- This topic has 11 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 8 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
-
I had a buyer today give me neutral feedback on an item today. They said “Looks great in the picture but awfully disappointed when I received it”. I promptly sent them an email saying please return and I will give you a refund. They came back with this “Can’t because I have to pay for the return shipping and I’m not spending money to return something I don’t like”.
Now here is where it gets interesting. I went to see the buyers feedback they have left for other sellers on things they have purchased. The have left 69 total feedbacks with 34 being neutral or negative. That’s 50% neutral or negative.
Do you think they are abusing the feedback system or just having really bad luck buying things? Should I report this to eBay to make them aware? Part of me wants eBay to know so they can address this. The other part of me just wants to move on? If I report should I click on the report the buyer in eBay or call support?
Any thoughts?
-
I once had a buyer through GSP give me a negative feedback of something like “bad quality”. These were just your average napkin rings. Nothing particularly bad or good about them. I was wondering about what to do, so I checked the feedback. Like your buyer, he left numerous negative feedbacks, and several had a seller comment of something like “serial giver of bad feedback”. My guess is that the good feedback he left was when a buyer offered him money back.
Rather than deal with the buyer when he was obviously fishing for a refund, I just responded in the same way and just took the negative. I probably should have pressed that link and reported him.
I don’t know that it is worth your while to call eBay. I doubt that they will remove the feedback. Once, when I called about a buyer trying to fish for money (different than the one above), the customer service rep said that she pressed the button for me and reported him. Nothing different than what I could have done on my own.
Your buyer’s excuse for not wanting to return the item sounds pretty lame, and I think he is just fishing for a refund. Unless it would make you feel better to call, I would just report him and leave a response to his neutral feedback.
-
What’s to report? That he’s unhappy with a lot of his purchases? I don’t think it’s against the ebay rules to be a person who is difficult to please.
I would move on.
-
Sonia has a point. A buyer is always allowed to have their opinion. One neutral/negative will not hurt your store in the grand scheme of things.
That being said, eBay feedback is there to make our reputation as a seller, thus can affect our sales, thus can affect our income, thus can affect our way of living. There’s no shame in fighting confusing, unwarranted feedback.
If we have the time, it doesnt hurt to plead your case to eBay about the feedback. A buyer who leaves 50% neutral or negative feedback is rare and obviously has unreasonable expectations. If you showed the item with all its flaws, then the buyer is just being grumpy. Buyers can always ask to return an item if they are unhappy.
Anything less than neutral/positive feedback means you did something wrong. If you didnt do anything wrong, thats a valid reason to ask for eBay to arbitrate.
-
-
“Anything less than neutral/positive feedback means you did something wrong.”
I think I’m in the minority of sellers here who think this, but I disagree with this statement. Negative feedback can just mean that the buyer doesn’t like something about their item or experience, but doesn’t necessarily translate into something the seller did wrong. For example, very often on this forum people say things like “I can’t believe that they buyer gave me negative feedback after I offered them a complete refund.” IMO as a buyer, it’s great to get a full refund when I’m not happy with the product, but that doesn’t take away from the annoyance that the item is not, for example, up to the level of quality that I expected, and now I have to go shopping again to find what I want. Sometimes things just look better in the photos than they do in person. Or maybe I got a great item that I really like, but the buying experience was frustrating b/c the photos were bad and I was nervous about whether I made the right decision in making the purchase. That’s also something that would cause me not to want to leave positive feedback. Does that make me a grumpy buyer? Or is it the seller who is grumpy who cannot acknowledge that they are not seen as perfect by all buyers?
I continue to wonder why sellers worry about neutral feedback at all. Does anyone really think that 1 or 2 neutral feedbacks a year is going to stop even one person from making a purchase from you? As for negative feedback, do you know anyone who would not purchase from a seller with feedback of 98% or higher? Particularly when they are selling unique items?
Time is something to be scavenged as well. And one piece of low hanging fruit wrt to getting back more time in the day is to stop spending time on neutral and negative feedback (other than perhaps writing a feedback response in some cases) unless there is some risk of falling below 98% positive rating (or pick your own threshold).
Stepping down off my soap-box now.
-
I agree that there’s debate whether or not a seller should worry about fighting a neutral or negative feedback. As I said earlier, in the grand scheme of things, it probably wont affect sales as long it’s rare, but a seller has every right to do it.
However if someone buys an item from a seller and she’s provided great photos, why should the seller gets a negative because the buyer dislikes the ITEM. The seller did everything right, but the buyer hates the item? Not the seller’s fault unless there was misrepresentation.
The eBay feedback system clearly states that the buyer is to rate the seller experience:
https://www.ebay.com/help/buying/leaving-feedback-sellers/leaving-feedback-sellers?id=4007
(under “why should I leave feedback”)By leaving feedback for a seller, you’re telling them what you think. Equally important, you’re letting other buyers know about your experience. Your feedback combines with others’ to build a rich base of knowledge to help to find the best sellers every time you shop.
Grumpy buyers are ones who complain because they realized they bought something they dont like, which is completely out of the seller’s control. If the buyer chooses not to return for a refund, then they’re not only grumpy but irrational for keeping an item they dont want.
-
-
Upon further thought, I think the problem with feedback is that the levels of feedback are not well-defined, and there’s only 1 choice for positive feedback. Many people don’t want to leave the highest possible feedback if their experience wasn’t absolutely fantastic, and the only other choice is neutral or negative. I think that if ebay had 2-3 levels of positive feedback (Fantastic, Good, Fine) and clearly defined negative feedback as something like “Unacceptably bad experience”, then it would give *slightly* grumpy buyers like myself a way to express our opinion about the imperfections in our experience (via choices like “Good” or “Fine) without making it seem like we’re saying the seller is horrible.
-
i had ebay remove a neutral the other day because it said “great, thanks” and they gave me all 5 stars, never asked for a refund or even messaged me about any issues or at all. they said, ‘yeah that looks like a mistake, we’ll remove it’. so i’m thinking if you show that you offered a refund, and the person has a record of 50% neg/neutral feedback, that they’ll remove it. let us know!
-
How about this: Would you be okay getting a negative feedback if you sent the buyer the wrong item by mistake, even if you did everything in your power to fix the problem (but could not, b/c the right item went to another buyer overseas, say), and even lost money on the whole transaction in the process?
-
If the seller makes a mistake, the buyer has every right to be unhappy and leave negative feedback. If the seller tries to correct the mistake, that’s up to the buyer if it solves their issue enough to leave good feedback.
But again, if the seller sends the exact item on time that the buyer purchases, why would anything other than positive feedback be left? The buyer’s opinion of the item has nothing to do with the seller’s performance.
Ive read other sellers say that eBay’s feedback system and 5-star ratings is an outdated system from late 1990’s attempt to create online trust. Do you know of a website that does a better job?
On Amazon, the rating system is based on the product itself than the seller which I find very helpful when buying commodity items. “3.5 Stars: This dishwasher is great and but not very power efficient.”
-
-
“But again, if the seller sends the exact item on time that the buyer purchases, why would anything other than positive feedback be left? The buyer’s opinion of the item has nothing to do with the seller’s performance.”
If you are talking about branded new in box items that you can get elsewhere and read product reviews about elsewhere, and provide your own product review elsewhere then yes, I completely agree. But in the case of used items, many without brands, where does the buyer get to review the product, as well as its condition and color (as compared to the listing description & photos)? You may not think it important to disclose a bunch of ink marks inside pants pockets, but if it’s important to your buyer, it’s their right for this to be reflected in their feedback. They like the item, they just think its condition was not accurately represented.
On Amazon I find A LOT of reviews (but still small percentage-wise) that talk about poor packing/delivery, different item, etc – things you judge the seller on. I find those really helpful too. I like Amazon’s system better, b/c the rating of 4 stars, which is one level down from a perfect 5 stars, isn’t considered to be “horrible”. But then again, I don’t have a huge problem with ebay’s system, but rather with people making such a big deal about the rare neutral/negative like it’s the end of the world. Of course people have the right to fight neutral/negatives as much as they want (run your store how you like), but sometimes the topic turns into non-productive buyer-bashing, which is inconsistent with the overall positive attitude espoused on this forum.
Note to self: At this point, I think I’ve said everything I have to say on this topic, some several times, so leave it at that and no more walls of text! 🙂
-
Not disclosing the ink marks would be an INAD, though. I’m not sure I’m understanding how that’s relevant here – the seller would be at fault and deserve the negative/neutral. Sending the wrong item – another case of a worthy negative feedback.
We’re so far away from OP’s story, but while we’re getting theoretical:
I can’t be responsible for a buyer’s unrealistic expectations. We can drill down to finer, more subjective details like color, “fit”, whatever, and ultimately just arrive at the conclusion that shopping for items with subjective, vague qualities is just a process prone to error. Imagine going clothes shopping at a store where you just pointed out shirts and someone held them 4 ft. in front of you, then rotated in increments of 45 degrees instead of letting you try them on. You don’t leave a bad review – you just return the item and try again. This is online shopping.
A seller could take an awesome, well-lit photo only for the buyer to view the listing on their $50 Android phone with a uncalibrated screen while they’re passing out on ambien. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be unhappy when it arrives and it doesn’t meet their hazy expectation, but look, there’s a ton of systems in place where you can get your money back and go on with your life in like 15 minutes. That’s the worst-case scenario and the inverse is that you get the exact item you wanted and all you had to do was hit “buy it now” on your phone.
I look at a seller’s feedback when I’m buying – that’s how you figure out if they’re trustworthy, right? It’s an important metric IMO. I’ve definitely decided to be more skeptical about a purchase before based on what I felt was a sub-par percentage w/ overall feedback score in mind.
Here’s something we can agree on: Fussing over neutral feedback is a bit of a time waster, but I feel the same about a large majority of posts about returns. At least in the case of handling a return you can put a definite dollar amount on what your time is worth, whereas here we don’t really know how much a negative really penalizes a seller financially via lost sales or affected placement in search.
Another point of agreement: eBay needs a new feedback system!
-
-
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.