eBay is planning on rolling out new policies on February 20th, and there's a boycott against these changes that's scheduled to run from the 19th through the 25th. So what's getting everyone so riled up?
The new policies will probably cost sellers more money and the adjustment to eBay's feedback system is an especially big point of disagreement. Sellers will no longer be able to leave negative commentary about their buyers, leaving delinquent bidders and scammers to run amok.
If you were an eBay seller — and maybe you already are — would you boycott?
Heine
Elemis
Burberry
I never sell anything on ebay, but I think they're new policies are a little ridiculous.
1I have sold items on ebay and this will just allow many people to get away with doing bad business. I got scammed by someone who stole another ebayer's paypal info and that mess didn't cleared up for months. I really think they need to review these new policies one more time.
2EBay as it currently works sucks. Sellers misrepresent products all the time and buyers have no recourse except to try to glean info from ebay (which they refuse to release w/o a court order) and then take the seller to small claims court.
I had to try out buying two items fromebay when I worked for an internet company that was partnered with ebay like 8 years ago. I bought two posters from two different sellers. One person got my money order that I FedEx'd and immediately mailed the poster-a pristine limited edition Academy Awards Poster. The Other person also got my Fedex'd money order, cashed it and then did nothing for over a month- though the agreement was for rush shipping. It turned out the person was running a poster business out of her home. When I sent an email inquiring as to where my poster was since they had cashed my money order, the person immediately slammed me with multiple negative comments. At first ebay would not intervene. Then I reminded them that I had only made two purchases but had ten different comments from sellers saying incredibly negative things. I also reminded ebay that I was working for their partner company and we were testing their policies and actions to evaluate whether we wanted to continue our partnership.
Suddenly the negative comments disappeared - the seller would attempt to put them back every time I contacted her requesting my product or ebay contacted her threatening to shut her down. Suddenly after 4 months I got my 2nd poster in a crushed tube - ripped in half inside the tube marked - as is. I forwarded the poster to ebay to show them how this woman did business and pointed out the numerous complaints on her page and the number of times she slammed buyers with multiple negative comments and ebay said "well there's nothing we can do". They could have banned her from the site but they chose not too. They could have limited or eliminated the +/- comment thing all together because seller's can artificially inflate their positive rating and ebay knows it.
Later when I worked for another company we had to get the AG of CA involved in a case to get ebay to stop people from selling products that were stolen property from our warehouse. Ebay tried to say that because they never actually touch it they aren't responsible and couldn't do anything, couldn't even remove the listing from the site but the AG thought differently and ebay had to pull our entire product line from their site and ebay was found to be acting as an agent of the reseller and making money off stolen goods.
I haven't used that account since those purchases and I get these weird emails that someone has hacked into it and is placing false bids on products etc - ebay has been alerted and I've instructed them to shut down that account, remove my email addy and stop sending my phishing emails requesting my credit card info. Their response - we can't.
3I don't sell on eBay, but I do buy quite often; I will not be buying much if they are doing away with negative feedback.
How will I know who I am buying from is credible? I don't want to know that what I bought possibly won't be sent to me or that it was misrepresented!
I know a lot of people who are already finding other avenues to sell their usual eBay merch just so they don't have to deal with this crap.
4Sorry, sorry, I want to KNOW that what I bought will be sent to me ... yada, yada, yada, you know.
It's Monday morning and you can tell!
5I never use E Bay, I've heard waaaaay too many horror stories.
6The changes support buyers far more than sellers so I imagine buyers would like the changes. As someone who does both - I think feedback for BOTH sides is important. It is not fair that only buyers can leave negative feedback. I dont want to sell to someone who is a bad bidder or doesnt pay. Ebay is not the best place to sell - you lose a lot of money in fees in my opinion.
7The bad part about feedback on ebay is that most sellers wait for you to leave feedback before they will leave it for you. Then, if you as a buyer leave negative feedback for a seller, they leave it for you as well even if you did nothing wrong. That type of retaliation needs to be fixed, but I don't think eliminating all feedback for buyers is the right way to do it...the buyers need to be held accountable just as much as the sellers!
8I both buy and sell on Ebay, and Once my account was hijacked and was selling porn items, i have gotten negative feedback from people i have bought from that i was unhappy with so they just fired one back to be mean. The feedback thing really doesnt work, its only helpful to see that the person is a serious seller or buyer, that they have a history of following through , and thats what it should be used for, i dont know how they would fix it. Maybe if a negative one is left, you cant retaliate?
9thank you for telling us about this
10i'm not touching ebay this week!
I will have to read more into this but it doesn't sound good, escpecially about the feedback
11Well, crap...I had a whole bunch of stuff I was going to put up on this week. I wonder if my auctions would do better or worse if other sellers aren't listing...?
I've sold significantly more than I've bought on eBay, and I still think these are good policy changes. There are a lot of buyers who are scared to leave negative feedback for sellers who deserve it because they worry the seller will retaliate. I don't know the best way to fix the system, but not allowing sellers to leave negatives for buyers seems like it might be a good idea. Sellers can report delinquent bidders to eBay, and they will be kicked off after a certain number of reports.
The biggest problem with feedback, though, is that most buyers don't understand the system. I have feedback over 800 and 100% positive. It's not that hard to do. But, buyers look at someone with feedback of even 90% and think, well hey that's still an A! That's a really bad seller and you're running a huge risk buying from them, but recreational buyers don't understand that.
12no negative comments?? I've had several people try to jip me on that site. So I would be deterred from using it for sure!
13I have sold stuff on EBay and did well. I think if you are an honest seller than things go well it is the bad bidders and some sellers that suck. It is crazy that you cannot leave negative feedback about a seller. I had someone back out while it isn't the money it is the principle.
14I recently sold stuff on Ebay. To recoup all the fees (listing and selling) for Ebay and Paypal, I had to increase my selling price by $10 - $20. That's not fair for the seller OR the buyer. I won't be using Ebay until they change their fee schedules to something more reasonable.
15hmmm, I thought ebay was reducing their seller fees? and whats this about feedback?? I haven't sold/bought anything from Ebay in a while but it doesn't sound like I should any time soon.
16I was using eBay as an outlet to sell some of my jewelry pieces from my Jewelry Line. and the fees were more than ridiculous.
I end up closing my eBay store. i rather spend the money on my own site. the whole purpose was to reach a larger volume of customers for less overhead.
i didn't have issues with the bidder thing, because all my pieces were listed as Buy Now. and all my customers were cool. but it was a waste of money.
and now they are making things worst?!?!?
ebay sucks rotten eggs. . .
17Yeah, I thought ebay was reducing their seller fees? Wow.
I'm so tired of eBay. I bought a magazine subscription a few months ago, but never received it. Of course, they don't save the history of your purchases past a few months so now I'm out the money I paid because I can't remember the person I bought it from. Gah.
It's better to buy used through amazon or go through craigslist. Enough with ebay.
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