Problem With Seller Who Leaves Unfair Feedback

greensea27

Hi Folks

Grateful for your thoughts on an eBay seller who leaves unfair feedback. Basically, this seller is a Power Seller with a feedback rating of 15,454+, who sells small electrical items (mobile phone charges etc). Most of his transactions go well, but when they don't, and buyers complain, he leaves them unfair, and often libellous, feedback. This month he has received 3549 positives, but 66 negatives and 37 neutrals.

My particular story is as follows:

I bid and paid for (by PayPal) a mobile phone charger. The seller sent the wrong charger, and when I advised them of this, they requested I return it, at my expense, for a replacement (and, I assumed, a refund of my p&p costs). I therefore posted it back to the address the seller provided me with, at a cost of 75p, and then heard nothing further. The seller didn't respond to emails, and so, after two weeks, I lodged a claim against the seller with PayPal for the refund of my payment, and the 75p for additional p&p. The seller refunded my original payment the following day (but not the extra p&p) and PayPal then said the dispute was closed. I therefore left negative feedback, saying they still owed me money, and was shocked to see that they left negative feedback in return, claiming I was a trouble maker! I've been trading on eBay for 7 years, have a rating of 670, and this was only the third negative rating I've ever received (the other two were from many, many years ago). This seller appears to make a habit of leaving negative feedback for others when he/she is left negative feedback, which always appears to be for poor/bad service. Some other buyers who left negative feedback have even been accused of using fraud/bogus credit cards to pay for items. The feedback I was left by this buyer is inappropriate and unwarranted - they still owe me money!

I have three times reported this seller to eBay under their "unfair feedback" policy, and have had no response, other than their usual survey form, asking how well they responded to my query (I said that they hadn't!)

This sellers current feedback shows a rating of 98.8% and 66 negatives in the past month. Whilst I can (reluctantly) take the hit, because 1 negative feedback on 670 only brings me down to 99.6%, some new buyers with only 9feedbacks and one negative from this clown get knocked down to 88.9%, which might jeopardise other sellers being prepared to deal with them.

Here are a some recent examples of feedback left for this buyer (and they're not all from newbies):

Stopped working after 14 days ! 7 days exchange policy as per listing !!!!
Buyer parkermj13 ( 9 ) 01-Jun-06 21:01 9718609409

to which the seller responded:

TROUBLE MAKER! SELLERS BEWARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Seller e_cell ( 15452) 01-Jun-06 22:16 9718609409

and another

good price and fast delivery but used it twice and it stopped working
Buyer nellydean0 ( 7 ) 01-Jun-06 20:58 5881722338

with the seller's response again:

TROUBLE MAKER! SELLERS BEWARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Seller e_cell ( 15452) 01-Jun-06 22:17 5881722338

and another

Returned item. Still haven't had a refund after 4 weeks. Useless!!
Buyer charlie3160 ( 79) 01-Jun-06 17:29 9715110144

and again the seller's standard respose:

TROUBLE MAKER! SELLERS BEWARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Seller e_cell ( 15452) 01-Jun-06 17:38 9715110144

and here's an example of this seller's even more libellous feedback. This was left:

Item does not work. Bad after sales service. Overcharges on post. £3.99 for 48p
Buyer coolsatdude ( 155) 12-May-06 21:34 9707295698

and this is the seller's response:

TRIED TO PAY WITH STOLEN CARD! THIEF AND CONMAN! BEWARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Seller e_cell ( 15454) 12-May-06 22:04 9707295698

as you can probably guess from this email, this seller has made me very, very angry!:mad:

He may be a Power Seller, but how can he treat his customers so shabbily and get away with it? And why won't eBay do something about it? The cynic in me says it's because he's putting loadsa money their way for listing & success fees, but surely they have some responsibility for ensuring he's not ripping people off?

Grateful for any thoughts on what can be done about this seller.

Thanks for taking the time to read this rant

greensea27

soolin

Unfortunately there is very little you can do. You did the right thing by leaving neg feedback to warn future buyers but paid the penalty by getting a neg back. Even the neg you left may not stop him from selling, his negs didn't stop you after all.

Once his feedback drops below 98% (is it 98% ...anyone?) he will lose his powerseller rating though.

Also, it is worth noting that you may have been lucky in that if you returned the charger by regular post and he claimed not to have received it and you did a paypal chargeback you would have lost *all* your money.

Unfortunately these sellers will always be around, negative feedback in itself is not a problem, but if there is quite a bit it is worth checking before bidding to see how a seller reacts. I personally don't like sellers who leave retaliatory negs automatically.

As for feedback removal, you might be able to persuade him to do a mutual withdrawal, or if the feedback he left for you is lebellous then ebay will remove it, just calling you a trouble maker though is unlikely to be removed unfortunately.

Soo

soolin

He may be a Power Seller, but how can he treat his customers so shabbily and get away with it? And why won't eBay do something about it? The cynic in me says it's because he's putting loadsa money their way for listing & success fees, but surely they have some responsibility for ensuring he's not ripping people off?

Sorry I would also just add that I think ebay would argue that they do something as they allow buyers to see the feedback of sellers before they bid, and the tutorial for new bidders suggests that this should be considered to check the reputation before bidding. Sellers rarely get removed purely because their feedback is their reputation and once they start picking up too many negs most people will stop buying anyway which effectively removes them from ebay.

Soo

missile

Oh the joys of eBay.

If you check eBay terms you will see he is not obliged to refund your postage. You were being unreasonable and deserve a negative feedback. Get real, 75P is nothing. If you had bought the item from a mobile phone shop, would you expect them to re-imburse your bus fare?

I bought an item for my Motorcycle and power seller supplied wrong item. I sent it back and he refunded me. I put a possitive comment "seller supplied wrong item, but refunded promptly when I sent it back" Thus informing others but at the same time avoiding him giving me a negative strike on my 100% feedback score. I did not expect him to refund my £4.00 postage.

greensea27

Thanks Soo

If anyone want's to see the extent of this clown's neagtive feeback, it can be seen here:

http://www.toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs?User=e_cell&Dirn=Received+by

with his ill-considered responses here:

http://www.toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs?User=e_cell&Dirn=Left+by

and yes, it is 98% when, apparently, eBay withdraw a seller's Power Seller status.

greensea27

newleaf

For what it's worth, I believe spiteful, retaliatory feedback from an unreliable e-bayer always stands out as being exactly that. It would not have persuaded me to buy from him in the first place.

oldMcDonald

What on earth possessed you to buy from this seller in the first place?

I think that there is probably nothing that you can do this time other than learn from your mistake. Take this warning you are giving to others regarding this awful seller as a lesson to yourself about checking feedback and really thinking before buying from such a seller.

shelly

*Most* e-bayers will realise he just leaves retaliatory negs because he leaves only 2 differently worded negs for everyone. IMO if you leave someone a neg it is specific to that person so anyone can see with him its all retaliatory and made up.

soolin

greensea27 wrote:

Thanks Soo

If anyone want's to see the extent of this clown's neagtive feeback, it can be seen here:

http://www.toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs?User=e_cell&Dirn=Received+by

with his ill-considered responses here:

http://www.toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs?User=e_cell&Dirn=Left+by

and yes, it is 98% when, apparently, eBay withdraw a seller's Power Seller status.

greensea27

At this precise moment the seller is showing 98.8% so on his number of sales he is nowhere near losing his power seller status. I have managed to find it on the ebay help pages (is it just me or is ebay help not very helpful?). and it says:
PowerSellers are eBay top sellers who have sustained a consistent high volume of monthly sales and who have a high level of feedback (98% positive or better).

http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/tp/know-seller-ov.html

In reality though it is a bit late now to worry about previous feedback, you should do that before you bid.

Soo

dodger65

missile wrote:

Oh the joys of eBay.

If you check eBay terms you will see he is not obliged to refund your postage. You were being unreasonable and deserve a negative feedback. Get real, 75P is nothing. If you had bought the item from a mobile phone shop, would you expect them to re-imburse your bus fare?

I bought an item for my Motorcycle and power seller supplied wrong item. I sent it back and he refunded me. I put a possitive comment "seller supplied wrong item, but refunded promptly when I sent it back" Thus informing others but at the same time avoiding him giving me a negative strike on my 100% feedback score. I did not expect him to refund my £4.00 postage.

So if I win and pay for an man's Armani overcoat and the seller sends me a womens fur coat I should send it back shoulder the postage costs and be happy about it ???

missile

dodger65 wrote:

So if I win and pay for an man's Armani overcoat and the seller sends me a womens fur coat I should send it back shoulder the postage costs and be happy about it ???

No of course not, Greensea has every right to be annoyed that the charger did not work, as I was when I got the wrong bit for my bike. My point is that he is not obliged to refund buyers postage and it is unreasonable to expect that he would. Is it reall worth making such a fuss over 75P?

The seller may well be a chancer, but in this particular case I am sure it was a genuine error. He refunded and in this particular case did not deserve the negative feedback. If you look at item 9722090850 you will see gordon3800 had a similar problem and left neutral feedback, which IMHO is more appropriate.