Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 18:06:18 -0400
Reply-To: Wesley Pegden <wes@CS.UCHICAGO.EDU>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Wesley Pegden <wes@CS.UCHICAGO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Beware EBAY LVC was: Re: eBay Professor for Vanagon parts ...
In-Reply-To: <CAEOIPKOOCKNBBDDDMBPGEFMABAB.vw.doka@gmail.com>
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Jeff,
While I sympathize with the position of ebay sellers and think it's easy
to take "the customer is always right" quite too far, I think in ebay's
case, the policy would be better the way I said, for everybody involved.
Feedback means virtually nothing when sellers retaliate to maintain
artificially high feedback scores. You may personally be a great seller
on ebay, but it's hard for me to tell, because your feedback rating
means zilch these days on ebay. Anyone who's bought things there more
than 3 times knows that high percentage feedback does not equal high
quality.
Yes, it's true, you'll deal with some jerk buyers that will leave
negative feedback. You probably also have people leaving negative
feedback because they don't really understand the system (they think
this is the proper channel to ask questions about their order, etc).
But the point is, this would affect all sellers more or less equally,
unlike the strong-arm tactics, which reward the people who are the
biggest jerks the most. Also, these situations are exactly what the
"response" part of the feedback system is for. (Yes, I think they
should increase the line limit a bit.) If some buyer gives you the
run-around and then leaves you negative feedback, you say in your
response that that's what happened (and invite people to follow his
feedback trail to see he's done this before).
So yeah, your percentage would drop a few points if they changed it like
I said, but so would everybody else's. And the people who's feedback
ratings are held up only by their strong-arm tactics would drop below
yours, so that it would be once again possible to tell who is a good
seller and who is not.
The truth is, Ebay is not what it used to be, and a big part of the
problem is that the feedback system is effectively gamed. People are
(rightfully so) very weary of ebay sellers now, I think....
-Wes
Another proposal I didn't mention would be simply to remove the
possibility of mutually removing feedback. Of course, this would have
its downsides as well. But keep in mind the other possibility: people
get sick of the meaningless feedback system, and stop buying things off
ebay.
VW Doka wrote:
> Wes,
>
> The problem is that "feedback retaliation" works both ways. If a vendor was
> required to submit feedback after payment, he could be held hostage by the
> buyer (ask me how I know) for a discount or partial refund. And I can
> guarantee you that there are just as many (more) unscrupulous buyers as
> sellers on eBay.
>
> Jeff
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com]On Behalf
> Of Wesley Pegden
> Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2007 6:07 PM
> To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
> Subject: Re: Beware EBAY LVC was: Re: eBay Professor for Vanagon parts
> ...
>
>
> I couldn't agree more with your comments about revenge feedback. It
> hasn't happened to me, but I've noticed that sellers use it as a
> tactic. If ebay was interested in improving their policies, they could
> simply require sellers to submit feedback first (i.e., immediately upon
> receiving prompt payment) but instead they'd rather prop up the scores
> of bad sellers so they can push more total transactions and get more
> commissions.
>
> One tactic you can use to spot this is to scour the feedback page for
> instances of ratings "mutually withdrawn". I always consider this a big
> red flag, especially if when I go to the other users page, I see that
> the seller left the kind of BS retaliatory feedback he left for Jeff.
>
> I agree with BJ's message; there are undoubtedly some great sellers on
> ebay. I think they are the exception, but nevertheless, it can be
> possible to find them. I still buy things on ebay, but I steer clear of
> the feedback retaliators.
>
> -Wes
>
>
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