The feedback system is not fit for purpose, I need to rant about Ebay

[lee1980wolves]

I've sold 1000 of this item, loads of positive feedback and it works fine.

I get a neutral feedback saying "Not sure if it will.work . But for the money worth a try" 

Customer is an idiot, that's fine and expected but when I try to get this nonesense removed, Ebay say "Unfortunately we won’t be able to remove this comment because it doesn’t violate any of our Feedback policies."

The likely reason for the customer leaving this premuture feedback is Ebay sending out them "leave feedback for this recent purchase" emails that they send out and idiots will respond with thier 2 brain cells even if they havent used the product. 

As Ebay itself.....no excuses, they just got lucky, right time and place with thier website back in the early 2000s, the actual company has no concept of how to make money or run a business, it is a circus at best. In fact I would say they try to make less money. I could go all day about things like this, how they make it so hard to do simple things like combine postage. The truth is, the people running the siute and making the rules have never hard to run a real business in thier pathetic lives, they can only work for other people as part of team and do small basic tasks themselves following every spefic orders with no ability to think or even act if they could. 

The sooner I can leave this platform, the better and they are forcing me out anyway.

[myriad*seller]

I've seen stupid product reviews that say it arrived I cant wait to try it out 

What sort of review is that when you want to know about the product! 

[*vyolla*]

Or a neutral with  "I don't know what this was like because I gave it as a present".

[eastern-lights]

Thing is though, neutral feedback doesn't really matter, and anyone reading it will realise that the person leaving it is a wally.

[lee1980wolves]

It still effects my stats if they dont read it. I know I shouldn't get so bothered by this but it's so frustrating because the person making the rules and decision to not remove this kind of feedback has zero business sense at all and would never be make any money in the real world.

Like I said, Ebay just got lucky with the timing, they have no real value other than that and are mostly hated by the sellers who begrudingly use their website purely out of necessity.  

[dch2112011]

The neutral feedback is not insulting nor harmful - the customer simply said he had not tried it but complimented the price.

You however left a personally insulting response  for the buyer ! 

I hate to think how many blood vessels you will burst  if you receive another negative feedback. 

[lee1980wolves]

You're right, I should just stop checking it, my mind is not built to deal
this sort thing. Just inventing and working.

[lucy_farmer]

Oh yeh... I had a neutral from somebody saying 'Haven't tested it yet'   

I left a reply saying 'perhaps you could have left feedback *after* testing it  🙂 '

Buyer was gone from ebay fairly shortly after that  though ..... perhaps he was a serial silly feedback-leaver.

[dch2112011]

The crazy thing is that having read your customer feedback you give great customer service, great problem solving products  and care deeply for your business - this is what your customer's say about you, your business  and your products.

Unfortunately when a hiccup occurs with feedback you fight back by lashing out - this is completely understandable given your personal ties to your products and business which is pretty unique and is definately niche, but this reaction is not doing you any favours.

By all means ask for feedback to be removed and if it is solution found but if it is not removable for whatever reason use the neutral or negative feedback to showcase what the vast majority of your customers already know and that is to let the world know how good you and your business are. 

The feedback was I am sure left because ebay push buyers to leave feedback so your buyer did because he felt obliged to do so -

In this case you could have replied something along  the lines 

Thank you for your feedback, I am sure you will be pleased with your (item) when fitted and appreciate your recognition of  the value for money  we always provide to our customers.

[lee1980wolves · Accepted solution]

I spoke to a Ebay rep on the phone, a nice lady from Scotland, she agrees with me about the feedback being unfair and said she wished she could remove it but at the moment the feedback revision department has all the power of this. She did say there is change coming that will return the ability to them to sort feedback issues like this soon so hopefully that will happen.

I disagree with that I left a personally insulting response, I agree it should have worded better but it is 100% factual based on the action, nothing personal or insulting. If he had acted logically, my responce would not exist. 

What I said:

"How about you fit them and then leave feedback instead of tarnishing my rep because you cannot think logically."

[lee1980wolves]

Thanks for the kind words and advice. 

You are absolutley right, I do need to work on my reaction to these situations as that is the only thing I can control and what starts in anger, ends in shame. 

I suppose that's why I came here to rant, I needed to hear this. Now the hard part taking up your wise words so I'm prepared for next time.  

[dch2112011]

I can see that you care about your business and really help your customers  - I am not critiscising just trying to suggest an alternative positive way to handle bad feedback, if ebay refuse to remove.

Telling someone they are illogical and accusing them of tarnishing your reputation by leaving feedback  could be construed as insulting even if you did not mean it to be - personally I would leave personal comments out of your replies to non positive feedback and simply concentrate on turning it into a positive for you and your business  - but hey that is just my opinion - there is no tone in the written word.

Of course you need not have responded or you could have sent a polite message to the customer asking if he would consider reviewing his feed back once fitted  and if he was happy with the product and the price paid could he help by revising the feedback .

Another thought is, Do you think buyers might just feel just as indignant when their feedback is removed ? 

Trying to take a balanced view is not easy when you have a vested interest.

As a side observation

With this particular popular product - it may be worth creeping the price up based purely on the feedback from your customers - even if you start by 10p and keep creeping it up, I doubt it would put buyers off buying from you - you seem to have designed a winner !

[lee1980wolves]

I agree with you. I should have handled this how you said and could have even turned it into a positive. The trouble is, I was too angry at the time and ironically, it was me not acting logically. I must work on this and ideally get to a position where I can allocate customer service to someone else, my time is best spent on getting new products out.

I did send that responce about it not being a insult before my other responce where I agreed with you but they are not in order because it was direct reply but the timestamps are right. 

I did message the customer twice and thankfully managed to be focused purely on the outcome so was polite but they haven't messaged me back yet so I will just have to see what happens and not think about it anymore as it is inconsequential.

Thanks for the nice words about my product! I agree with you about the price and it's something I will consider but I am a bit worried about Royal Mail prices at the moment, they keep going up and I'm unsure about the future of the 2nd class service from what I hear.  I'm trying to keep the total below £10 as I feel this makes it more of an impluse buy even if they don't plan on fitting it for a few months. It's only an extra £1.50 for 2 but most people still only buy 1.

[technthread]

Your reply to the feedback made me laugh. I have said similar to buyers over messages which in hindsight I regret as I reacted emotionally, now if I'm about to do something like that I walk away from it for a bit and return to it later after trying to see the funny side of it. It shouldn't spook too many future buyers as I think most people will get how daft the neutral feedback was. 

[dch2112011]

Yes sorry our replies overlapped -  

[theelench]

As an aside and in reply to your paragraph starting "As ebay itself.....no excuses,...."

I don't think ebay did "get lucky", except in the fact that they were at hand when the internet and ecommerce were new and being touted a great equaliser allowing everyone to "have a go" at being an entrepreneur or opening-up markets that until then were restricted to what could be sourced locally.  This included the hundreds of thousands (at least) of niches in collectables.

Because I was limited to local jumble sales, junk shops, house-clearers and later, boot fairs, I bought indiscriminately.  Never knowing whether I had grabbed a rare gem or a piece of junk and not knowing if I would ever see the same design or pattern again.

Ebay was designed to be the worlds boot fair enabling person to person buying and selling, whatever the niche, no matter how small.  In my early days on ebay I sold a tiny 1/12th Anna coin to a collector of 'Princely State' coins somewhere in India that I couldn't even find on a map.  Also a small and quite common Davidson glass bowl to an Australian collector who only wanted it because it had the Australian registration number on the base. 

Ebay grew prodigiously because it was a perfect fit to fill that huge gap in the market and tens of millions of buyers and sellers flocked to it because for a small fee they could buy and sell almost anything.  

Then Wall St. took over, seeking to utilise its biggest resource - the millions of buyers with spare cash - to turn it into a vast shopping mall for new goods on the cheap by overlaying that idea on its person to person design.  That's why it's now such a mess and has so many problems today, it's turned into a second rate amazon needing high fees partly because of its schizophrenic identity but no longer fulfills the requirements of either the person to person or business to consumer markets.

[theelench]

Just to add to the bit about my early ebay sales.

These days I wouldn't make either of those sales.  Not only are ebay fees now much more with international fees, money conversion fees and probably really bad exchange rates, but with the growth of ecommerce the carriers have got in on milking consumers by increasing costs.  Also the MBG means if the buyers want to return either, it would very likely be cheaper to give them the item rather than get it back and sell it in the UK where it would fetch a much lower price and nowhere near cover the costs.

[theanonymousgrouch]

As with most things in life, there's a flip side to this 'issue'...

Speaking predominantly as a buyer, there's been many a time in the past I've been stung by some dodgy seller, & left neutral/negative feedback accordingly to warn others, only to find it removed the following day, all because the seller went & whined to the admins... thing is, if you can't express your honest opinion for a product, for better OR worse, what's even the point of leaving it in the first place?

Yeah, I get how being given a bad feedback could be frustrating for some... buuut, pardon my bluntness, but, in the end, if your paying customer ain't happy, they AIN'T happy! 😒

Ranting at them via message or whatever probably isn't gonna help resolve the issue... just sayin'.

[dch2112011]

Of course buyers should be allowed to leave honest feedback good bad or indifferent, the most frustrating thing with buyers feedback is when they become abusive or state they had to involve ebay - this is unfair and should be removed, 

If the feedback was factual rather than fanciful less feedback would be removed - words like scammer, avoid, thief,rude, arrogant, idiot, etc have no place in feedback and are buyers venting anger issues not constructive or factual feedback 

Likewise stating I had to get ebay to intervene to get a refund is purely designed to slight the seller - everyone can use the MBG - that is the core of ebay - to word feedback in such a way that it infers that ebay decided the buyer was right and the seller wrong is fanciful - the rules of return and refund are set in stone - every buyer and seller is governed by them.

If buyers stepped back and weighed up the experiance before putting finger to keyboard  there would be less feedback removed.

[theanonymousgrouch]

Nah, sorry fam... I mean, I sorta see your point, but, frankly, I just ain't buying it. (No pun intended!)

Disclaimer - I admit, maybe I'm just a liiiittle bias, mainly due to the number of bad experiences I've had in the past as a paying customer... frankly, however, these days, I tend not to have too much sympathy for sellers anymore with regards to the whole feedback system.

There have been several times at least in the past where I've offered legitimate criticism after being stung by some dodgy seller, only to find it miraculously gone within 24 hours; no revision request, no explaination given - just gone.

It's probably no great coincidence that, more often than not, this tends to occur most often with those sellers who already have a significant foothold upon the platform; i.e. those who bring in the most revenue for ebay themselves... which, to me, shows rather firmly where their priorities lay... And, trust me - it AIN'T with customer satifaction! 🙄

Going back to my original point...

Fair & honest feedback is, in theory at least, one of the few tools that we, as customers, can use to determine if a seller is truly worth our time - &, more importantly, our money!

Thing is, if a seller can just whine to have it removed, simply cos it "hurts their feelings", or whatever, it kinda defeats the purpose of the entire system... least, that's my two cents. 😒