It’s been interesting to read the comments from Tamebay readers regarding the recent eBay UK test to remove visibility of “Feedback left for others”. It’s obvious that, despite eBay’s improvements in recent years to seller protection, you still feel vulnerable.
We’re pleased to report that eBay have told us “This was a test run in the UK. It has now ended and feedback visibility is restored“.
A test it may have been, but the comments were illuminating. Possibly the most sanguine comment was from eBay veteran Tinker, feedback doesn’t do that much for anyone until it’s too late and you have a problem so Tinker has automated software which leaves feedback on receipt of payment calling it a “soulless box ticking automatic dribble”.
Bearing in mind that around 80% of eBay sales are fixed price immediate purchases, it’s not possible to check feedback and cancel bids in the way you once would have done on auctions. Also, unless you’re a hobby seller, who has the time to check every buyer’s feedback before shipping the item out? If you do have time to check each and every buyer out then you’re not selling enough.
So accepting feedback is useless until something goes wrong, that is when many sellers use it for investigative purposes and as David Brackin pointed out “eBay is about trust and this visibility is important”. If a buyer is being habitually troublesome their feedback should reflect this.
No buyer’s feedback really reflects how good or bad they are – these days eBay only allows sellers to leave positive feedback for buyers. It’s only by seeing the comments a buyer leaves for other sellers you start to build up a picture of what they’re like to trade with.
The people we really want to pick up on troublesome buyers are eBay themselves. We want eBay to protect us and we want eBay to kick troublesome buyers off the marketplace.
There have recently been a couple of stories in the press about Amazon banning buyers who’s behaviour falls outside of Amazon’s accepted norms. I’m sure neither Amazon nor eBay really like this sort of publicity. I do though and I suspect that most sellers would agree with me.
If eBay are protecting sellers and taking note when enough sellers report a buyer to ban them then sooner or later a buyer is going to be upset enough to complain to the newspapers. I’m looking forward to that day.
44 Responses
I agree with Tinker, our software also automatically gives a customer positive feedback at the point when we mark the order despatched on the admin panel of our website.
We never check feedback really – because to be honest we rarely actually log in to Ebay itself and do everything from either our website admin or Xsellco for messages etc.
as Dave Brackin says its all about trust and visibility,
if ebay would be more visible and publish a monthly list of how many buyers had been sanctioned and for what ,we might then trust them when they claim that they protect sellers
I’ve been begging ebay to at least put up a warning regarding multiple item not received claimers. Especially since Royal stopped sellers claiming for standard & economy lost item ebay buyer claims.
We closed our shapewear shop after they allowed a woman with 26 INR’s to claim. I sent them screenshots of all the INR’s some in copy pasted rows of 4 on same day for different sellers.
A recent one was sent to me which was pages & pages of item not received. The seller had her 2 negatives removed but the buyer carried on buying. I sent pages to the media again a few days ago stating buyers feedback left for others should be looked at on accounts. They needed to see what sellers were up against on ebay & how although it had been reported. Nothing had been done. I last discussed this with an ebay representitive Monday. When I saw the tab missing yesterday I immediately assumed another glitch. I checked another of my shops in another browser. I checked my own account… fine. Eventually became enlightened. Somebody in your earlier extremely timely post regarding the matter mentioned someone should contact the media regarding all the theft. I wonder now if my interfering has had anything to do with the risk of us losing this valuable tool. On the other hand I’m thinking don’t be silly.
why?
why would ebay bother?
EBAY PROFIT FROM SCAMMERS.
Scammers cost ebay little to nothing, the scammers take YOUR MONEY, not ebays.
ebay will still charge you for finding against you and taking your money to give to a thief.
ebay are basically a shoplifting assistant these days, they make money from assisting in crime, why would they want to stop?
the “report a buyer” button does LITERALLY nothing.
you may as well write your compaint on a post-it and deposit it in the bin, thats what the report button does. ebay do not care.
We have it set up to leave positive feedback after the customer has done it. Kinda class it as have received and am happy then the transaction is complete, I even have to pay to use that service. I do not think sellers should leave bad feedback. However a company like eBay need to actually take a more pro-active role in dealing the scammers (getting Police involved for one) and idiots. It is the platform I have the least confidence to sell on, it causes 99.9% of issues. Amazon and others nothing, sell the same products over all marketplaces. Ebay have set a system up to be abused and it is costing millions, and it is not their money they are putting at risk. Between them and RMG they are only destroying their own business long term by not dealing with courier issues and INR and theft, let’s be honest that is most the issues. I could employ someone with the FBA fees I payout each year but it is because Amazon take away so much hassle it is worth it, this money is going into Amazon and NOT eBay or RMGs coffers as they cannot be trusted with your products and will not deal with the issues at hand. Claiming an item has not been received when it has is a CRIME it is fraud, theft and should be treated as so. RMG need to join the 21s century and get with it. It should be in Government Legislation that these organisations take some responsibility to run safe selling environments so much small business is forced to use their services and platforms these days.
I sell low cost value items from £3 – £20 personalised goods so they are never sent tracked (costs too much for low cost items). I would get approx 4 INR claims per week in which i would refund the buyer due to the fear of getting a negative on my feedback – it was getting very depressing especially as I was getting no claims on my Amazon account. Cant be royal mail losing post for just my ebay items surely?
So I decided to put a fake tracking barcode on all my Royal mail postage labels…..and guess what? No more claims!!! I get maybe 1 a month now which makes me realise how many buyers are out there to get what they can for nothing. It has solved a large number of thieving scumbags trying to claim but I wish ebay would take notice and wake up to the people who work hard pay their wage!
Its mot Royal Mal’s fault, (on delivering)….the issue lies with eBay (allowing open fraud)
https://www.ppi-labels.co.uk/id99.html
for Atom
Back to the original headline…..
THERE ARE NO BANNED BUYERS!!!!
to eBay…
Fraudulent buyers = Revenue
Obviously there are banned buyers but for other reasons like hackers and underage people except those who deliberately defraud sellers
The fix is simple all ebay need to do is add more options to buyer requirements so sellers can set up rules to block buyers with more than the threshold of claims or returns from their items anyone abusing the system will soon fall foul of seller blocks.
If I want to block any buyer with more than 5 claims a month it would stop them buying my items another seller may be happy to sell to buyers with 100 claims a month but we should be given the raw data and allowed to make the blocks.
eBay have all the tools but seem reluctant to address the problem and give sellers the blocks they need is the problem bigger that we all imagine and ebay too scared that too many buyers will end up blocked?
It is quite obvious what eBay should do… they should look into accounts that have had a high percentage of purchased items refunded. That is exactly what Amazon do… then simply ban them OR notify sellers to use a tracked service for that specific buyer (because you know they may genuinely have 10+ parcels go missing each month)
But firstly they’d need to implent address validation to stop the same fraudsters signing back up again.
I currently have a 0 feedback newly registered user complaining that “all of my eBay purchases go wrong” – strange that happens considering you just signed up?!
We have been hammered this weekend with INR cases. At least 3 of them have proved to be fraud. We contacted the other sellers who had left feedback and they had all received the same issue.
The one this morning is also concerning and is a whole 20 miles away.
Despite providing eBay with evidence all 3 of the accounts we know about are STILL active. Royal Mail are totally inept at dealing with these issues also. That was a LOT of money stolen from our accounts this weekend.
Both organisation eBay and RMG are not fit and proper organisations as far as I am concerned. Both do nothing against buyer fraud. I have even gone as far as getting fulfillment companies quotes as we are not wanting to deal with eBay or RMG who are not fit for purpose when it comes to security.
Another weekend of slow sales and endless INR claims got to love eBay always encouraging buyer fraud.
I had a buyer trying to extort a partial refund on a purchase wanted 80% refunding so I held my nerve.
The best bit is now he has opened a return knowing the postage eBay will charge me is more than the partial refund he wants to extort and he had the cheek to tell me it will cost us more to accept the return so we should just partial refund him.
He is also a seller I am sure kama will have its day 🙂
sellers need to grasp the logic of ebay
sellers are expendable and replaceable were all cannon fodder
Seriously .. What is the point they never listen , and cannot in any shape or form make a decision based on common sense .
They constantly refer to the ebay rules if you open any dispute with them ,Rules which are so one sided in the buyers favour they are grossly unfair and really your beat before you start …
Free postage ! really where do you get that .. ebay force you to lie to the customer , offering something that doesn’t exist…
If you don’t offer free p&p then your selling nothing on the ebay platform as your at the bottom of the list , But there is no such thing as free postage ….
Ebay is corrupt we all know that ..we use it and you either accept it is corrupt and unfair or what .. there are no alternatives unfortunately , And they know that …