Ebay Annoyance

Hermia

Lady_S wrote:

It isn't tit for tat, and if they are unhappy I will deal with it directly.

It's not about buyers being unhappy, it's about some of them being dishonest. My friend sold some DVDs to a lady who paid via paypal. My friend of course sent them off straight away. A week later the lady started a chargeback for some daft reason which stunned my friend as the buyer had not contacted her saying there was anything wrong. A while later the DVDs were returned to her because the buyer had not collected them from the sorting office. My friend got pretty angry at this point and the buyer eventually admitted that her brother had managed to get a cheaper set of DVDs at a market a couple of days after she won the auction. Luckily they did manage to sort this out (my friend got her postage back) as the buyer was irresponsible and stupid rather than a con artist. But, can you imagine what would have happened if my friend had left a positive straight away? Other sellers would have read the feedback and thought, "oooh, this is a nice honest buyer to deal with"!

I don't mind giving feedback first as a buyer because you have the goods in your hand and the seller probably isn't going to come to your house and steal them back!

baffcat

I send this message as part of my paypal advice note.

Hi. Congratulations on winning this/these auction/s. If you're happy with everything, from communication through delivery, to the goods themselves, please leave feedback to confirm, and I'll do the same by return. If not, please contact me so that any problems can be sorted out. Regards. Baff

I started doing this after getting my ONLY neg from a buyer who didn't bother contacting me, and to whom I had posted +ve feedback immediately after his payment.

I think this is a polite way of trying to ensure that the buyer is happy and won't leave a neg without contacting me first. Since I've added this to my advice notes, I've had one neutral feedback and over 1500 +ve. There have been a (very) few occasions where I've had messages making (sometimes) valid points, and those times I've been able to sort out the problem to both our satisfaction, often resulting in glowing +ve feedback.

Baff

PS. As a buyer, I leave feedback immediatelly after receipt and inspection of the item, unless it's faulty, in which case I ALWAYS message the seller to give them the opportunity to sort it out.

As a seller, I will always send reminders after 5 and 10 days of no contact or payment, again to give the buyer the opportunity to pull his finger out, or just to make him aware there's been a problem. The 10 day reminder, if no response has been forthcoming from the 5 day, will also point out that I always use ebay's NPB scheme in cases of non-completion of the transaction.