A seller blocked me for leaving negative feedback on a previous order

[macahead14]

I tried to buy a book today and got the message 'The seller isn't accepting bids or offers from you ' I looked up what that message meant and found out that it means the seller had blocked me. So I looked up what previous orders I made from that seller and found out that it was one I left negative feedback on. The last book I ordered from them got held up by Royal Mail and took nine days to get to me, and I said so in my feedback. EBay kept asking me if I was sure I wanted to leave negative feedback , and persuading me to discuss the problem with the seller, but never told me that the seller could block me for it. I was never told that the seller had blocked me, and only found out today. I'm now wondering if a seller is allowed to block a buyer over just ONE negative review over something that wasn't their fault.

[hytheantiques2011]

how can a seller improve a delivery company he does not own, please advise so I can phone Royal Mail and pass on the information.... you are making yourself look very silly here... delayed delivery from a 3rd party courier is not constructive criticism, its holding someone accountable for actions out of there remit.. you 100% deserved to be blocked and instead of learning from your actions you decide to defend your corner with a poor defence 

[macahead14]

I don't own the forums, but I am just trying to stop the comments because none of them have been good. If you've got nothing nice to say, say nothing at all.

[hytheantiques2011]

Sooooooo.. whats happened is that you have done something wrong, you have posted because you do not see what you have done as being wrong and becuase 100% of the comments are backing the seller in this situation you have now decided that the comments are horrible and not nice... man will you take some responsibilty and accept that you are wrong... every comment you post just makes you look worse and worse as the time goes by

[macahead14]

I clicked wrong when I accepted as solution. Don't blame Royal Mail! That's just wrong, because they've actually been quite good recently.  'A bad workman always blames his tools', so how can Royal Mail be to blame when there's hundreds of other bad reviews with similar complaints? There is absolutely no need to be so spiteful. If you've got nothing nice to say, say nothing at all. And I don't think any other sellers are blocking me because I don't leave many bad reviews, (I've only left about 2 bad ones ever) I actually leave lots of good ones, so the probability of getting a bad review from me is low and not worth shutting the shop without having served me.

[aj_swift]

Did you also find somewhere to leave Royal Mail your constructive criticism?

[hytheantiques2011]

mate are you ok? im not sure you should be allowed on the internet unsupervised.. the whole thread is about late delivery and your saying dont blame the courier?? how can you sit and type what you are saying and not see how wrong you are? If i post an item today and it takes a week to arrive your saying thats my fault not the Royal mail who took the week to deliver it... WOW your giving me one headache 

[macahead14]

I'm going to just ignore you from now on. 

[hytheantiques2011]

Or just take 5 minutes and have a good think about this thread and all the comments that are saying the same thing... take a step back from the bubble you live in and see hows this looks to everyone else... 

[txt.ltd]

---

@macahead14 wrote:

I'm going to just ignore you from now on. 

---

You can just unsubscribe from the thread if you no longer want updates on it. It's not your personal website. It's a forum for the eBay community.

Just because people don't agree with you doesn't mean they are being mean/spiteful/hateful or whatever word may feel fitting.

[derpybay]

They're not reviews, that's the problem, you keep saying "reviews" as if that's a neutral thing. You leave a review on say, trustpilot, okay, the business is affected by your opinion in as much as customers can look at that and have their opnions swayed. That's a review. A business can improve based on that if they want to.

Feedback on ebay is that too but it's not just that. Your opinion is not communicated just to fellow customers and potential customers, it is communicated to ebay, and if we have enough unfortunate events out of our control or human errors (even the megasellers have humans in there somewhere) ebay will shut us down. Our livelihood will be gone. 

Every transaction is therefore a risk, and the risk presented by you is not worth the pennies profit they can squeeze out of a used book. It's like insurance. Some companies will not deal with risky customers, that's all it is.

[pillarboxred]

EBay warned you repeatedly.  I would have blocked you too. It is hard to quantify the damage a bad, undeserved feedback comment does but it is huge. It takes forever to recover from and all you get are miserable bids on things for years afterwards. 

Books, apart from rare ones, exist in multiple copies and you should be able to source another copy unless it's a First Folio you are in pursuit of.

[pillarboxred]

You could open a second account. If you are primarily a buyer, that won't impact you economically unless a few sellers are unwilling to sell to 0 feedback buyers. You might have to buy a few cheap items to earn some positive comments. 

[pillarboxred]

I'll block a Bleep who leaves a neutral for postal delay. A neutral is not anyway appropriate for that. Does the product match the description and photos? That is all you should be commenting on. If a package has been delayed or the postie has dropped it on dog doo, complain to the delivery service.

[nigel_paul_wright7557]

A seller can block you for any reason.

Some sellers are very touchy and any problems they wil block a buyer to prevent further problems.

I only complained about packaging yet left a positive and got blocked !

In a way I agree as returns can get expensive for a seller.

[pillarboxred]

EBay sellers are supposed to hold enough stock to cover expected demand but if there is an unexpected rush and a book sells out, though the disappointment  is real, I would feel it is unfair to "neg" a seller and buyers should wait to for the restocked book to arrive or buy the book elsewhere. EBay certainly frowns on sellers who list items they don't have in their possession and available for dispatch as it is unfair competition with sellers who have invested in the items and can supply them. So a "neg" can be justifiable for that. If a seller has advertised expedited delivery such as Datapost but sends an item "snail mail" then a "neg" is justified but the more ordinary methods can take fifteen days before they officially become Late as the advertised timings are simply an aim. Datapost must be delivered the next day, come what may,  but  cost me £120 the last time I used it.

[pillarboxred]

If he's the one in your recent feedback, he has sold 1.6 million items and 600 negative feedback comments are hardly statistically significant as it works out as one problem in every two thousand six hundred sales, roughly. You would get that rate of complaints if you were St Francis of Assissi. However, your comment could cost him dear if a few hundred people see it and decide not to buy from him.

[pillarboxred]

 600 negs out of 1.6 million sales is miniscule. I suppose because one buyer only counts once in the Feedback score and many happy buyers have often bought from him, the tiny number of negs is overstated in the percentage figure. 600 out of 1.6 million sales is not even one percent. My maths is shakier with age but I think the 600 is about one three thousandth of one percent. Can someone come to my aid here? I don't want to exaggerate but the % of complaints compared to items sold in fantastically small. That doesn't mean the unjustified neg is harmless, far from it.

[txt.ltd]

---

@pillarboxred wrote:

 600 negs out of 1.6 million sales is miniscule. I suppose because one buyer only counts once in the Feedback score and many happy buyers have often bought from him, the tiny number of negs is overstated in the percentage figure. 600 out of 1.6 million sales is not even one percent. My maths is shakier with age but I think the 600 is about one three thousandth of one percent. Can someone come to my aid here? I don't want to exaggerate but the % of complaints compared to items sold in fantastically small. That doesn't mean the unjustified neg is harmless, far from it.

---

It's 0.0375% or roughly a 27th of a percent

[blackpoodleretro]

Gawd! Don't encourage him to set up another account. He's dangerous enough with one! 

[peja_6449]

In law it is a form of imprisonment to be refused service. In lock down I sued a shop owner for 10k for the refusel of service bcos I didn't have a mask he thought his assumptions of law were correct till the judge emptied his pockets