The GOOD old days

[ga-877480]

Does anybody remember the good old days, when we found an auction of interest, CLICKED on the bids made, taking us to the BIDDING HISTORY of that auction, where you would find that ebay had encrypted the bidders user names, and you COULD have clicked on ANY "name", to be taken to that bidders BID HISTORY: BIDDERS DETAILS page, where you could? well, in effect check out the opposition.

Check its bidding history with the seller

Check its bid retractions in the past 30 days AND 12 months, for example

Total bids: 13

Items bid on: 5

Bid activity (%) with this seller: 46%

Bid retractions: 3

Bid retractions (12 months): 7

I ask y'all, would you get involved in an auction, with a bidder with THIS record? I wouldn't AND YET ebay blocked our ability to make these checks...leastways for us, in the UK, but WHY? to protect WHO?

[fotherbale]

Some of us can remember when ebay didn't even encrypt the bidders user names on the listing page - you could see the user name of the high bidder, and the bid history showed the names of all the previous bidders, so you could check not only what their bidding history was like, you could also see what they had been bidding on and the name of the seller in each case and check over their feedback history. 

I don't go back quite far enough to be able to remember when it was possible to leave feedback for another member regardless of whether or not you had a transaction with them!

As to why they have stopped us seeing the bid history (even in anonymised form, I can only wonder what they are trying to hide.  I have my suspicions 😉

[edwardian-dreams]

In the good old days if a buyer was a scammer you could leave negative feedback for them ergo warning others of their criminality 

but eBay in their wisdom decided all buyers are perfect 

that’s just one thing I remember about the good old days 

[fotherbale]

What actually happened was ebay decided to do something about unscrupulous sellers scamming buyers and using feedback extortion to get away with it. 

If seller really want ebay to do something about the bad buyers, then make sure you report them via the correct procedures.  

The reason that nothing seems to get done about them is mainly because of stupid sellers who don't use the reporting procedures for problem buyers, and instead mistakenly think they they are doing other sellers a favour by leaving a positive with a negative comment - not only breaching ebay rules and putting their own account a risk of restrictions, but the ebay system only sees the positive so everything appears tickety-boo.  

Added to which, if the bad buyer knows the system, they can report the false positive feedback left for them and ebay will remove the comment, so ultimately the seller has actually aided the bad buyer to continue buying, and done absolutely zero to help anyone!.

[edwardian-dreams]

Oh right

so there’s as many scamming sellers as scamming buyers? I doubt it 

if a buyer is a sh it I want to be able to warn others 

the reporting system will certainly not do the same job 

[fotherbale]

It will do far more than leaving a false positive will. 

And yes, I would say there are easily as many scamming sellers on ebay as there are scamming buyers.  In fact, judging from the posts I read in here, I would say there are a higher proportion of dishonest sellers than there are dishonest buyers.

But ebay sellers always seem to think that it is only they who are hard done to.

[edwardian-dreams]

Ok 

I get you now 

still the normal feedback would be better

all other online places have it except eBay 

[themidnightcaller]

I remember being able to look at the bids and seeing the same 0 feedback bidder upping the price

on all the same seller's auctions (very naughty)..

[themidnightcaller]

I should add to the post above that the bidding user names at that time were not encrypted.