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Neutral Feedback - as damaging as a negative.
StaffsSW
Posts: 5,788 Forumite
Source“It’s only a neutral.” A phrase that crops up again and again on eBay message boards. “It could’ve been worse, at least it wasn’t a neg.” Because neutrals don’t affect feedback percentage, and disappear from the feedback scorecard after a year, most experienced sellers tend not to worry about them. More often than not in my experience, neutrals are about buyer’s misplaced expectations (”these 6mm beads are smaller than I expected”, “these black jeans are not the colour I wanted”), or circumstances totally outside a seller’s control, like delivery delays. Much as we’d all like to, you can’t please all the people all the time.
Well, it seems that the days of “it’s only a neutral” are over. eBay’s new seller non-performance policy counts a neutral the same as a negative:
If more than 5% of a seller’s buyers are dissatisfied, as measured by negative and neutral Feedback left or Item Not Received complaints during a 90 day period, the seller is in violation of the Seller Non-Performance policy.
At first glance, keeping 95% of your buyers happy ought to be easy, and certainly we don’t expect that most sellers will be affected by this policy. However, if you’re selling very few, very big ticket items, you might want to put some additional safeguards in place: if you sell ten cars a month, you only need one buyer to complain that his petrol tank was half-empty, and that’s your eBay career over with.
More than anything I’ve seen in a long time, this policy shows how misplaced eBay’s “level playing field” is. If, as above, you sell very little, you can only pi55 off one customer a month before you’re finished. If you sell 100 items, you can !!!! off five customers. And if you sell 1000 items, that’s fifty customers who you can turn off eBay before you get any kind of censure. Who’s doing the most damage to eBay’s business, and to the business of every honest seller out there?
This is a worry. Neutrals tend to be received for instances beyond the seller's control, postage delays, lost in post, buyer mis-understanding etc. So now sellers' livelihoods are at risk because of another badly-implemented and unannounced policy change.
It also concerns me that there are unscrupulous buyers who will see a seller on the edge of Neutral limit, and may take the opportunity to engage in a bit of feedback blackmail. eBay will only act on extortion in certain circumstances (not that I will list them should any muppets be reading this!) and there is very little protection for the seller against this.
I can see that eBay need to take action on bad sellers, but using a series of unquantifiable remarks as evidence is pushing things too far.
This makes me more inclined to leave a negative as a response to a Neutral in hope that the buyer will agree to a mutual withdrawal.
<--- Nothing to see here - move along --->
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At least it answers the age old question of 'If I give a neutral, will the seller retaliate with a negative'. I have left 5 neutrals in the past to sellers, 3 of which [SIZE=-1]petulantly[/SIZE] left me a negative in return. Now I will give a negative!0
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stevew8975 wrote: »Source
It also concerns me that there are unscrupulous buyers who will see a seller on the edge of Neutral limit, and may take the opportunity to engage in a bit of feedback blackmail. eBay will only act on extortion in certain circumstances (not that I will list them should any muppets be reading this!) and there is very little protection for the seller against this.
I can see that eBay need to take action on bad sellers, but using a series of unquantifiable remarks as evidence is pushing things too far.
This makes me more inclined to leave a negative as a response to a Neutral in hope that the buyer will agree to a mutual withdrawal.
You complain about feedback blackmail from buyers and then propose that you do some yourself as a seller!!0 -
It's an act of self-preservation rather than a potential threat to a sellers livelihood.<--- Nothing to see here - move along --->0
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I notice that the link in the article is to an ebay.com messageboard, so perhaps there is hope that this lunacy doesn't extend to ebay.co.uk.
Btw I couldn't help noticing your new sig, steve - did you go and queue for it at midnight then? Have you had any sleep yet? I'm waiting for my son to finish his so I can borrow it.0 -
If it gets introduced on the .com site, it is very likely it will be on the .co.uk site soon after0
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I have left 5 neutrals in the past to sellers, 3 of which [SIZE=-1]petulantly[/SIZE] left me a negative in return. Now I will give a negative!
This has happened to me today & I'm fuming but I'll get over it.
I left a netral as the seller had packaged 3 heavy books in an envelope. The envelope ripped & 1 book was water damaged as a result.
I believe it would be down to common sense to use better packaging for 3 heavy books so left a netral as I was happy with the items.
I got left negative today along the lines of 'BAD EBAYER - LOOK OUTSIDE - ITS RAINING - ITEM WILL GET WET'
In a few days I'll be >
but at the moment I cannot believe I got the negative! Sometimes it's important to work for that pot of gold...But other times it's essential to take time off and to make sure that your most important decision in the day simply consists of choosing which color to slide down on the rainbow...0 -
This has happened to me today & I'm fuming but I'll get over it.
I left a netral as the seller had packaged 3 heavy books in an envelope. The envelope ripped & 1 book was water damaged as a result.
In fairness they deserved a neutral for poor packaging, but I am more concerned about the neutrals where people say "Great item, great price, but took 4 days to arrive" or "OK" with no explanation, and I've even seen "Where is my item?" left as a neutral. As the article points out, certain categories tend to have a tendancy to attract neutral comments.
I have long said that I do not fear a neg out of poor service as I have all those areas under control, I fear negs (and now neutrals) from newbies or idiots who do not understand the need to communicate. As I list separately on eBay.com, I'm pretty certain that the policy could affect me.<--- Nothing to see here - move along --->0 -
stevew8975 wrote: »This makes me more inclined to leave a negative as a response to a Neutral in hope that the buyer will agree to a mutual withdrawal.
So you're going to blackmail people too but in a more subtle way?!?! I hate to see mutual withdrawals on peoples feedback pages. Makes me think something dodgy has gone on. I'd rather see the feedback left as it was with a factual reply to it.:heart2: Love isn't finding someone you can live with. It's finding someone you can't live without :heart2:0 -
I hate to see mutual withdrawals on peoples feedback pages. Makes me think something dodgy has gone on. I'd rather see the feedback left as it was with a factual reply to it.
I fully agree, but if an unwarranted neutral potentially affects my ability to sell, what other options have I got?
If I knew I was at fault then I'd take it on the chin and learn from it, but I will not let an idiot jeopardise my income.<--- Nothing to see here - move along --->0 -
stevew8975 wrote: »I fully agree, but if an unwarranted neutral potentially affects my ability to sell, what other options have I got?
If I knew I was at fault then I'd take it on the chin and learn from it, but I will not let an idiot jeopardise my income.
If you are given a neut or neg without having the buyer/seller contacting you to try to sort out any problems first then IMO they deserve one back. If they leave one after problems haven't been sorted even after asking then a factual reply to it is best. Personally I wouldn't go the mutual withdrawal route, as I said before makes the seller look dodgy.:heart2: Love isn't finding someone you can live with. It's finding someone you can't live without :heart2:0
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