Flawed ebay feedback system

KoinDawg

This week I had a situation with seller. I won 4 items at auction three weeks ago and paid the same time via PayPal. Two weeks go by and no shipment. I send seller email queries 3 days in a row and get no response. The dude listed his business phone number with the item ad so I called him long distance last Friday and asked him where my coins were? I was very polite and nice, and he remained cooperative apologizing that he was just a "one man shop" and was a bit behind. He promised to ship my coins pronto.

I receive a package in the mail on Monday with only 3 of the 4 coins in the package and an invoice listing only 3 of the 4 items I paid for. I send him an email. As usual, no reponse. I called him on the telephone on Tuesday and he said he would check and see if he was out of inventory or what the problem was and promised to call me back that afternoon. You guessed it. No phone call Tuesday or Wednesday. By this time I'm sick of the whole thing so I file a non-receipt complaint with PayPal and generously left 3 positive feedbacks carefully worded "Slow Shipping. Coins as advertised." Then left a negative for the one coin that was missing stating "Coin was missing from shipment. No response from seller."

He promptly retaliated and left me 3 positives saying:
"Quick response and fast payment. Perfect! THANKS!!"
"Great communication. A pleasure to do business with."
"Hope to deal with you again. Thank you."

and then one negative:
"YOUR REFUNDED $12 IS WORTH A NEG IN KIND GOOD LUCK"

He actually owes me a refund of $12.95 but hasn't done anything about the refund with PayPal.

Then I get this email from SquareTrade stating that the seller wanted me to withdraw my negative feedback and was I willing to have the situation mediated? All this really means is that Seller pays SquareTrade $20 and they try to convince me that I should withdraw my negative feedback. If I agree, the seller gets the negative removed. But leaves me with an unwarranted negative feedback, my first in over 12 months.

The feedback system needs to make retalitory negative feedbacks a violation of rules and any such feedback would be withdrawn from the innocent party by ebay.

I explained in my response to SquareTrade that Seller deserved the negative feedback for his poor service and nonperformance. And the fact that he left me a negative out of spite, I wasn't in the mood the "mediate". Especially since he still hasn't posted a refund and PayPal is still "reviewing" my complaint.

30AnvZ28

Retailation negs suck. Its something that must be dealt with though. They need to come up with something.

flaminio

Add a comment to the neg that it was retaliatory. Then move on. Don't remove their neg; sounds like they deserve one.

MikeInFL

Refuse Square Trade, take the neg, and forget about it.

As an aside, I am of the opinion ebay should go to a "blind" feedback system, with neither side seeing the other's feedback until both have entered it or the time to enter it has expired.

cullenbryant

funny how he's got plenty of time to photo and list the auction, take your money, then when it's time to live up to his end
all of a sudden he's "a bit behind".

i've had a bad month on ebay also with a buyer who stiffed me for 110 bucks after i hot shipped when he promised he would send a money order. sad part for me is, when it's all said and done, i'll probably be out the money and have a retailiatory neg

braddick

If you agree with SquareTrade then not only is his negative removed that you left for him but by default the negative he left you is also removed.

The only problem is the comments remain with a disclaimer from eBay.

Bochiman

Tell him you will only go along with squaretrade if he refunds all of your money ASAP otherwise you cannot agree to go along since the problem still exists and it would make you dishonest.

relayer

What's even worse is if you ignore Square Trade, he gets his neg removed for free

You should work with them to get your money back and forget about feedback.

Boom

And it will still cost you to have this mediated. If you go that route then state your terms are that you not only want a complete refund but for him to pay for your Square Trade fiasco as well.

Press PayPal to get your money reimbursed and just take the damn neg. Leave him the one he deserves and that's that no matter who the seller is.

The feedback system is lacking in many ways. In plain layman english, it's a bunch of Bull chit!

marz

<< <i>What's even worse is if you ignore Square Trade, he gets his neg removed for free

You should work with them to get your money back and forget about feedback. >>



square trade is used by a lot of dealers that are problematic to extort people into caving in or suffer the neg!
It sucks! You basically pay to have e-bay remove feedback or prevent it. It's partial as all hell.

DeusExMachina

What's worse is if you 100% positive feedback, the other side of the transaction has you by the short hairs because they can threaten you with negative feedback. I sold a coin on ebay recently and it took 10 days for the buyer to even respond to my emails. I kept asking for payment and he said he was having problems w/ paypal and gave no indication about when he would actually pay. In addition, he told me to be patient or I would get negative feedback.

I reported him to ebay as a non-paying bidder and he actually sent payment the next day. Had he not, I probably would have rec'd a neg for his non-payment. Total garbage.

Russ

Ever notice how these sellers can't find the time to respond to an eMail but are johnny-on-the-spot with the retaliatory negs? BTW, out this dickhead.

Russ, NCNE

koynekwest

You bet it's flawed. This retaliatory negative FB thing just HAS to go.

flaminio

<< <i>You bet it's flawed. This retaliatory negative FB thing just HAS to go. >>

Perhaps it has (a little)? I was reading the feedback rules on eBay, and happened upon this:

Losing Feedback Privileges

It appears to say that if you drag the buyer through the complete dispute process (NPB/FVF), and at the end of it they're still a deadbeat, they lose their feedback privileges against you. It doesn't help against retalitory feedback leavin' sellers like fairtraderz, but if this is true it should make dealing out negs a lot less painful for sellers.

DeusExMachina

Interesting. That must be why my deadbeat paid the next day after I issued an unpaid item strike.

KoinDawg

Update.

My refund from PayPal is being "processed". Apparently takes another 3-4 days to get it from bank to my PayPal account and since I used my credit card, it will then be transferred as a credit to my Visa. Nothing more heard from SquareTrade but I'm sticking to my guns and keeping the negative out there. Other potential buyers need to know type of seller they're dealing with.