If I buy a Mars bar in a newsagents, hand over my money and walk out with my purchase thats a good transaction, it’s a bit difficult to see how it’s worth five stars “excellent shopkeeper, wonderful service etc”. It’s what is expected, that’s good, three out of five. So if I buy a standard £5 packaged item on eBay and it arrives a couple of days later, as expected, it is difficult to get enthused enough to take the time to click all those stars, write a glowing sentence.

I mostly buy antiques on eBay, I think performance of sellers knocks 30% off overall prices and good sellers get kicked like bad ones. Sometimes I get junk, being forced to guess from poor quality eBay hosted heavily compressed pictures which are often enhanced. I know a powerseller nearly 2K 100% positive who is universally complained about. About 1:30 items are broken due to lack of proper packaging, maybe half are lucky to arrive, at the other end of the scale some have so much packaging that waste disposal is a problem. ‘Optimistic’ descriptions are a problem too, obviously antiques are often sold by amateurs clearing attics and sheds etc and you have to allow for it but some of the professional antique sellers take advantage.

I’ve had retail businesses for around 30 years, in fact some manufacturing/service/retail, in a fairly difficult and complex field working in peoples homes. High Street stores, mail order from the late 1980s, I sell a bit on eBay too, not much, the one promise they keep is low prices.

eBay however is in the process of being closed down to small businesses, those dollars and pounds going to ordinary folks will end up in the corporate coffers. It’s very deliberate, the management team are performing well in returning those dollars lost to mom & pop to big biz, they aim to repeat the High Street being emptied of small traders. They are breaking things that work, not fixing things that are broken, it should be obvious to all. They waste your time in communicating just like the universal call centre model. The same process is going on with Royal Mail and BBC, being messed up so that when privatisation comes along people don’t complain too much. The web in general is being made more difficult for small companies to exist, prices are going up for no good reason, it will end up like the High Street too.

The problem is, people leave neutrals and thinking that they aren’t hurting you but they *ARE*

I’ve even had comments that I’d interpret as a “soft positive” left as a neutral.

As far as I can remember, it was on a thread that followed the announcement on 18/7 of the changes to UK SNP. I asked the question why neutrals were still being counted when Usher Lieberman and Richard Brewer-Hay had announced they wouldn’t. I missed Norrie’s announcement.

I have even looked back at the list of threads around that time, but there are so few, a lot have obviously been removed.

I can’t remember Richard’s exact words, but they were along the lines the announcements were mistakes, as they were only thinking about taking neutrals out of SNP and no decision had been made.

However, I don’t mean to erase negs for big sellers. I mean actually make the seller earn the positive by having the 7 day window where they can work it out with buyer before neg goes live.

Personally….if they did that….I say lower/put the SNP at 2% or 3%. If a seller is given the chance to resolve the issue and don’t, they should not be on the site anyways. At this point you would have 3 types of Ebay sellers….

1-Those who have great FB and never gets negs.
2-Those who do get some negs, get them removed and resolve issues and also have great FB as result.
3-Those who get negs and don’t resolve issues….who eventually are suspended.

I say 1 and 2 are pretty good for Ebay.

This is something Ina at Auctionbytes should verify. It was first reported on her site these would no longer count. It makes her reporting look inaccurate by not getting a clarifiaction and explanation from Ebay. As for Richard Brewer Hay….he has continually mis-spoken on Ebay rules. However, I feel the problem is with Ebay. I doubt Richard Brewer Hay could have mistaken what he clarified a month ago about this. I think Ebay is waffling on the issue, personally.

Chris Dawson….I also don’t like getting negs, even if they get removed. However, we have been selling on Ebay for 5-6 years…have tens of thousands of FB, etc. and that 80% figure I said probably is true over the 5-6 years. Buyers leave negs and don’t care….especially on low-cost items. It is because they don’t realize the ramifications….

We all have agreed that this could EASILY be resolved by Ebay instituting a system where the neg does not go on for 7 days while buyer/seller resolve (like unpaid item dispute). However, Ebay does not want to do this.

I will give you an example. I sold a customer a roll of mercury dimes. The coins were sold as unsearched. Yet the buyer somehow expected to receive BU coins. He left a negative without contacting me.

I immediately requested his contact information and we worked out a deal where I gave him 25% of his money back *AND* free shipping. He was happy.

IMO this became a positive transaction for him. For me I lost money as he could have gone into a coin shop and probably made a profit as he got those at way below melt.

The point is, you can turn a negative experience into a positive experience.

I’ve done things like that quite a few times because I think it helps my reputation in the community.

A lot of people rather than just contacting you to fix a problem or a mistake would rather just neg you.

It sometimes take a significant effort to get a hold of these people and educate these people that they misread the listing and/or maybe I sent out the wrong item. Some of these people work long hours and it’s extremely difficult to contact them.

I think somebody who is serious about making something right should be differentiated from somebody who gets a neg and says “screw you”

It’s pretty misleading to not count neutrals in Feedback percentages, yet count them in SNP calculations.

The problem that I have on eBay is I get very few negatives. My feedback percentage is 99.7% yet I’d get lots of neutrals, such as “Okay” “Good” “Thank You” “Took a week to get”, etc….

Somebody even left me a neutral once saying “Fast Shipment, Good product, but needs communication to make transaction smooth”. If they are happy with the product and the shipment was quick that seems like a smooth transaction to me. Instead they are *looking* for something to complain about.

Agreed, but not one rule for one seller & another for another from the rules of ebay themselves.

Obviously Border Laws/rules have to be acknowleged.