survey about feedback

soolin

On a different buying account (not the one I am having issues with ) I have been asked to do a survey about what I think of the feedback system. Basically they want to know whether I thought the system eay to understand.

Interestingly that account is primarily a selling one and I bought on it by accident so it looks as though they sent me the survey as I am an infrequent buyer

Crowqueen

I think if you can read, you can use it. Too many people patronise buyers by saying they need education - they don't. We know what's being done with our money; being ripped off is something that is keenly felt.

The issue about ease of use as a buyer is that if you leave stars first they reset themselves (particularly IAD) to 0 if you then leave a comment! Not a good idea; I've never left a 1 by mistake but I've certain left a 0 rating when I meant to leave a 5.

A change I would also make is make the neutral/negative warning message bigger. I would dim the screen and put a warning box up in the centre of the page for you to confirm - even if you only select it. At the moment if you press certain scroll buttons at the wrong time it is possible to accidentally tick the neutral/negative boxes, so that needs to be sorted. The message is not big enough to trouble many people. I could be wrong, but I find it a bit perfunctory for trying to prevent people making mistakes.

I would also put 'reasons for leaving lows' drop-down menus on all low score ratings; like if you go to leave a 1 or 2* rating for Item as Described. I wouldn't make it compulsory to fill out, but at least something visual would occur to reduce the possibility of mistakes.

In summary, the more visual you make the process, the fewer mistakes people would make.

Mindless_Clone

I got the same survey, probably because I recently sold something.

I do think some of the feedback questions are too subjective; I think if they want the feedback to be more accurate then they need to make them more direct questions. Things like Dispatch time, as has been said elsewhere, get mis-scored because many think it's delivery time and not dispatch. There are ways ebay could put things in place to extrapolate data to make this more accurate, while still offering realistic data about a seller's performance.

I also think, if you score someone less than 4, then there should be an additional comments box that the buyer can enter why they scored it that. This would be far more useful information to a seller than just some random number on a screen.

I know all that makes the feedback system rather more complicated and that might put some people off leaving it, but with everything else, people can chose to leave it or not and maybe it might encourage people only to leave feedback if they're going to make an effort instead of 5* across the board and "great thanks".

Crowqueen

I disagree. Any customer rating system is going to be subjective. People's opinions and perceptions matter a lot in online or offline retail and trying to make them objective will not actually mean much. Businesses have gone under based on bad publicity and reputation damage - so there should not be any insulation from this on eBay to protect poor sellers from annoyed buyers.

If eBay in general is seen as a place which protects poor sellers, it will kill its own reputation rather than theirs. As a seller who strives to work quickly and efficiently even on private sales, I don't want that - there is too much of that suspicion already - I avoid whole categories and I now think in terms of what I could possibly buy on eBay not what I want to avoid, and I don't want the situation to become even worse. This summer has been remarkably poor in terms of sales as it is. Time was when I'd happily pay the listing fee to upload something onto eBay. Now I can't be bothered. Reputation kills, and all you are going to do is move the poor ratings from the sellers who do eBay down to the whole site.

If people think dispatch = delivery that affects everyone who buys from everyone. Yet I get good dispatch stars because I send out within a day of purchase, and someone who dispatches within a week, or maybe two depending on the phase of the moon, will usually get poorer stars.

I don't think that aspect of it is not working.

I also don't think you would get fewer 5*s if you had your system. I think you would get more as people would be confused and wary of marking anything down. I think a feedback system should be honest - which means making it less daunting to mark down where a customer has a poor experience.

plumface

Crowqueen wrote: »

I disagree. Any customer rating system is going to be subjective. People's opinions and perceptions matter a lot in online or offline retail and trying to make them objective will not actually mean much. Businesses have gone under based on bad publicity and reputation damage - so there should not be any insulation from this on eBay to protect poor sellers from annoyed buyers.

But do you not think that eBay has let its 'annoyed' buyers attack good sellers,for any reason, because the buyer knows that sellers run scared of any dispute as eBay 'law' is stacked in the buyers favour?

If eBay in general is seen as a place which protects poor sellers, it will kill its own reputation rather than theirs. As a seller who strives to work quickly and efficiently even on private sales, I don't want that - there is too much of that suspicion already - I avoid whole categories and I now think in terms of what I could possibly buy on eBay not what I want to avoid, and I don't want the situation to become even worse. This summer has been remarkably poor in terms of sales as it is. Time was when I'd happily pay the listing fee to upload something onto eBay. Now I can't be bothered. Reputation kills, and all you are going to do is move the poor ratings from the sellers who do eBay down to the whole site.

If people think dispatch = delivery that affects everyone who buys from everyone. Yet I get good dispatch stars because I send out within a day of purchase, and someone who dispatches within a week, or maybe two depending on the phase of the moon, will usually get poorer stars.
You should be getting 5* not just 'good'.I am exactly the same,i dispatch sameday yet can STILL get marked down!

I don't think that aspect of it is not working.
I Do

I also don't think you would get fewer 5*s if you had your system. I think you would get more as people would be confused and wary of marking anything down. I think a feedback system should be honest - which means making it less daunting to mark down where a customer has a poor experience.

I agree with the 'less daunting' aspect,but buyers need to understand the very real consequences of their actions.

Mindless_Clone

I'm not disagreeing that feedback is subjective, but to rate a seller on something that is fundamentally flawed is unfair. It's flawed because the data they use is misunderstood by the people who do the rating. If there was some kind of guidance in place as to what warranted 5* etc. that would be something but, on the whole, there isn't, or what is there is not exactly readily available on the feedback page and you have to go looking for it.
So something like (for example):

3* - Item dispatched same/next day or earlier than seller stated.
2* - Item dispatched within timescales of seller's agreement.
1* - Item dispatched 1-3 days after seller agreement.


Because, really, with something like dispatch time it's either early, on time or late and it doens't really matter whether it's a day late or a week late, late is late. Some things just don't necessarily fit in a 5* rating system so why make it just to make the system look tidy?
If ebay had a system where a tracking number - when entered - automatically marked it as dispatched then any item sent recorded, SD or via courier/tracked service could have the data collected automatically. Obviously that does mean things sent just standard RM with no tracking can't be scored this way... and it's open to abuse if the seller enters random string of tracking numbers but, one would expect the seller might spot that and take issue in the feedback!
Realistically, the whole feedback system is so open to abuse and whatever ebay do someone will find a way to manipulate it to their own ends.
Again, it it were combined with a "did the item arrive within the expected timescales?" then it would soon become very clear who are the late dispatchers and who are the ones who doing everything they can to keep the customer happy.

Likewise with the P&P. I know I've seen people here say that buyers don't factor in packaging and other costs, but I've seen on ebay itself that it says you should take these things into account.

"Remember that sellers may charge for the cost of the actual packaging materials, along with a reasonable dispatch fee to cover the seller's time and direct costs associated with postage"
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/feedback/detailed-seller-ratings.html

But I think it's pretty clear from what people have said on here and elsewhere that buyers don't generally, take that into account and expect to pay just the postage fees. This is notwithstanding that someone can easily get around it by just making it all free P&P (and thus avoid being marked down for shoddy packaging which, IMO, is as important as how cheap it is to ship).

I think it's also worth bearing in mind that the whole DSRs system is hugely offputting to private sellers - while it may be very helpful for a businesses and very helpful when buying off a business, I'm not sure it's really quite the right forum for the ordinary Joe like me who sells the odd thing. You can't compare a 4.8 for (e.g.) dispatch from a private seller who only sells about a dozen things a year, to a 4.8 from a business seller who does 100 a week. One mark down in 12 transactions because the buyer misunderstood dispatch for delivery times and it took a bit longer to get there and that's you're 4.8. Whereas in 5200 transactions, that's a significant portion unhappy with delivery and indicates more of a problem.

I would also say, as a buyer, the whole 5* thing is pretty meaningless. I would rather see a percentage of times the item arrived within timescales, was dispatched on time, P&P was rated good/excellent or above, than some rating that really has not much of a frame of reference because most buyers don't really know how to apply the ratings correctly.

Crowqueen

This is precisely why I think bad sellers pollute the eBay experience for the rest of us and should be dealt with harshly.

http://community.ebay.co.uk/topic/Buyer-Central/Returned-Item-Described/18000468614?#msg18006982762

That's one more buyer who will go straight to dispute, one more buyer put off buying on eBay at all, one more buyer who will go and spend their money elsewhere. One less buyer for my books, Soo's items, your items, other people's items.

Sorry - I think the system works. If sellers are held accountable for their actions properly - and they are given a chance to work things out, to accumulate poor feedback before being booted - then the rest of us can keep working hard to please buyers and hopefully maintain high enough standards. The people that don't give a monkey's just spoil eBay for the rest of us and if eBay keep standards high that is a good thing in the long run.

Mindless_Clone

Crowqueen wrote: »

This is precisely why I think bad sellers pollute the eBay experience for the rest of us and should be dealt with harshly.

http://community.ebay.co.uk/topic/Buyer-Central/Returned-Item-Described/18000468614?#msg18006982762

Yes, agree with that. However, people can do "just enough" to not get booted or to keep themselves afloat. I have a dispute with a seller right now; he's actively getting customers by wording his listings in a way to attract people (making promises he clearly can't keep). It's going to end up with me forcing the issue through the dispute system, meanwhile he's deprived another ebayer of business and put me off using ebay to buy things. There was a thread on here the other day about a seller who was doing dodgy stuff but disguising it inside lots of cheap deals that he was getting good feedback for. Yes, shoddy sellers need to be dealt with, but the feedback system does not always work effectively to highlight them.