Ebay changes killing the sellers!!!!!!!!

[blueline]

Just wondering how many other ebay sellers have been affected by the recent Feedback changes that were implemented a few weeks ago. For those who are not aware, the main change is that Sellers can no longer leave a Negative or a Neutral for Buyers. However, Buyers still have the three options available when posting feedback Positive, Negative or Neutral.

I have well over 8,000 positives and last week, I received my first 2 Negs in well over 3 years. My rating was at 99.9% and is now just over 99.0%. This new Dashboard shows me at well under par in 2 of the 4 categories, basically labelling me as a terrible seller who provides sub-par customer service. The Negs were from 2 newbies who did not pay within my specified time frame, ignored all correspondance from me, waited until I relisted the item, then paid out of the blue. This after they were told I was relisting the item and any payments would be returned. So one guy basically called me a crook, a thief, a liar, a cheat and I can't do anything about it. The ebay puppets sent back a form letter stating the Neg cannot be removed as it is within the FB guidelines.

So now, we sellers are at the mercy of the buyers. They can bid, win an item, not pay and we cannot leave a Neg to warn other sellers of potential problems with this person. Yet they can leave us Negs full of lies about how they paid, how we are crooks, stole their money,etc.

I have been running 2 sites for several years and am only using 1 now. I closed down my ebay store and will not be listing much on my second site. People are leaving every day, closing up shop and heading for other sites.

The next change that is supposedly coming in July - ebay will be taking a cut out of our shipping costs. Ebay used to be a good place, it sure kept me going through some tough times. However, it is time to move on because they are driving us away.

 

[anonemouse]

I agree completely....

I used to do a fair bit of business on ebay, mostly selling but some buying as well. In the end, it was too much BS for me.

So, I use CL now. It's also a pain, since everything has to be done in person but at least you end up with cash. I haven't had anyone complain about anything I've sold on CL.

On ebay, I got the feeling a couple of times that people regretted how much they paid for items. Whether they got caught up in the bidding, or overvalued it, or didn't do their research or whatever, they ended up paying more than it was really worth. They're the ones that bitch and moan later, in my experience.

CL is also free, which is always a bonus.

Ebay is going to price themselves out of competition. Someone should start up a new low-budget auction site.

 

[forcebwu]

What's the other site you are selling now blueline?

 

[blueline]

So, I use CL now. It's also a pain, since everything has to be done in person but at least you end up with cash. I haven't had anyone complain about anything I've sold on CL.

So you have had success going the CL route? I have spent the last few days looking at various sites, trying to decide where to set up shop. I prefer the auction style of selling, however, I am not opposed to trying CL or Kiiji, etc. I have listed a few items on each in the past, but with no luck.

I read that a lot of ebayers have gone to OLA OnlineAuctions.com, however, when I checked it out, I see thousands of items with zero bids on them. So I am at a loss right now as to where to go.

Haven't really tried Amazon, maybe I will look at it.

If you or anyone else can recommend other sites, please feel free to post them.

 

[vulcan99]

I feel your pain, Blueline.

That being said, such measures would not have been taken if sellers hadn't been holding feedback hostage for so long. I can't count how many times I wouldn't get feedback until I left it first. That being said, once payment has been made, the buyer has fulfilled his obligation and should receive PFB accordingly. This wasn't happening, hence the changes.

 

[blueline]

I feel your pain, Blueline.

That being said, such measures would not have been taken if sellers hadn't been holding feedback hostage for so long. I can't count how many times I wouldn't get feedback until I left it first. That being said, once payment has been made, the buyer has fulfilled his obligation and should receive PFB accordingly. This wasn't happening, hence the changes.

While that is the argument of many buyers, I don't see it entirely that way. For me, a positive transaction isn't all about getting paid quickly. It has to take into account the whole process. Quick payments, good communication, friendly buyers who don't turn on you after you leave them good feedback. I got fed up in the early years with buyers leaving all kinds of crap, negs, etc., instead of contacting me first so that I could correct the situation.

If an item didn't arrive in a timely manner, ask me before leaving a Neg that I am a slow shipper. I ship within 48 hours and I post that on my listings. I also do not deliver the mail so once it leaves my hands, I have no control over it. Many buyers cannot understand that and leave FB accordingly to reflect poorly on the seller.

Same as if they receive an item and it is damaged or not quite the same as described. If I am at fault, I will make it right - send something else, offer a refund, etc. By leaving a negative, it makes me look bad, like I didn't do my best to correct a problem. Had the person contacted me first, all would have been fine.

Another one that irritates the shit out of me is shipping costs. I clearly state my costs as S&H which covers postage, Canada Post sur charges and fuel charges, GST, where applicable plus packaging materials. A person sees the cost on my listing, bids, wins, receives the package, sees the postage on the package, then complains shipping is too high. Here comes a neg or a neutral or a positive along with the .... good deal, but shipping excessive.

So that is why I stopped leaving feedback first. It is about how the entire process goes. If you end up being a jerk, accusing me of being a crook, making up lies, to me thats not a positve experience.

This new system severely handicaps us sellers now because we can't tell if a buyer is good or bad. All we see now are positves, 100% ratings. How do we know this person doesnt have several outstanding NPB disputes? It sucks.

Since this change took place, I have had more buyers ignore all communication from me, payments are coming in much later than ever before, all because some people do not give a shit. They have nothing to fear now. If we dare to ask them where their money is, we get threatened with a Neg, feedback extortion it is now being called.

For the most part, I have had a very positive and hassle-free experience on ebay for nearly 10 years. In the last month, it has changed considerably and is no longer fun.

 

[tboy]

.....

On ebay, I got the feeling a couple of times that people regretted how much they paid for items. Whether they got caught up in the bidding, or overvalued it, or didn't do their research or whatever, they ended up paying more than it was really worth. They're the ones that bitch and moan later, in my experience.

....

Yes, I think many get caught up in the "I win" process but that is what auctions are all about. I went to one live auction and it was for a home center that had gone out of business. They were selling off everything including all the power tools.

So we finally made it around to the power tool aisle and up for bid was a dewalt 18 v 4 pak. So the auctioneer explains that they have 20 items in the lot and when you bid, you bid on one, and if you win, you can take as many as you want at that price. So the bidding starts at $100.00 and soon goes above the regular selling price. The guy wins, the auctioneer asks him how many do you want? He says, Uhhh ONE.

Up for auction is a dewalt 4 pak 18 volt kit, the bidding gpes for $5.00 less than the previous one, auctioneer asks the winner "how many do you want" ummm one. Up for auciton is a dewalt....

SO I work my way around to the idiots that were bidding and say: there's 4 people bidding, DON"T bid, let the first guy have it, then you buy the next one...what? huh DUH? SO the four ended up buying 4 kits for over the retail price THEN the auctioneer moves on to the next item. I said "what about the other 16 items? He said, we don't have time, they'll be sold off with whatever's left at the end of the two days in bulk....Fucking idiots.

As for ebay, I also hate that bidder's IDs are hidden now so you can't see if they are phantom bidders or not. I know one time I saw a mastercraft multi-tool kit going for $22.00 so I wrote to the high bidder (who lived in toronto) and told him the exact same set was on sale at CTC for $8.00. ANother time I saw a guy bidding on a broken plasma TV. I warned him that it costs about $7K to repair and he was the high bidder and bought it (paperweight) for $500.00. DOH.

 

[ig-88]

I used Amazon to sell some old books.

I didn't pay anything, except for a commission to Amazon, only if someone bought the book.

There is a feedback system on there, but I didn't get any negative feedback. Granted, I only sold a few items, and I would imagine that the more transactions you do, the more people you deal with, and the greater chance that you're going to run into jerks, or just plain screw up.

 

[alexmst]

I've been on Ebay for 10 years and have hundreds of postive feedback (as a buyer, not a seller) and never got a negative. I think the old system as it was in the 1990's was better (for me).

The problem I saw with the seller feedback option was:

A) if a buyer left a negative, a seller would almost always retaliate and leave a counter-negative. Thus, buyers would not want to leave negatives as it would mean they would get one as well.

This didn't happen with me mainly because I was lucky and never had to leave a negative. Once I recieved a DOA product, but rather than leave a negative I e-mailed the seller and explained the problem, and he said he found tyhe item in his deceased uncle's closet under a pile of old clothes and never tested it and just thought it was EX+ and worked. Ok...if the uncle had it dumped on the floor of his closte under junk, that might be an indication.... ha ha. Anyway, he refunded my money and neither of us left feedback. Most sellers want to avoid neg feedback and will happily e-mail and sort out problems.

Another example: I bought concert tickets as high bidder. Seller didn't e-mail me after I pay pal-ed payment. I e-mailed them - no response. I e-mailed agian each day for 3 days. Some people would rush to leave a negative, but I waited. Finally I get an e-mail from her saying "um, do you still want the tickets? I haven't heard from you or been paid." I reply and say I've sent multiple messages and payment, and give her the times and dates I sent them. She e-mails back and says "Oh - sorry. My husband was on the computer at those times and he put the messages and Paypal message in the junk mail folder as he thought they were spam". So I got the tickets xpress post right away. Some buyers are too quick off the mark to leave negatives. Of course sometimes a bulky item sent ground mail from the U.S. can take 3 weeks to arrive...but again that isn't the seller's fault.

The thing I liked best about the old Ebay in the 1990's was the ability buyers had to look at the watch list of any other buyer if they knew that buyer's User ID. Often the same buyers would bid on the items I wanted. Bu clicking on their name, I could go to their watch list, which often was full of items I wanted to buy...so I'd click on those itmes and add them to my watch list as well. This saved me a lot of time surfing Ebay. Ebay dropped this years ago, I guess for privacy reasons...click on co-workers name and see all the porn he/she bids on...that sort of thing. I clicked on a co-workers ID once for fun and saw he was bidding on an inflatable sex doll.

So yeah, the new ebay is less good for sellers, I agree. Still a good site for buyers, but site works best when people relax and take it easy - leaving negatives is a last resort.

 

[anonemouse]

Getting caught up in the bidding frenzy is why Ebay was great...as a seller

As for CL, it's a lot different. You get people that will email you for more information and you won't hear back from them (about 50% of the responses to your ads)..then you get people that will offer you less (lowballers: about 35%)..you get people that want to buy it and arrange to meet but don't show up (around 10%) and you get successful transactions (about 10%). In my experience, anyways.

Lowballers are the worst. I'd had items I'm selling at what I know is a great deal, and they still claim they can get it cheaper elsewhere, etc. If you can, why bother emailing me?

In any event, CL is more labour intensive. You have to put in time with emails, occasional no shows at transactions, etc. If you're a high volume seller, it isn't worth it. If you're like me and pick things up cheap occasionally with the intent of reselling them then CL is the way to go...IMHO.

 

[Tony2Tap]

...A) if a buyer left a negative, a seller would almost always retaliate and leave a counter-negative. Thus, buyers would not want to leave negatives as it would mean they would get one as well.
...

I agree 100%. You can just look to see that a negative usually means a negative. I haven't used EBay in over a year, but is there not a way to respond to the Negative feedback? I used this in the past to determine if the feedback for a seller i was looking at was valid.

 

[blueline]

I agree 100%. You can just look to see that a negative usually means a negative. I haven't used EBay in over a year, but is there not a way to respond to the Negative feedback? I used this in the past to determine if the feedback for a seller i was looking at was valid.

Yes, a person can respond to a FB left for him/her. It will show up right under the original comment. However, that does absolutely nothing for a seller now. These negatives, some warranted and some not, as in my case - they were total bullshit, just bring down your overall percentage. I am expecting 2 more negs from buyers who did not pay, that I have filed NBP disputes for, so I will most likely receive a neg because I had the nerve to ask for payment. My rating will go from 99.9% to probably under 98%, I will have 4 negs in 2 weeks, buyers will now see that and move on when considering a bid on my items.

There is something new called the Dashboard which is a summary of your overall performance in 4 categories. You receive a rating based on your FB scores and how the buyer rates you in the 5-star program, etc. Well my ratings were near perfect until these negs I received. I am now considered well below par in 2 major categories. This is now linked to the ebay search function, something referred to as 'best match'. All the top rated sellers items will show up at the top of the list in the search and the lower ranked sellers - like me now - will have their items buried at the bottom, limiting the number of hits I get on my listings, thus causing me to lose sales. All because of two newbie idiots who don't get it, I am the big loser now.

My 10 years worth of positives do not show up on my summary now, only the total transactions from the past 12 months. So now it looks like I am a terrible seller, when in fact over 10 years, 8000 positives and maybe a dozen negs made me a pretty good reputable seller.

The point I am trying to make is we the sellers are lining the pockets of the ebay employees. Now we have no protection but to allow anyone to bid on our items because every buyer has a 100% perfect rating. If a person bids, does not pay, we cannot do anything to warn other sellers. I have resorted to leaving a positve FB with neg comments for buyers who have not paid and who have been nothing but trouble for me. However, ebay is starting to find these types of FBs and is removing them. So how can we warn other sellers to avoid certain buyers? We can't. We are the losers on this deal and soon ebay will be the losers because people are leaving every day. I read the message boards and see long time power sellers going.

Here is an example of how terrible this sytem is. I saw a person on the boards who sold 17 items to a buyer in one transaction. The buyer won 17 auctions and apparently did not like the combined shipping rate, even though it was explained before they bid. The buyer left 16 negs and 1 neutral. You tell me thats not total bullshit.

 

[tboy]

Well, the way to create change is by not using them any longer. I know they are falling out of fashion in many ways and if all the sellers start bailing, then they will have to sit up and take notice.

Frankly I used to use them a lot (for the past 5 yrs or so) and now? Not so much......they snoozed and eventually they'll lose.....

 

[blueline]

Well, the way to create change is by not using them any longer. I know they are falling out of fashion in many ways and if all the sellers start bailing, then they will have to sit up and take notice.

Frankly I used to use them a lot (for the past 5 yrs or so) and now? Not so much......they snoozed and eventually they'll lose.....

Agreed.

I mentioned in my original post that there is word that ebay will soon be taking a cut from our shipping charges now. Supposedly this will go into affect in July. So a seller is now going to have to pass this onto the customers by increasing their S&H costs.

I am not sure how this is going to work, but it seems ebay is going to set the shipping cost for you. You may have to enter weights, sizes of packages then they use their shipping calculator and voila - that's what you charge.

That won't work for a lot of my packages. I tend to sell a lot of magazines and pack them between pieces of cardboard for protection. At the post office, the clerk will use a template to see if the package will fit through a slot. If so, I may pay $2.95 - $3.95 to send a package. If not, that package goes to BC, it costs me about $11.00. So ebay sets the cost at $3.95, I pay $11.00, I lose.

I know why ebay is doing this. Some sellers pad their shipping costs to increase their profits. Ebay wants to get a control on that, however, I don't think taking money from me is the way to go. I can't see how they can possibly come up with an accurate S&H charge that will cover all my expenses related to shipping the item.

Yes, the only way to make them stand up and take notice is to stop selling. As I mentioned, I have already closed a store and am not listing on one site. I have limited my listings on my second site.

 

[tboy]

OH hey, as for controlling the extra money someone may make on padding their shipping costs, I mean, you'd have to be brain dead to buy from that seller. For eg: I was looking to buy a dewalt impact driver. 9 out of 10 sellers were shipping it (from cali no less) for around $15.00. This one seller was shipping it for $79.00 lol I mean, WTF??? lol.

I don't mind a difference of a couple of dollars either way but over $60.00 difference? (and they were both sent via USPS lol).....

BTW: this is typical of a poorly run business. I worked for a similar company who, to control costs, had a PO procedure that cost the company about $40.00 in time etc. Well, that was fine for purchases over $1000.00 but if I needed batteries for my calculator, ($2.00) I'd have to do the same.

I call it "cutting off your nose to spite your face" or "spending $50.00 to save 5..."

 

[herames]

OH hey, as for controlling the extra money someone may make on padding their shipping costs, I mean, you'd have to be brain dead to buy from that seller. For eg: I was looking to buy a dewalt impact driver. 9 out of 10 sellers were shipping it (from cali no less) for around $15.00. This one seller was shipping it for $79.00 lol I mean, WTF??? lol.

I don't mind a difference of a couple of dollars either way but over $60.00 difference? (and they were both sent via USPS lol).....

BTW: this is typical of a poorly run business. I worked for a similar company who, to control costs, had a PO procedure that cost the company about $40.00 in time etc. Well, that was fine for purchases over $1000.00 but if I needed batteries for my calculator, ($2.00) I'd have to do the same.

I call it "cutting off your nose to spite your face" or "spending $50.00 to save 5..."

i fucking hate the sellers that don't post the shipping ...you win they make up the loss in the shipping /handling... one guy told me out right that i won item too cheaply when i questioned the shipping cost!?...when i contacted ebay...they did nothing to protect the buyer from being over charged. FUCKERS

 

[blueline]

i fucking hate the sellers that don't post the shipping ...you win they make up the loss in the shipping /handling... one guy told me out right that i won item too cheaply when i questioned the shipping cost!?...when i contacted ebay...they did nothing to protect the buyer from being over charged. FUCKERS

I had a guy pull something similar with me a while back. Asked about his high s&h and he told me flat out, he does it to make extra cash, says the ebay fees are too high and he is getting something back.

My s&h costs have always been fair. I am able to estimate a cost fairly accurately and on the occasion that I over charge a person, I will send back the extra amount the customer paid. Within reason of course, I don't send back a few cents and I have never had a complaint about that. I usually start at about one dollar or so. If it is over by that amount or higher, I send a little something back to their paypal account. Goes a long way with the buyers, many write back and thank me for my honesty. I guess I don't always feel good about taking something that isn't mine.

 

[boffo]

So far I've only used ebay to buy things. I've made about 40 purchases or so and about 38 out of 40 were good experiences. (I have 100% positive feedback.)

Two were lousy but I could not leave a negative for either one of them because I knew they would leave a tit for tat negative terrorist bomb on me. One of them waited for a month before mailing me the item from Vancouver and the other one just took my money and sent nothing and ignored all my emails asking what the hell was going on. Had to go to ebay arbitration to get my money refunded.

I think this is a better system because it will more honestly reflect whether sellers are decent. I expect the new standard for a really good seller will be 90% because no matter what 10% of buyers are likely to be unreasonable and people will just understand this.

 

[S.C. Joe]

You hear of things that were too good to last...cheap gas, cheap housing, good paying jobs, etc....Well E-bay is now like everything else....it was good but not so much anymore

 

[21pro]

sex is too good to last. but, thankfully, it's still good for me.

my grandfather begs to differ, though ...