The last 2 negs I received (both removed due to non-communication from the buyer before leaving it) were for
(i) Dell 17″ TFT with a cracked screen which sold for 99p – the neg complained of a cracked screen in comment
(ii)Dell 15″ TFT which sold for £9.50 because it had a scrached screen, close up photo in auction. Buyer complained of scratehced to screen in comment.

I have started to stop listing a lot at 99p start now to discourage bottom feeders who just see the auction title and 99p so place a bid not really expecting to win but just ‘playing at Ebay’. Even starting a with minimim prices of £4.99 and above for a lot of items has seen no complaints at all due to bidders not bothering to read auction descriptions in the last 3 weeks at a average of 65 sales a week.

If I was unhappy with a £300 purchase I would be more likely to leave negative feedback than if I was unhappy with a £1.99 purchase.

A £300 purchase also has a greater chance of making me unhappy as my expectations will be much higher.

Don’t forget though, ebay is encouraging buyers to mark down sellers with their less than subtle messages and even using their payment processor to spam their customers with their propaganda.

The sector is very important. I got a neg from a buyer a couple of weeks ago because he ordered a phone on Sunday received it Thursday, claimed it should have been next day delivery, the service offered was 1st Class Recorded.

How many people here would get a neg for that in their category?

The buyer with £300 invested is much more likely to take the time to try and sort out whatever the problem is than the guy with £1.99 gloves, Giving the seller a much better chance to sort the problem out.

In my business on eBay, I do not find either points to be true. But it may just be my category and my buyers. I can’t speak about eBay as a whole.

> 1 in 20 that ended up being pissed off customers

Take BargainLand as an example. Many of the feedback left for that business was due to products being sold as-is, or not as described. Buyer ends up leaving a negative for a $500 item s/he bought for $10. It ends up not working or it is not up to the buyer’s expectation. That is more a reflection of the product being sold and/or the buyer not having realistic expectation about potential outcomes. (What did you expect for $10?)

#21 As you say Randy the surveys you’re talking about are much more detailed. However if you view a negative as a customer who would never under any circumstances purchase from the merchant again it makes more sense. Buyers will often answer fuller surveys highlighting where the service could have been better and the more detail the more opportunities to give feedback. Also the surveys take into account multiple purchases over a period of time from the same buyer. If however the surveys were limited to positive/neutral/negative for a single buying experience I’d expect them to be more inline with eBay feedback.

As for 95% giving a positive – it’s not that that’s considered a poor buying experience. It’s the 1 in 20 that ended up being pissed off customers

Here are the numbers from the Forsee Customer Satisfaction Survey.

Netflix is #1 at 86 on a 100 point scale
Amazon has an 83 rating and Buy.com has a 72 rating.

These surveys are much more detailed than Positive, Neutral, Negative and 4 DSRs

If 95% of their customers give them a positive how is that considered a poor buying experience.

I am not worthy.

The whole system is skewed towards volume sellers, at least eBay seem to be finally catching some bigger fish who offer truly carp service.

**boom boom**

I have to be honest and say that ANY business on or off eBay that has a 1:20 unsatisfied customer rate has to be doing something very very wrong. Especially as disgruntled customers are on the whole a lot more verbose about spreading the word compared to satisfied customers.

Using feedback percentage to determine a seller’s desirability on eBay is deceiving. You must factor in the average feedback percentage for a specific category and not analyze percentages as a whole. 95% may be the best feedback percentage possible if you compare with other sellers in the same category.

There is no such thing as a bad buyer, ebay have said so.

I am actually pleased to see this drop off in large sellers if some of those sellers were pushed, not because I want to see anyone fail more because its helped restore a little confidence in eBay for me, it confirms to me that eBay do not skew figures and bend the rules as much as I thought they did.

if most of us do a search on our own ids
we are ranked in the top thousands and mostly in the top 10s of thousands,
there are more sellers than lops on a dogs back
ebay could see a few hundred thousand sellers disappear and not notice a thing

Taking a straw poll around the sale rooms, I have not found one dealer active on eBay who has moved away – it is still by far the easiest method to reach the US and Australian buyers who are not coming here on holiday for economy reasons, and we all take advantage of the differences between items that sell on eBay and those that work better in other markets.

I am sure that some decent sellers have decided to leave for valid reasons of their own but I doubt very much that a huge number of sensible business people would calmly give up a market niche that easily.

If the numbers are still showing a month on month increase this time in 6 months, it will probably be the right time to be worried. At the moment I would expect eBay management to be comfortable that their strategies are actually doing what it said on the tin.