts to expect reasonableness from ebay buyers its time to seek therapy
.
And you think you have customer problems.
30 days… 6 months… 1 Year
Positive 96509 466733 810565
Neutral 702 2018 2862
Negative 737 2111 2868
And you all think you have customer problems.
TRS too.
[Not us, thankfully]
.
Unfortunately I think we are all hoping for more than we are going to get, here.
Having had a conversation this morning with Ebay CS, it was more than obvious CS still unavowedly support the buyer over the seller.
I questioned why this new “Report a Buyer” tab did not include a INR claim, button. Honestly I was taken aback with the ‘swallow it & move on attitude’ of CS.
A barrage of what ‘we’ [sellers] were guilty of. A completely flat attitude to my objections, ie; why we should tolerate it, etc.
The trouble is buyers who do get blocked from a few sellers, just find another one to claim INR.
It was interesting though she, suggested a bar code scan label on the back of packets & suggested these would help stop INR, [thereby acknowledging there is a problem].
Suppose we are on our own again!!….
well I know about a dozen seller that have all reported the same buyer who is caliming refunds for everything they buy on ebay (hundreds of pounds per week) and ebay have done absolutely nothing about it. It looks good having this feature, and builds confidence in sellers>ebay but no action from their end is extremely frustrating.
does nothing for our confidence, with no visible result or information on any specific report,
its just a placebo program for sellers
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/9650610/eBay-blacklisting-has-forced-us-on-to-dole.html .When it startes making newes like this, you know something is up.
In the real world a score of 95% would earn a distinction, on ebay it gets you banned!!!
ebay need to look after their business if they allow sub standard sellers, it harms not only their busines but ours too,
we sell around half a milion £ a year on ebay .
we experience all the same problems as every ebay seller, its keeping TRS that we have trouble with ,not losing our actual account.
so we wonder if this seller really is hard done by
this is a thread about report a buyer, ok sellers are punished, anyone have any evidence at all that any buyer anywhere has lost their buying ability on ebay as a result of this program ..???????
The fact is the seller was banned before the “report a buyer” was introduced. Whether the ability to “report a buyer” would have made any difference with ebay looking at the situation with a sympathetic ear remains to be seen.
I have absolutely no doubt that Tamebay or any of its active participants will report if any buyer has been banned as a result of the “report a buyer” system.
In any case surely ebay will want to make it known that “report a buyer” is having an effect by feeding info back to sellers else what is the point?
we would think report a buyer would have made no difference at all to that seller regardless of report a buyer , we would guess its the sellers methods that were at fault
lets get real report a buyer is not a get out of gaol option it a white elephant
lets be honest the whole concept of report a buyer is suspect,
ebays hard drives must be glowing with reports for every buyer who leaves a neutral or a negative or who makes a complaint , its only the very worst who will even be noticed’ they will just re register if sanctioned, which could be detrimental as blocking an ID then becomes ineffective
Are decisions on ebay made on a Commercial Basis? Far more likely that a Ciomputer somewhere has built into it a set of numbers and once your statistics exceed that set of numbers the system clicks into operation. I doubt if there is much if any Human involvement. After all we consistently hear that ebay CS is totally useless and they are the ones who should be over seeing the whole system.
So it is likely that Saal were in fact almost totally innocent but the numbers exceeded the laid down norm and their business was duly destroyed by ebay.
Surely “Restraint of Trade” should have an impact in this and many other cases? How about the Office of Fair Trading having a very good look at ebay. After all the OFT^ can give fines up to 10% of a Companies Turnover. So if ebay was dodgy the fines could be very interesting.
Had an interesting call from eBay that my account was running “below standard”. Interesting since we’ve maintained 100% feedback in the 10 years we’ve traded on eBay.
They said it wasn’t my main account – it was another account I held. This was news to me, since we have traded with the same name for the last 8 years and don’t have any other accounts (apart from a personal account I use to make purchases).
It turned out that a guy who sold 2nd hand clothing in another unit in the same business centre as me had been linked by eBay to my account. As well as the same address (apart from the unit number), he had the same first name.
I sent a detailed email to eBay stating categorically that we only had the one account selling car parts and had never dealt in 2nd hand clothing. After a couple of days, I was assured by eBay that the accounts were no longer linked.
I have to trust that this is true, but I’m not sure.
Could I have been blocked from selling on eBay because of a dubious link to another seller?