After a few years of arms length fiddling I decided to jump back in and sell a few things on eBay.
It seems that certain things have changed?
You see, I sold an item to some bloke who took almost 3 weeks to pay up. After the first week of waiting I emailed to find out what was going on and he informed me that for some reason his eCheque went loco and he had no idea why.
Today, I posted the item so it was feedback time!
Because of the problems with the sale I decided to leave NEUTRAL feedback. However, when I tried to add the fact that there had been problems with the sale and therefore NEUTRAL feedback seemed the right choice I was barraged with an eBay tutorial on why I shouldn’t do this?
I also found this nugget of information that goes some way to explain why NEUTRAL feedback is seen as the next worst thing to a Nazi Fox Hunter:
NEUTRAL FEEDBACK SHOULD NEVER BE GIVEN (FIRST) – sellers generally prefer NO FEEDBACK whatsoever to Neutral or Negative. Neutral is generally considered to be a “faux negative”.
All I have to say is. What?
Surely people are intelligent to work out that NEUTRAL is not good or bad but somewhere in-between.
I find the fact that eBay would not allow me to add NEUTRAL feedback until I had filled in some dummy questionnaire quite insulting. If they hate the idea of NEUTRAL feedback so much why do they still persist to have it as an option?
If they maintain that their users are idiots and do not understand the word NEUTRAL then hey should just get rid of any middle-ground feedback options and go with a simple good/bad approach.
I am confused about this as well. If you are given an option in software that should ‘never’ be used, I feel that is a terrible design!
My dilemma is that I received an electronic product from a seller on eBay for $20. The product was broken out of the box. I paid the $6 to get it shipped back to the seller in order to receive a replacement. That is an extra 30% of cost and another two weeks to get my item! The seller solved my issue, but I had to go through extra hassle. I don’t consider this positive, but I wouldn’t say it is negative since it was resolved. Therefore, I think I would be right to leave a neutral feedback. Why the heck would anyone say that neutral should never be left!?
Personally i would like to see an end to neutral feedback. There are only 2 feedback types positive and non-positive (negative and neutral)
If a buyer is unhappy they should either leave negative or contact the seller. I personally give a full refund on return of the item.
I would rather recieve negative feedback than neutral. 100 % positive feedback is important to me and I hate someone to end mine 100% record by a minor mistake somewhere that wasnt my fault. All non-positive feedback can be avoided by always offering a refund.
No Feedback left is better than non-positive. This should be an option when leaving feedback. ie. Positive / Negative / I dont want to leave any feedback / i want to leave feedback at a later date
I agree it is ridiculous to make you go thru this before leaving the feedback but here’s the reason why:
People are fucking stupid. We’ve been selling on ebay for years and most of the buyers are good people with good intentions. Even when an issue occur, they will understand and won’t leave negative or neutral feedbacks. However, some type of buyers thinks that feedbacks are a review of the product itself.
1 star for not as described when you don’t like the product is not justified.
1 star as shipping time when item arrives within the carrier’s window is not justified.
eBay simply knows that these people are hurting both the sellers and eBay… Its because of them that we need such a complicated system.
Leaving a bad feedback for an item that cost 0.99$ saying the item broke after 40-50 days is ridiculous. Its a 0.99 cent piece of junk bought on ebay, not your brand new car.
Sorry for my tone… We lost our top rated status so many times because of these people. Get a freaking life.
Just recently I purchased a lot of items on eBay. The majority had no problem but several were just scams. I gave them negative and neutral feedback that was well thought out prior to giving it to them. These were the worst of the worst sellers I have come across. A few days later eBay sends me a nasty gram indicating that all of these would be removed and if I did it again I would be suspended. WOW I now know that eBay’s feedback system is a fraud. Apparently eBay wants to protect the bad sellers and buyers. So do not trust anything toy see on eBay. It is all false.