Look, I'm not going to write 1,000 words on why Ebay sucks. I happen to like Ebay and it feeds the three things I happen to collect. That being said, I'm a process guy and their feedback system is a large pile of fresh steaming possum excrement on a cold night. You hear me Ebay? I'm talking to you! Will it do any good to rant and rave here for 60 people to read? No. However, it might help if you send this link to people you know who Ebay or potentially work for Ebay....otherwise known as E Money Whores who do not care about the people who make them their money.
My name is Still A Fan....this is my story. I'm not going to wax poetic. I'm going to stick to the facts. I joined Ebay in 2001. I have 480 feedbacks, 479 of which are positive. I both sell and buy. Two weeks ago Mrs. Fan asked me to sell some old items that were too valuable to toss. One item was a Motorola Pink Razr with the booklet, 2 wall chargers, 2 car charges and a holster. I've been burned before by people who buy something and then wait forever to pay. I list on all of my items that Paypal payment is due within 3 days of auction end or I will relist the item. It also says in all caps "NO EXCEPTIONS".
My lot of 6 items sold all within an hour of each other. I received 5 payments within another hour or so. No payment on the phone. I prepared 5 shipping labels and packaged the items up wanting to take them all to the PO at once or schedule a pickup at my house, again all at once. I still had no payment on the phone 3.5 days later and had not heard from the winner. I sent a reminder from Ebay on day 2. Oh well. I wasn't going to do two of anything because of one slacker so I offered the phone to the second highest bidder using the second chance feature. The individual snapped it up for $1 less and paid immediately. Superb! I scheduled the pickup of my items for the next day.
The next day I received an email that I got a payment of $34 to paypal. Yup, now the original buyer sent payment. I refunded the payment immediately and sent a nice email explaining that she missed my deadline and I sold the phone to the next highest bidder. I didn't just yank the carpet - I told her I was sorry, that I had explicit terms that she didn't follow and that I had no idea if I would ever hear from her so I allowed someone else who bid $1 less to buy it before they lost interest and I lost a sale.
I received an email back that read like it was written by a person in the third grade. It said I was wrong. They paid in the time limit and that I would receive negative feedback and have a case opened against me. No chance to reply. I flipped over to Ebay and there was the negative feedback already. One thing Ebay tries to do before you leave negative feedback is make sure you tried all avenues first to settle between parties. The feedback said I wasn't happy with what I sold it for so I was relisting to gain more money - watch out! I found this amusing as using the second chance offer button by nature is taking less money for an item.
I immediately sent her an email back explaining myself again and I sent her a one time only request from Ebay to cancel the transaction which would erase the feedback as well. She refused and said she paid in time. Bitch! I screen printed the listing with my rules on it, the date the auction ended and the date I received payment and sent it all to her. Now I didn't get a reply. Again, BITCH! I sent an email to customer service for feedback removal. I replied to her feedback on my page swallowing hard not to get nasty and explained myself.
Ebay sent me a form reply saying my case doesn't merit feedback removal as she broke no specific rule they have. They said I could also send her a 1 chance only feedback edit opportunity and explain myself. She denied the chance, of course, that BITCH. I replied to ebay and told them to escalate to a manager, to look at my rule I posted, look at the end date and look at the payment date and then tell me HOW they can allow someone to leave negative feedback and a LIE about a 9 year user with close to 500 transactions and a 100% feedback rating. They apologized profusely but said again she broke no specific rule of theirs.
I tried one last time in a plea offering up that there should be special cases, just like this, where rules are posted and broken where a user shouldn't be allowed to post negatively when they screwed up. I even asked how it was possible for her to leave feedback for me after the item was retracted and sold to someone else? They said I could have gone through the process to cancel the transaction with this buyer first. WTF? The whole reason I have the 3 day rule is to expedite the process of packing and shipping. When we first started selling, I would batch 10 items up and sell them and we would get payments in via paypal and snail mail over the next 2 weeks making it impossible to make one shipment. If selling is going to work for me, I need to be able to sell x items and ship x items together. Plus, this individual swine was not going to cancel anything. I sent that back to them and have yet to hear.
I did take the opportunity to send her one more email. I had her name and address and I even Goggle stalked her to see if I could see her stupid face. Alas, I could not. I also don't want to be too big of a jerk in case her significant other is a 6' 8" ogre with an attitude. I basically told her how small of a person she is for realizing she's wrong and not doing anything to correct the situation. She looks like an idiot because the person who bought the phone for less is 2 items above her on my feedback list and it shows the price as being less than the original sale.
In a nutshell, an Ebay user of 1.5 years bought something from an Ebay user of 9 years, didn't follow the seller's instructions, lost the deal because of it, and then still has a "right" to enter negative feedback about the seller and her stupid opinion about why I did it. I would have accepted negative feedback if the comment said "His payment demands suck and should be extended".
Lastly, to prove what a mental giant she is, I went to her mypage. You can leave reviews for items you buy so that when the next person is looking for a phone, they can read about what others say about Pink Motorola Razrs. She left 1 review so I read it. Guess what? It's about me! Instead of reviewing the phone, she reviewed the "sale" and suggested I be banned from Ebay for what I tried to do to her. LOL. What an idiot. She is either in denial, or can't actually process the order the events and what really went down. I think it's the latter. Some people say "Do not bid on my items if you have less than 10 transactions". They need a button that says "Do not bid on my items if your IQ is less than 100".
I will now put on my work hat and suggest to ebay that before accepting a deal or finalizing a buy - the buyer gets a box to check that says "I understand and accept the seller's payment requirements". I almost blame Ebay more than the user. They could absolutely take special cases into consideration or choose to look harder into issues when a user replies to the same help ticket multiple times. I agree you can't police all the feedback - it's impossible. But added to the profanity and personal abuse policy should be some defined area where they get involved.....especially if it's someone's first negative and they have over - oh i don't know - 450 positives?
