Revamped> Ebay Seller's rating system?

J

JD Spydo

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I was talking on the phone the other night to a good fellow knife trader and he agreed with me that the Ebay Seller's rating system they have on Ebay itself has a lot to be desired. If some you Bladeforumites like myself do a fair amount of dealing on Ebay then you have undoubtedly come across some pretty bad sellers. I have encountered 3 of them that were just outright crooks. What do you all think about possibly setting up a section here on the Forum to where we knife aficionados could set up our very own Ebay seller's rating system. This way we could expose them without the risk of getting a retalitory Negative feedback on our own Ebay rating slot. This way we could keep a list of the ones who continually are dishonest and give poor quality service.

I hope I didn't put this Appeal/suggestion in the wrong place here on the Forum. If I did I humbly apologize.
 
People do post here when they get ripped off by a dealer on ebay (or anywhere). It's certainly worth the trouble to search this forum before you buy.
 
JD. I have done a little on e-bay(only seven) one was a disappointment, I gave the seller a neutral rating and was suprised that when I sent it in that I was asked if I was sure that that was what I wanted to do, it was as though I had given a negative rating. I think that posting here would help...only questions I have is what would happen when the mods purge the archives? Thanks for bringing this up. Preston
 
I agree that it is a little hard to positively judge an eBay seller by the feedback rating.
I've been selling on Ebay since 12/98 with the user name of manyplews.My feedback rating is 717 - 100% positives- no negatives.
On several occasions,I've refrained from giving a seller a negative because his feedback record shows that he retaliates.The loophole that lets a seller do this is some sellers wont post feedback until the buyer posts.That gives bad sellers the opportunity to retaliate.
When I am selling,if the buyer fulfills his obligation of sending payment promptly and responding to any e-mails I've sent him - I consider that the buyer has fulfilled his obligation. I post feedback immediately.
When I buy,I expect feedback to be posted by the time I get the item.If the seller wants me to post first,I try to avoid that seller.
I just bought a schrade 34ot from an eBay seller out of Conklin,NY. The knife is in excellent condition and the ad description was factual and it was shipped promptly - all facts that should result in positive feedback.
I paid for the item thru Paypal immediately after the auction closed.
However,I get a note with the knife saying:
"We hope you are satisfied with your purchase.If eveything is OK,please leave positive feedback so that we know that your item has arrived safely.We will inturn leave positive feedback. ....."
In my opinion,I fulfilled my responsibilities first and the seller should post first.
Until eBay fixes this,feedback ratings can be deceiving.
I look at the seller info and judge based on whether he has been selling under that user name for a long time ( some bad sellers,re-register under a new user name every few months so they can start out fresh) and if he's sold a lot ( probably 50% of buyers won't waste time leaving feedback) and whether his positive % is above 99% and how recent are his negatives and whether the negatives are from buying or selling.Some ebayers get negatives early in their experience and finally wise up.
The items that I sell are from my personal collection and tend to attract buyers in the 40 year-old range and older .This crowd was raised differently than kids today.If you want some bad experiences,try selling/buying stuff in computer categories where you will meet a lot of people in the 15-25 year-old range.
Over the years,I've sold/bought probably 2500 items on eBay and have had less-than-desirable experiences in less than 10 of these instances.
EBay is a great place to find what you want and the price may be cheaper than what you can get it for in a brick'n'mortar store.
Just use common-sense and be a little careful.
 
Well thanks a million for your insight "Relodr36". You more or less stole a lot of my thunder on a few things I was going to expound on. But that's great because I am really glad to know that a few of you guys are on the same page I am. But there has to be a much better way to keep people more honest. That crap of the seller waiting for the buyer to post first really irritates me as well. For the last 3 months I have picked up on that one. There are six sellers now that I have refused to leave a Postive Feedback because of that.

In all fairness most of the sellers I have dealt with are honest decent people who really want you to be satisfied. There were 2 deals in which they said the knife was new in the box and when I got the knives they were not new at all. I e-mailed them. And both of those sellers even refunded my money even before I got their knives back to them. So there are good players out there too and I don't want to hurt them in any way. But there are also a couple of knife dealers on there trying to sell knives that they haven't even received from the supplier yet. My girlfriend got a Burgundy Calypso from a popular knife seller in the Spyderco slot who just keeps giving her one excuse after another. I personally had dealt with this same seller before and had not had the best of experiences with them either.

Shipping & Handling is another rip-off arena that these butt-heads try to exploit. This same seller charged me for insurance on packages 2 times but neither package had been insured. I took them to the Post Office to make sure and they confirmed that they were not. When I e-mailed and confronted the seller with this he would not even respond to my e-mails. So with all that said there is work to be done. I would love to implement a system that would keep these people honest. Thanks for the great input guys
 
I've sold a bunch of items on ebay and I'm one of those sellers that waits to leave feedback. I realize it costs me some positive feedbacks and frankly that's not a great concern. I consider my feedback as an endorsement that a particular buyer or seller is good to do business with. Simply receiving payment quickly isn't enough information to endorse anyone. Nervous, non-trusting buyers will never receive positive feedback from me because dealing with these kids was not "positive".

whitie
 
whitie said:
I've sold a bunch of items on ebay and I'm one of those sellers that waits to leave feedback. I realize it costs me some positive feedbacks and frankly that's not a great concern. I consider my feedback as an endorsement that a particular buyer or seller is good to do business with. Simply receiving payment quickly isn't enough information to endorse anyone. Nervous, non-trusting buyers will never receive positive feedback from me because dealing with these kids was not "positive".

whitie
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But Whitie I don't understand. Because for instance if you had a knife on Ebay for sale. Let's say that I win the auction. Let's say the price was $90. OK the very minute the auction is over I pay you with Paypal in full. Haven't I fulfilled my obligation to you? Didn't I pay for the item lightning fast? With that being said and with me having a 100% positive rating on Ebay ( which I do have) haven't I earned my positive feedback. Because after that the ball is strictly in your corner at that juncture. Now if the person you are dealing with has a lot of negatives or there is something else to be suspicious of then that poses another story.

But why shouldn't I get my positive endorsement right away? Because I am going to tell you and other sellers with your mindset that I won't be giving any positives back under those circumstances and I will be very reluctant to ever deal with a seller who operates in a confrontational manner like that. With all due respect Sir I hardly think your mode of operation is justified. I personally have only ever given out one negative in all the time I've been on Ebay. That is because for 6 weeks I couldn't get the seller to send me the item ( I had already paid for) and for 6 weeks they would not respond to my e-mails. That was the only time I ever resorted to that measure. When us buyers play fair why can't you sellers play fair?
 
JD,

You are suggesting that a seller should leave positive feedback as soon as the buyer pays. That's about as sensible as a buyer leaving feedback as soon as the seller ships!

How can a seller rate a transaction until the transaction is over? Too many PITA immature buyers want a daily update, or they want me to file a USPS claim 3 days after the package was sent. That type of nonsense doesn't merit a positive feedback IMHO.

whitie
 
JD Spydo said:
OK the very minute the auction is over I pay you with Paypal in full. Haven't I fulfilled my obligation to you? Didn't I pay for the item lightning fast?
Click to expand...

Although I'm not entirely sure I like the feedback withholding that some sellers do, I can understand why some of them do it. It isn't necessarily so they can retaliate.

I see feedback as evaluation the transaction overall. A buyer can pay right away but the seller may end up having a horrible time with them. For example, they may claim the item was lost in the mail when you can in fact prove that they received it. They may try to swap an item out on you and return it. They may attempt to return the item because they regret their impulse buy and then get nasty with you when you don't accept it.

You get the picture... Sometimes sellers do it for this reason. Unfortunately, at times the buyer has a very legitimate reason to leave a negative but doesn't because some sellers will hit them back. It's a double-edged sword.
 
Well the 2 of you make pretty good points. I just never have ever sent a knife or any item back to a seller. With the exception of the 2 sellers who lied about them being new when indeed they were not. I guess I am in the habit of doing things honestly and above board and maybe just can't relate to some of the stuff you guys have apparently encountered. GEE! I guess it's more rotten out there than I thought.

I guess maybe the bottom line to all of this is that if Ebay with all the billions of dollars that they are making off of this it seems like they ought to put their heads together and devise a better way of rating buyers & sellers. OK your points are well taken. But I do not do sellers that way. So I guess it would serve both people well if they would oversee what is going on a little better. I had a dispute with Paypal ( which is owned by Ebay) once. It took me 2 days before I was able to get a human being on the phone. There is no excuse for that with the money that they make.
 
JD,

There probably isn't a foolproof way to rate sellers on e-bay. My radar goes off if the seller has a ton of feedbacks with anything less than a 99.8% rating. I can think of one guy in particular with a 98.6% rating that is about as rude of a jerk as I've run across. A seller with a 99% rating and 10,000 feedbacks is to be avoided IMHO. To me, it's worth spending the extra $$ buying from a dealer if you aren't sure about an e-bay seller.

Guys like you that prefer positive feedback right away are generally honest, professional folks. I wish all sellers were like you - ebay would be better for everybody.

whitie
 
In the last nine months alone:

1. I bought a Scout knife that was represented as "very good condition" and "no cracks in scales." The pictures were backlit, but the seller had good FB record. When the knife arrived, all four "blades" were badly piitted and both scales had obvious cracks. The punch could only be opened by using a tool of some kind. When I politely asked the seller to take the item back, he told me it was sold "as is." That was incorrect both practically and legally since he made specific representations of condition that were clearly inaccurate. That is a sale by description, not "as is." After two months with no satisfaction, I had to resort to contesting the charge with Discover. He then gave me negative feedback.

2. I bought a Cub Scout knife that was represented as "both locks work well." Pictures simply do not tell you if that is true. On arrival, neither lock worked at all. For what followed, see above.

3. I bought a Scout knife that was represented as "excellent." The pictures were cloudy, but the seller had a good FB record. On arrival, all four blades were rusted shut. After the seller ignored my request to reverse the tranasaction, I simply gave up. He did not give me feedback of any kind.

I each case, I paid within one hour of "winning" the auction. I usually do better than that.

In each case, eBay would do nothing.

I would NEVER buy a folding knife on eBay unless: a) the seller has a 99.9% FB record or better; b) payment by credit card is allowed; c) the knife is new.

I have puchased fixed-blade knives on eBay that were misrepresented as to condition and even length (by 1"), and the sellers would not take the items back. However, by the nature of the items (no working parts), you can better protect yourself.

While I have no doubt that there are dishonest buyers who resort to eBay, there are sellers on eBay, enabled by eBay/PayPal, who make the place a stench in the nostrils of honest men. The misrepresentations are rampant.

I have never had a problem of any kind with a purchase from BF or the other place.
 
whitie said:
JD,

You are suggesting that a seller should leave positive feedback as soon as the buyer pays. That's about as sensible as a buyer leaving feedback as soon as the seller ships!
.

whitie
Click to expand...

Those two examples are not similar.
When the seller gets his payment,he's got what he was after.
The buyer isn't sure he got what he was after until he receives the item and is satisfied that it was described accurately in the ad.
That's a big difference !!!!
 
Those two examples are not similar.
When the seller gets his payment,he's got what he was after.
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Really, the seller is only entitled to payment?? That's short-sighted IMHO and an unreasonable expectation. Try being a seller for a while and maybe you'll see things differently.

Tom, your experiences and my own are exactly why I don't buy anything used on ebay. I've been screwed over enough by unscrupulous ebay sellers that eventually I wised up.

whitie
 
whitie said:
I've been screwed over enough by unscrupulous ebay sellers that eventually I wised up. whitie
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Isn't that amazing, the common saying, "oh I'll just dump it on ebay then". I've seen that a bunch of times in conversation even on BF here as well (from some), kind of a sad general insight into how some people tick, "if it goes to someone that doesn't know me, I didn't hurt anybody". Yeah it does...

Those descriptions of misrepresentation above (just a sample, for sure), criminal, and the attitude and feedback retaliations, double criminal.

Fortunately the one time I got boned, I made the seller make it right with me.

I'm a believer in very full disclosure of flaws, or fix it before you let it go, and don't try for highest dollar if something is wrong with the piece. I've sent people extras they didn't expect if I thought they paid too much on an auction.

Some of those ebay sellers need to realize, even based on greed, treating others like you'd like to be on the receiving end is the only way to move forward without a bunch of unfinished baggage following around. The money is temporary, the marks left by the erosion of deceit, those tend to stick with a person...

Frank H.
 
I'm a believer in very full disclosure of flaws, or fix it before you let it go, and don't try for highest dollar if something is wrong with the piece. I've sent people extras they didn't expect if I thought they paid too much on an auction.
Click to expand...


Frank-H, it's not clear who or what you are talking about. I've reduced prices by hundreds of dollars after people grossly overbid. I've also paid shipping and included NIB Ka-Bar or Cold Steel knives when merrited. Military folks sometimes don't have to pay for anything at all. I spent thousands on my camera so I can give clear evidence of condition when I sell on e-bay. Unless the seller can improve content, any auction with crappy pics or a vague description is to be avoided IMHO.

whitie
 
Ok Guys I didn't mean this to become a shouting match. And I know that a lot of you have a legitimate reason to shout as do I. But I must admit that I personally stand somewhat corrected in some of the assumptions I made. But that's one of the main reasons for bring this to surface. I want to learn from this as well. If I can be helpful to sellers I buy from I will be more than happy to. But it is like I said: I deal/trade and correspond in a mode of complete honesty because that's the way I was raised. And I believe that probably 95% of the good Brothers/Sisters here on Bladeforums are of like mind in that regard.

My reason for launching this thread was to get the thoughts and ideas of a few of us together and see if we can fix a problem or improve a situation that undoubtedly many of us knife aficionados have run into. It's like this one Brother just said: We all want to be treated decently in our dealings. With Ebay you are really sticking your neck out to a degree. And a lot of unscrupulous sellers use Ebay as a "dumping ground" like the one Brother eluded to. I just think it would be simple to gather information to compile a profile of sorts on Ebay sellers that would hopefully de-motivate them from being un-ethical. That way all of us Forum Brothers wouldn't get tagged twice and we could forewarn other good Forum Brothers/Sisters about these sellers with the scrupples of a cockroach.

I personally would always give the seller a chance to make something right before I would tarnish his name. But like that one seller who even takes people's money before he even has the goods in hand is just outright un-ethical. My girlfriend is still waiting for her knife that she won from him almost a month ago. That's inexcusable:mad: . That seller should at least be suspended for doing such crap. But maybe Whitie is right. Maybe there is no real proficient way to rate sellers. But I just believe if we put our heads together and expose these jerks we can sure make them uncomfortable. IF there's a will; there's a way. ;)
 
whitie said:
Frank-H, it's not clear who or what you are talking about. I've reduced prices by hundreds of dollars after people grossly overbid. whitie
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Hi Whitie, sorry if I was unclear, I was basically just agreeing with the rant on those who take advantage of others on ebay, it's very clear you're not one of those guys. Sorry if it seemed there was any inference to that effect, I meant to be chiming in on the concept of being on the short end of the stick as a buyer when a seller isn't being honest, I didn't mean to infer you weren't a great seller. And sellers, just like you said, can be dragged around the block by a goofy or unreasonable buyer, or a feedback retaliator.

I wish all sellers had the sense of fairness you've described. It's a pisser when one is on the receiving end of a seller thinking they can treat any buyer as a "mark" at a carnival. I know this has been covered before, but also one of my pieves is getting a knife shipped in a cheasy brown envelope. Man....

Frank H.
 
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