Why have so many Ebay Sellers got such high feedback?

cepheus

Why the high feedback ratings? Whenever I buy an electronic or complex product from somewhere I would guess that at least 50% of the time there is something wrong. Why is this never reflected in the ratings.

• do people accept any old craap?. Should buyers providing feedback be encouraged to be more rigourous and critical. No doubt it is in Ebays interest to discourage this!
• do people realize something is wrong only after they send the feedback? Perhaps for some products the feedback should be only admissible after sufficiently long period of time after purchase.
• do people not like spoiling a buyers good record?
• is their a bias in that only customers who receive reliable products tend to provide feedback
• are buyers frightened of retaliation? I understand Ebay changed the rules regarding buyer feedback for this reason. However, what happens if they are a seller as well.

I'm obtaining quotes from local double glazing companies at the moment (not Ebay) and find exactly the same problem on seemingly independent assessment sites comparing these companies. Always around 98% good. Surely this isn't the norm for double glazing?

hermum

You must have a lot of bad luck if you expect 50% of things you buy to have something wrong with them.
Is this within a very short period of time or over months?
I think that with the FB system often sellers are marked on how they deal with issues, if they give good CS, even if the initial transaction had something go wrong, if the seller was quick to rectify the situation then I would leave a positive.
If I was buying electronics on ebay if they went wrong & had been new then the actual seller isn't to blame, so again it would really be the CS that would get marked.

cepheus

hermum wrote: »

You must have a lot of bad luck if you expect 50% of things you buy to have something wrong with them.
Is this within a very short period of time or over months?
I think that with the FB system often sellers are marked on how they deal with issues, if they give good CS, even if the initial transaction had something go wrong, if the seller was quick to rectify the situation then I would leave a positive.
If I was buying electronics on ebay if they went wrong & had been new then the actual seller isn't to blame, so again it would really be the CS that would get marked.

Most of these took several months to emerge: for example

• both my hard disk video recorders (non Ebay) have moderate problems,
• branded DAB radio very suseptible to static,
• every cordless phone (Ebay) has had major problems (one was refurbished),
• every printer has had a major problem,
• camera very minor pixel problem,
• laptop USB ports occasionaly fail,
• cheap TV faultless,
• mobile phones generally reliable
• most clothes OK but some far more durable than others.

Is it fair on a near faultless manufacturer or retailer, to give top marks to other retailers selling cheap faulty products? Perhaps we need to distingish between the quality of product and the seller although the two can be connected if they are sourcing reject goods.

pitkin2020

or it could be the fact they are providing a good product within the delivery time they state.....shock horror. Out of 100 purchases on ebay I have had 1 problem, thats 1% no where near you imaginary 50%.

I would also suggest that if your having problems with 50% of your purchases that maybe you should look closer at yourself rather than the product or the seller as that is a ridiculously high figure, even 10% would be a high figure. Are you actually having faulty goods or are the goods to complex for you that you can't figure them so your happy to leave a seller a neg??

Crowqueen

If 50% of your purchases are going wrong then you need to reconsider what you buy and where you buy it.

I don't buy anything with moving parts, anything electronic s/h (for the reasons you state - I'd rather save up and buy a new item with a good guarantee), and am starting to scale back on most items except collectable books, ordinary paperbacks, and DVDs.

eBay is not the be-all and end-all of online commerce and you don't have to use it.

Most sellers are responsible, most buyers probably are happy with what they get.

To answer your specific points:

- I would imagine that people accept they bought it on eBay and that expectations are lower because the site's reputation is lower. Either that or they are genuinely happy. I know I don't buy electronics on eBay, for instance, but I wouldn't say that all electronics sellers are bent, just the ones I've had the misfortune to buy from, so I stopped buying from electronics sellers and normally go to Amazon or PC World for stuff like laptops, iPods etc. No use banging my head against a brick wall, even one that may have a soft spot.

- Sometimes, yes. I've done it myself. I don't know what the solution is, but I'm not sure that manipulating the feedback system is helpful. I think you may just be projecting your own experiences onto other sales. Again, the solution for you is not to buy those kind of things on eBay if you don't feel it's worth it. If other people are suitably unhappy, then they will do likewise and the seller will go out of business.

- Sometimes; other times the seller may bully or threaten them, sometimes they may feel it's their fault for buying on eBay or somehow being cheap and write it off - and then just not go to eBay next time.

- I think that eBay's feedback system works so well because buyers can receive feedback themselves - otherwise you might get fewer people leaving feedback and thus a starker picture. Since buyers can get feedback themselves, they may leave it for sellers out of all proportion to how "useful" it is for them. That's actually an argument for retaining buyer feedback, IMO.

- Not everyone knows the rules. The official Buyer and Seller Central fora are still full of buyers worrying about retaliation if they neg and sellers fulminating that they tried to leave a neg and couldn't, so really, yes, that might be true.

pitkin2020

cepheus wrote: »

Most of these took several months to emerge: for example both my hard disk video recorders (non Ebay) have moderate problems, every cordless phone (Ebay) has had major problems (one was refurbished), every printer has had a major problem, camera very minor pixel problem, Laptop USB ports occasionaly fail, cheap TV faultless, mobile phones, generally reliable, most clothes OK but some far more durable than others.

Is it fair on a faultless manufacturer or retailer, to give top marks to other retailers selling cheap faulty products?

Several months to emerge.....hardly selling you a faulty item straight out of the box. Thats a lot of fails, again are you sure your not the issue with these products for example every item you have mentioned there is subject to wear and tear, the TV not so much as it doesn't move (and you have said its faultless). All the other electrical items are items that can be dropped, knocked etc.

I certainly don't wait several months to leave a seller feedback. Once I have checked the item and it works as it should feedback is left. IF I have a problem with a NEW item within 6 months I will get in touch with the seller and give them an opportunity to sort it out.

cepheus

The 50% fault rate is typical of most of the products bought by people I know, it makes me wonder if other people know how to use what they buy!

I think fair and honest feedback system could be used as an efficient market mechanism for improving quality. If the buyer can't give higher marks for more reliable products then this represents a failure of the system, since their is little incentive for sellers to source reliable suppliers and avoid passing on secondhand as new.

All the same, it seems to me there needs to be a distinction between the quality of the product which is mainly the responsibility of the manufacturer, and the relatively simple job of the seller, which is mainly about delivering it in one peice on time and to price. I would guess the latter would be 95% OK on that criteria.

Then again if a product is faulty you take it back to the retailer first. If food is poisoned it is Tesco which gets most of the blame!

Crowqueen

cepheus wrote: »

I think the feedback system could be used as an efficient market mechanism. It seems to me there needs to be a distinction between the quality of the product which is mainly the responsibility of the manufacturer, and the relatively simple job of the seller, which is about delivering it in one peice on time and to price. I would guess the latter would be 95% on that criteria.

Then again if a product is faulty you take it back to the retailer first. Perhaps the retailer is partly to blame for purchasing then reselling less than reliable products.

There is, there is a star for Item Description, which you can always mark down to 1 even if the service was otherwise good. Using it would put the seller out of business because it is usually the star that has the highest site average. Too many low marks and the seller gets suspended or banned.

That's the whole point of the DSRs IMO and why I'm overall a supporter of them. Use them in the way they are intended to be used and you would get rid of the worst offenders.

Or it could simply be you're unlucky with electronics from eBay - but thankfully there are other places you can buy them instead.

soolin

I buy lots of stuff on ebay as I am sourcing business stuff for resale (i've mentioned this on a thread a while ago) so we are talking hundreds of transactions. Yet i have left 1 neg and 2 neutral in the past several months, everything else has been 100% fine. In fact I sent a message to a seller last week saying I had left feedback for turned out to have some slight damage (after I sold it, du'h) and they are sending me a replacement free of charge. My 3 non positives were all for seller issues, nothing to do with the goods.

I did leave a series of neuts and negs last year when I was buying lots of a different item from UK sellers but mainly as i was buying from new sellers trying to use the 99p stars for private sellers in categories with capped postage. Around a quarter of them asked for more money as I won at 99p and they wouldn't sell, or some tried to charge me more postage as the cap was insufficient. That however was nothing to do with quality of goods and all to do with dim sellers

rainbow_carnage

Cepheus, I think you have higher expectations than most people. If I buy a cheap piece of electronic equipment and it starts to develop problems after a few months, I wouldn't think of going back to the seller to complain. If I bought it new, I might complain to the manufacturer, or I might just buy another one and save myself the hassle. There's a reason these things are cheap.

On the other hand, if it was something expensive, I'd be upset. My DSLR developed a fault just after the 12-month warranty expired. I expected it to last longer than a year. The manufacturer refused to acknowledge that it was a common fault and wouldn't fix it for free. So I sold it on eBay (noting the fault) and bought another brand. Now, when someone asks me about DSLRs, I tell them not to buy Sony.

olias

50% problem rate??????????

Remind me to never get in a car with the OP, they are obviously the unluckiest person around!:p

I have bought hundreds of things on ebay and have only had 2 or 3 problems. Most people I know are the same.

Also, as has already been said, feedback is for how the transaction went, not what you thought of the product.


Edit: Taken from the ebay help pages - 'For each transaction, buyers and sellers can choose to rate each other by leaving Feedback'

Olias