Why have so many Ebay Sellers got such high feedback?

hermum

If the Feedback system was open for 6 months so that you could mark the seller down when the item stops working then they would be even more pointless than you claim them to be now.
As most people on ebay are the retailer & not the manufacturer I don't see why they should get bad FB because you bought a new item that broke after 6 months, unless they told you to hop it, not their fault, as their customer service had let you down.
A few years ago I bought a new fridge, washing machine & cooker, all integrated appliances by one manufacturer from the same store I bought a new kitchen from. All the appliances broke down just after 13 months after purchase. I will never buy appliances made by that manufacturer again but I will buy from the DIY shop as they had no control over whether the machines were built to last or not.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

The majority of issues tend to come from shopping on price, particularly with electrical items, at the end of the day, you get what you pay for and eBay shoppers tend to pay for the cheapest thing they find.

sequence

It sound to me like your expectations are too high for ebay.

I see ebay as generally cheap tat/throwaway junk and don't ever expect perfection (but it does happen!) .

If I want anything decent, I go to a proper retailer.

hermum

sequence wrote: »

It sound to me like your expectations are too high for ebay.

I see ebay as generally cheap tat/throwaway junk and don't ever expect perfection (but it does happen!) .

If I want anything decent, I go to a proper retailer.

I see ebay as decent stuff at a bargain price, I mainly buy items that I couldn't pay the high st price of.
I've only ever had a problem with 1 thing not as described that I can remember off the top of my head.
I guess it depends though what you're buying.

Hammyman

cepheus wrote: »

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.

Its because people like me sell decent quality items and offer a good service. In my entire time trading on Ebay as a business, out of the hundreds of laptops I've sold, I have only had three laptops go wrong in the 3 to 6 month warranty I offer - one terminal, another a hard drive failed and a third the optical drive went. On the last two, replacement drives were sent out in the post and the first, a refund given for the laptop plus the return postage cost when it was returned and tested.

If you are getting a 50% failure rate I can only assume you are what is known as a Jonah - a person cursed with such bad luck that they are destined to always get the faulty item.

cepheus

Hammyman wrote: »

I have only had three laptops go wrong in the 3 to 6 month warranty I offer .

You mean only 3 people returned them during this time?

I haven't returned my laptop for the USB problem, I can live with it and isn't worth the hastle. It is still a fault though.

pitkin2020

cepheus wrote: »

You mean only 3 people returned them during this time?

I haven't returned my laptop for the USB problem, I can live with it and isn't worth the hastle. It is still a fault though.

so your complaining about sellers but you aren't even giving them the opportunity to fix a problem and you want to leave a negative. My advice don't buy from ebay, I very much doubt they would miss your custom.....

cepheus

Perhaps I better explain the reason for the original question so you don't get all defensive.

I believe that an honest feedback system is a more efficient market mechanism to improve the quality of service and products than relying on basic market forces.

Efficient market force theory claims that customers will simply move to suppliers which are more efficient, reliable and cheaper, and they will prevail. However, no one customer buys a big enough sample of each to make an informed judgment, and small suppliers aren't well enough known to benefit from good or bad publicity anyway, so this second method without a centralized feedback assessment doesn't work very well.
Now I believe a universal centralized compulsory feedback system after 6 months might be useful providing customers could see precisely what the feedback rates relate to whether it is the reliability of the product, or after sales service for example.

I see all the positive feedbacks on Ebay and wonder why this appears to be far higher than my experience of electrical goods reliability generally and indeed anecdotal reports from other people. We have a few on here if you read.

Say if this feedback system was implemented, and everyone gave top marks from products you had to send back because they were faulty this system wouldn't allow us to tell the good from the bad. The inconvenience of sending things backwards and forwards is a problem in itself.

If someone was supplying reliable goods wouldn't they deserve a higher rating than someone who sold unreliable rubbish but was jolly nice about repairing it? The amazing thing here is what I suggest would benefit sellers like you if your products were as reliable as you claim. So please don't fire insults at me.

olias

You haven't even read my post have you?

Feedback is not about the product or how good it is. It is about the seller, and how they conduct their transactions.

Read ebay! It clearly tells you this.

Olias

Crowqueen

olias wrote: »

You haven't even read my post have you?

Feedback is not about the product or how good it is. It is about the seller, and how they conduct their transactions.

Read ebay! It clearly tells you this.

Olias

Well, to be honest, it might be if the seller sold me an item that went faulty. I once bought a bag of "postally used" stamps that turned out to be "cancelled to order" - which made a difference to their value as collectables - and so I scored the seller badly on Item Description (as a big stamp seller they should have known the difference and provided a much clearer photograph) but highly on communications, etc. because they responded well to my query.

Feedback is about the transaction, but that transaction includes the item. No point buying something and it's not fit for purpose or as described, even if the seller is polite and charming about it in other ways.