does '100% feedback seller' make you a target for negs?

brettcta

I've been looking up competitors recently and have seen a number of them with '100% feedback trusted seller' slapped all over their pages, only to look and see most of them no longer actually on 100% due to negs.

my question is - do you think this sort of 'boasting' makes you a magnet (or target) for people looking for an excuse to leave a neg and ruin that 100%?

i think it does. we all know what internet trolling is like and i can only imagine that giving it large about having 100% feedback will only serve to get you sorry !!! troll'd.

that's just my opinion though.

SneaksyWhippet

I wouldn't have thought it would be necessary to make that claim, so don't think it would be worth the risk.

If a buyer is concerned about seller feedback, they will look themselves and see if it is 100%.

If a buyer isn't bothered enough to check feedback, the "100%" claim probably wouldn't entice them any more anyway.

I can see that it could make you a victim for negatives; almost like you are asking for trouble!

porto_bello

I've had trouble with one or two buying opportunists in the past, who were trying to keep the item and the payment - essentially utilising the (only very slightly) veiled threat of "agree to my demands or I'll neg you and you'll lose your 100% feedback".

I've found that buyers who routinely get up to these kind of scams set their own feedback to 'private', to prevent future sellers seeing their trail of destruction and feedback abuse. Personally, whenever I see a negative left by a buyer using 'private feedback' against a seller, I tend to ignore it, unless the seller's response suggests there is some truth in it.

Unfortunately eBay allows buyers to hide their own feedback, whilst they move from seller to seller, throwing grenades into sellers' feedback - hardly a level playing field! Perhaps if eBay prevented the ability of buyers with 'private feedback' from publicly and anonymously damaging the reputations of sellers, there would be one less scam to worry about?

Crowqueen

Unfortunately eBay allows buyers to hide their own feedback, whilst they move from seller to seller, throwing grenades into sellers' feedback - hardly a level playing field! Perhaps if eBay prevented the ability of buyers with 'private feedback' from publicly and anonymously damaging the reputations of sellers, there would be one less scam to worry about?

Herein lies the absurdity of buyer feedback - name one place elsewhere, online or offline, where buyers have visible feedback. Essentially every other major ecommerce site has buyers with private feedback (the only place retaining buyer feedback of any 'worth' are the moribund eBay clones), so I doubt very much that it really accounts for any sort of psychological behaviour at all, other than what you would face with anyone trying to scam you in any kind of transaction.

Selling is not a level-playing field at all - you might as well accept that as it is not going to get any better; in fact, it may get worse as consumer law gets tighter next year.

I was actually about to wade in on the OP's side - I had an earful from the only person I have ever negged as a buyer for ruining their 100%. The riposte was that if they had answered my emails, paid attention when I opened a dispute and escalated it to a claim, it might well have been solved without resorting to a negative. But since their primary concern was not for me as a peed-off buyer kept waiting two weeks for a response about where the item was, but for their own feedback, I think the people who are precious of their feedback are actually the ones to avoid as a buyer because they are the people who don't actually realise their customers are human beings paying them for something they have to then, actually, y'know, send.

porto_bello

Crowqueen, just to clarify, I was not referring to 'buyer feedback'. I was referring to 'seller feedback' - specifically the ability to see the feedback left for previous sellers, by a particular buyer.

The thrust of my point is that just occasionally, I get the feeling that a particular buyer is going to be trouble. Having an ability to see the feedback they have left for previous sellers allows me to check whether it's just a direct manner (English may not be their first language) or whether they do indeed have a track record of 'issues'.

Not for the first time, just a few weeks ago, I was able to block a potential buyer, who out of the last 8 feedbacks, had left 4 negatives, 3 neutrals and just 1 positive! The replies from the sellers indicated a running theme - that this was a chancer, who issued demands after an auction. If the seller didn't 'surrender', they get a neg. [And in at least one case, the seller surrendered and they still got a neg].

I'm a private seller, so my number of sales transactions isn't that great. Even so, about once every 2/3 years, a serial 'chancer' slips through the net: a buyer who from an early stage, will issue demands under threat of destroying my 100% feedback. [One was so blatantly abusing feedback that eBay removed their comment]. I know I wasn't the only unlucky one, because the 'feedback left for others' showed a trail of destruction going back years.

The other point was that some buyers are utilsing 'private' feedback, to enable such trails of feedback destruction to be hidden. Again, in the past, I got the impression that a potential buyer was going to be difficult, but because their feedback was private, I couldn't see their feedback history.

However, as their eBay ID was unusual, I Googled it. And sure enough, there were numerous links to eBay feedback - usually both confrontational and negative... this wasn't a genuine buyer, but a scammer, misusing feedback to (covertly) obtain free goods.

Blackjack_Davy

I don't understand why people get so precious about their 100% +ve fb, as a buyer I'll happily buy from someone with 99% +ve and I probably won't even bother to check their history as there is always going to be the odd troublemaker, 98% I'd check their history but probably still buy, anything less than that I'd have to think about it.

porto_bello wrote: »

I've had trouble with one or two buying opportunists in the past, who were trying to keep the item and the payment - essentially utilising the (only very slightly) veiled threat of "agree to my demands or I'll neg you and you'll lose your 100% feedback".

I've found that buyers who routinely get up to these kind of scams set their own feedback to 'private', to prevent future sellers seeing their trail of destruction and feedback abuse. Personally, whenever I see a negative left by a buyer using 'private feedback' against a seller, I tend to ignore it, unless the seller's response suggests there is some truth in it.

Unfortunately eBay allows buyers to hide their own feedback, whilst they move from seller to seller, throwing grenades into sellers' feedback - hardly a level playing field! Perhaps if eBay prevented the ability of buyers with 'private feedback' from publicly and anonymously damaging the reputations of sellers, there would be one less scam to worry about?

I've had one troublemaker who tried to get money out of me by saying the postage paid was slighty less than what I had on the listing and was basically trying to get me to refund him the cost - he had private feedback but you could still see whole string of negs (this was back in the day when you could still leave negs for buyers, it's harder now) so presumably I wasn't the first person he'd tried this on with - I basically ignored him, publish and be damned I thought - anyway he left the predicted neg fb and some very rude words as well, which I promptly reported to eBay who removed them so I was back to 100% +ve again. Silly ar.se.

londonTiger

ebay sellers have it tough, ir must be horrible running a business on there. high fees from ebay and paypal coupled with a zero barriers to entry competitive system where anyone can set up shop.

i bought a iphone to cassete adapter from an ebay seller for £1.39, halfords would easily charge £12 for it.

I was thinking how does this ebay seller make money after ebay, paypal and RM take their share (it was free p&p), lets not forget the freight cost and unit cost of the item.

Its the feedback system that keeps ebay sellers on their toes at all times, over delivering and offering ridiculously high level customer service. Almost to a fault. It must be hard making a healthy profit as an ebay seller

kevinyork

londonTiger wrote: »

ebay sellers have it tough, ir must be horrible running a business on there. high fees from ebay and paypal coupled with a zero barriers to entry competitive system where anyone can set up shop.

i bought a iphone to cassete adapter from an ebay seller for £1.39, halfords would easily charge £12 for it.

I was thinking how does this ebay seller make money after ebay, paypal and RM take their share (it was free p&p), lets not forget the freight cost and unit cost of the item.

Its the feedback system that keeps ebay sellers on their toes at all times, over delivering and offering ridiculously high level customer service. Almost to a fault. It must be hard making a healthy profit as an ebay seller

Very well said. It isnt easy. People want the cheapest possible price for something delivered yesterday. It is hard to compete since as you say anyone can set up shop. With VAT at 20% it is very difficult to price yourself competetively against none VAT registered sellers. Customers have no idea how low margins have to be in order to have a business selling on ebay.

After 7 years selling online, it is getting harder all the time and customers expectations have risen dramatically.

Oliver14

brettcta wrote: »

I've been looking up competitors recently and have seen a number of them with '100% feedback trusted seller' slapped all over their pages, only to look and see most of them no longer actually on 100% due to negs.

my question is - do you think this sort of 'boasting' makes you a magnet (or target) for people looking for an excuse to leave a neg and ruin that 100%?

i think it does. we all know what internet trolling is like and i can only imagine that giving it large about having 100% feedback will only serve to get you sorry !!! troll'd.

that's just my opinion though.

I find that the ones claiming to be 100% positive FB and a trusted seller are normally the ones with dodgy DSRs and are actually the opposite of what they claim

paddyrg

I don't expect someone with 2000 sales to have 100% feedback - you can't please everybody the whole time. In fact if I did see 100% for someone with so many sales, I would be a bit suspicious!

Crowqueen

Blackjack_Davy wrote: »

I don't understand why people get so precious about their 100% +ve fb, as a buyer I'll happily buy from someone with 99% +ve and I probably won't even bother to check their history as there is always going to be the odd troublemaker, 98% I'd check their history but probably still buy, anything less than that I'd have to think about it.



I've had one troublemaker who tried to get money out of me by saying the postage paid was slighty less than what I had on the listing and was basically trying to get me to refund him the cost - he had private feedback but you could still see whole string of negs (this was back in the day when you could still leave negs for buyers, it's harder now) so presumably I wasn't the first person he'd tried this on with - I basically ignored him, publish and be damned I thought - anyway he left the predicted neg fb and some very rude words as well, which I promptly reported to eBay who removed them so I was back to 100% +ve again. Silly ar.se.

Yes, but my point was at no point elsewhere can you ever see that sort of statistics for buyers, you have to trust each individual on the merits of the transaction.

Where else do you get the opportunity to neg buyers - or even to see their feedback?

Regardless of what people want, buyer feedback cannot really act as a system of references properly - because it doesn't happen like that in the real world. Either you trust people to be mostly honest, or you take the risk that they aren't all going to be pleasant, or you stop selling online or even offline.

There's little point to buyer feedback until sellers start choosing who buys from them, and until in the real world you carry round a booklet of references. Until then, selling online involves quite a bit of trust - if you don't trust your customers to behave, then don't sell. If you do, you have to accept that buyers can no longer get negs, and they can set their feedback to private, and that this is standard practice everywhere.

Also, if you trust your buyers properly, then they might just trust you too. Which is generally a good thing all round.