Real-life MMD: Should I change my eBay feedback now the seller's replaced my item?

Bribery to alter feedback is against eBay policy. I suggest you report this and move on.

The feedback system on eBay is solely there to provide buyers with honest reviews on the sellers performance and how they handle each sale. It's about honesty, trust and also warning other consumers of potential problems before they part with their cash. As a buyer you make a decision over whether to choose to shop with that seller or not depending on the rating. If the system is messed up by unscrupulous sellers, the system will fail and people will get ripped off in the process.

What they're asking you to do is go against eBay policy and is essentially asking you to outright lie on the feedback system - you were unhappy with the way the transaction went, you left honest feedback the first time, end of story really. You don't have to be unpleasant to them, but neither are you obliged to change your feedback simply because they're unhappy that their ratings had lowered. If I was a seller and that worried about my ratings, I'd have made damn sure that the transaction had gone flawlessly in the first place!

If they wish to make amends for what happened it's a basic seller's responsibility to replace, refund or both (I can dream!) not encourage you to be dishonest and dangle a carrot of 'better' goods in lieu of doing so. That just smacks of something more than a little bit dodgy really. It is trying to bribe you with the 'promise' of a better item on the condition that your feedback is changed - that's not how it works and the bottom line is who's to say you'd even end up with the better item considering the sellers performance and business practices are sub-par to begin with. There is a high chance of you not ending up with the better item or your money back the very second after your feedback is altered.

I'd personally involve eBay, stick in a PayPal claim for a refund and move on. It's obvious that the seller has no qualms about trying to 'fix' the system in their favour, who's to say they won't pull a bigger scam or fail even more miserably to provide the basic service or item they're offering to somebody else in the future? Reclaim your money and move on.

~ B xx

I had similar happen to me on the amazon marketplace and spoke with amazon who told me it was against their terms of service.

Others here have said the same about eBay, so what you ought to do is fairly clear.

Again, as others have said, changing the feedback defeats the purpose of it...

But then this is a moral dilemma, so it's not a given that you actually want to do the right thing. I suggest you subtract the price you paid from the value of the potential replacement item. The resulting amount is the price you are considering allowing somebody to "buy you" for. Only you can decide whether:
1- you have a price and
2- whether the seller is meeting that price

As an occasional ebayer, I'm hoping you don't accept the offer and that you report the seller.

JezCooke wrote: »

Did you email the seller before leaving negative feedback? If not then the feedback is likely to be the first the seller knew that there was a problem. If this is the case then offering to replace the item for free sounds a fair and reasonable resolution. In that case updating the feedback to reflect the good customer service received sounds like a reasonable request to me (assuming of course that the replacement received is satisfactory!).

If you contacted them first and they refused to help until you left the feedback then that's a different story. Otherwise damaging their reputation without giving them a chance to resolve the issue first is unfair.

I think it depends too on what the seller said. If they said something like, "I'm really sorry, here's a replacement", that would be fine. If on the other hand, they said, "if you remove the negative feedback, we'll give you shiny things", that would clearly be less a case of decent customer service and more outright bribery.

So it seems that the question is whether the replacement is contingent on the amendment of the feedback, and my reading of the dilemma suggests that it is.

Did you contact the seller about the original goods before you added the feedback? Did you give them an opportunity to put things right first? If you did and they failed to put things right,then you are quite right to leave negative feedback. If they then contacted you again,offering to put things right if you change the feedback, that is clearly poor customer service and an attempt to bribe you into giving a positive review. Report them to eBay.
Having been both a buyer and a seller on eBay I know it can be a tricky situation . I was once given negative Feedback because I 'overcharged' postage,by 30p !! Given that the item in question was a brand new,unwrapped item that the person was getting at an absolute snip, £5 instead of proper price of around £50, I thought that was incredibly petty. However,I wouldn't have offered her the 30p back just to get her to change the feedack!