The GOOD eBay Buyer Perspective...

This is the post a wrote a few weeks back and stuck on blogs. eBay is only going to listen to the buyers. So I honestly believe every good seller out there who is also a buyer, needs to be yelling at eBay.......as a buyer. How many of you that sell, buy where you sell? I would easily buy 20-100 things per month on eBay for my friends and family...whatever the occasion...no more.

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Buyers are not comprehending how this will severely effect us as well. There are many indicators showing this will be disastrous for the buying community. I have been buying weekly for over 7 years on eBay. The clues are very clear. What negatively effects the good sellers will also negatively effect the good buyers. eBay is in fact throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

******Good buyers will no longer stand out among the bad. This means every seller will be leery of every buyer, going into every sale, and rightfully so. The greens we have worked so hard for will mean absolutely nothing since the greens will have to be given to anyone no matter how little they deserved it.

*Who is wearing a good guy dot?? As a buyer, I will no longer be able to see the true indicators and decide for myself who is telling the truth and who is just retaliating in spite with no warrant. The new system will make it impossible to see both sides of the story. IT IS NOT HARD to read through both sides, red & green, and come up with a clear view of the whole picture. In 7 years I have had very few truly bad experiences as a buyer but while shopping and checking fb, I see retaliatory feedback from BUYERS daily over things that give no reason to neg the seller.

How are we supposed to weed through the number of neutrals and negs every good seller will get due to overly demanding buyers who want things at yard sale prices with Saks customer service? It is already happening. Sellers are already posting on the eBay boards about buyers who are leaving undue neutrals and negs. In return, OF COURSE the seller is negging them, the buyer deserves it but the buyers are in shock the seller was able to leave the TRUTH.

Just because a seller leaved fb second does not mean it is in retaliation. A large percentage of the time it means the seller was negged first for something they could not control or blamed for the buyer’s stupidity and now there is reason to warn the rest of the eBay community. It always was the only seller recourse. This whole system will make it quite hard to see the truth. eBay is trying to say this will promote honesty , it will produce anything but. Buyers will not truly be able to see who is in fact *bad.*….. Why????…..

As a buyer, when I go in to leave feedback and use eBay’s “Detailed Seller Rating Stars=DSR; which was implemented recently, not only does that system not tell the seller what they could have possibly done wrong, so they can fix their behavior or show if there is merit to the claim, it allows buyers to ding anyone they want no matter what.

Independent studies taken over the years have shown that people will take advantage of a situation if they can….and now they can. Now, if a seller does not give a buyer their little green dot as fast as the buyer wants it, whether they deserved it or not, there is no reason to hold back by the buyer. Every buyer can easily neg a seller just for that without seller recourse. This is not only unfair, the new ratings eBay has sellers meet are totally unrealistic. Sellers are now calculated on DSR, feedback, including neutrals, any paypal claims, no matter how unwarranted and percentage of sales in a 30 day period. Sellers have to uphold a 95% satisfaction rate calculated over 30 days. WHAT business in the world succeeds at this?? Small, good sellers, we want to buy from will now be very easy targets for scamming buyers and we, the buyer lose out.

****Ebay is telling the buyers one thing and the seller another; When I click my choices out of 5 stars, if I give a seller ratings that equals = good communication, as advertised, reasonable shipping / handling charges and quick shipping = this equals 4 stars. This sounds to me like a very good seller. This should sound like a very good seller in any market. This seller delivered everything as advertised, emailed great, did not scam me on shipping, and packed my widget just fine, PERFECT……..not so according to eBay…

**** The new ratings set good sellers up for failure. eBay is telling buyers while making the selection that a 4.0 is very good, but then telling the buyer to view that rating as bad while telling sellers that a 4 star rating is .5 lower than the minimum requirements to be on eBay.. eBay is making sellers adhere to a 4.5 rating at the least or their account can be flagged and power sellers will not qualify for discounts on fees unless they keep 4.6 or 4.8 and higher. How is this at all realistic? Any business model, having a 90% customer satisfaction rate is actually quite good. Amazon only has an 86% satisfaction rating, yet eBay wants to be the next Amazon?? Do you see the confusion and hypocrisy here? eBay has set sellers up to an unattainable goal while being the target for buyer mood, which will give a totally false view on the seller's intentions and performance making it very difficult to truly find the good sellers.

****Items will be impossible to find if seller ratings drop. Ebay has said that if seller’s ratings drop, they will make their items harder to find in the searches. So your favorite sellers can be targeted, lose ratings and then buyers will have a harder time finding their items in search. Which means your favorite seller can be harder to find for others and end up leaving eBay. Is this fair??

Not only that; to show you how ebay's standards for sellers to uphold are impossible and insane, it shows ebay's total dissatisfaction rate is no worse than J.C Penney. The HIGHEST rating by Netflix falls short by a whole 5%, for ebay standards.

Based on Neilson ratings, eBay is already in the TOP 10 marketplace list of customer satisfaction sites…but that isn’t good enough for eBay…..yet their ratings system does not match the actual numbers…again, hypocrisy.

Here are customer satisfaction ratings for popular shopping sites:

http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=24861

"iNielsen Online, a unit of The Nielsen Company, reported that 82% of online shoppers surveyed were very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with customer support available during their online shopping experience. The data were gathered Dec. 13 – 17 from an online survey of nearly 900 shoppers. But in Foresee Results’ ongoing customer satisfaction index satisfaction with the Top 40 online retailers, as ranked by Internet Retailer on sales volume, scored an aggregate 74 on a 100-point scale, down 1.3 points from last year. The Nielsen Online survey found that 46% of those surveyed had done the majority of their holiday shopping online. 46% also was the percentage of respondents who said they planned to post, or had already posted, reviews about their online shopping experience. Most, 88%, said that their reviews were or would be positive.

The 10 top-ranked online retailers in Nielsen’s report all earned "very satisfied" ratings from more than 80% of respondents. They are Netflix.com, which garnered "very satisfied" ratings from 90.3% of those surveyed; NexTag.com, 87%; Amazon.com, 86.6%; Shopping.Yahoo.com, 84.3%; Kohls.com, 84.1%; BarnesandNoble.com, 82.8%; HomeDepot.com, 82.5%; CircuitCity.com, 82%; eBay.com, 80.5%; and JCPenney.com, 80.3%."


***** Good Mom & Pops will be gone taking their service and goods with them. Do you like buying from mom & pops? Low volume sellers are an easy target. A bad mood buyer can see one neg and use that against the seller knowing two can possibly freeze the seller's account The new rules have also set small time good sellers up to fail so severely many good sellers we buy from will not be able to compete and stay, making the discounts we currently rely on gone, which will effect our wallets and quality of life.

I frequently buy high quality goods on eBay at 65% off or more for my family and friends. Those days can easily be numbered and it will effect my entire family community. I find it interesting that the majority of sellers people claim about most are high volume power sellers, but these are exactly the type of sellers who will be able to stay, pushing all the good, small sellers out quickly. Yes, there are many high volume power sellers that will be forced to leave…but along with them are the low volume, one of a kind sellers we have grown to love.

***** Prices will go up to cover losses. Many sellers will also be forced to raise their prices to make up for the fee increases. While high dollar figure sales many not be effected much, this has crippled the $25 and under items which add up to millions of sales each day. Millions of buyers come to eBay to find that great deal or hard to find widget. These new rules will squeeze those out. Buyers will be forced to find their widgets in town or other venues they are not familiar using.

***** Hard to find collectibles will be expensive and even more hard to find. With all the above in place; hard to find widgets will go up in price. If many sellers leave, that means the items are going with them, which means there will be fewer to choose from, which means the prices to us will increase. Start planning on paying $250 at an Antique Mall again for that Bauer bowl you could buy for $40 on eBay over the past two years. This will effect many collectible markets and buyer pockets.

***** Forget about ever selling. Are you buyers thinking of selling? It will be too expensive, too risky, to stressful to even consider selling for buyers. New sellers will automatically go into the new stricter rules, with all sellers under 100 feedback automatically having to take Paypal or CC merchant with your account on aware status. Paypal is also raising their fees as well. You are automatically looked at as a fraud. This has not only maybe put a damper on bad new sellers, this has put a damper on all good low volume, new sellers as well.

***** The convenience of paying easily will be gone. Many good sellers who will fear the arbitrary Paypal rules will go back to money orders only again due to eBay's new Paypal freezes and open season on fraud charge backs which is very high in the credit card world. If a seller account is flagged / Paypal account fund frozen, even for an undue reason, sellers will be required to take Paypal or other cc venue, but then they are open to more charge backs and more account freezing. This will be their only way to accept pay. It is a no win situation. Sellers will have no recourse for this. While big business can figure in loss, most of the sellers I buy from are family run side things and they offer great stuff.……. which means less easy buying for us buyers.

I have emailed many of my good sellers letting them know I can no longer do business on eBay and the majority had NO CLUE to what eBay was really doing! Everyone needs to complain, post blog, you tube, etc to get the word out about what this is truly doing. ebay is no more. eBay is a totally different , horrible, selfish venue. I for one cannot justify giving my business to a company that is destroying the very people that made eBay what it is today.

This new systems put the BAD buyers at a very clear advantage over ALL OF US, buyers included. This is a horrible system and if eBay does not retract, I will take my business for my family of 6 elsewhere.


Here are VERY GOOD you tube videos explaining the issues & giving us back our power!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FOXbSJ82aA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23TomS5--nQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6rKIZv9lP4&NR=1


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Jzc1V_1gC0



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