I to, have been a happy seller for eight of the past 10 years. The EBAY that I once knew is dead and gone. Their corporate policies, search processes and rules clearly indicate that the once mighty EBAY (the last frontier) has forgotten what made them great. The trust, fairness, truth and cooperation we saw from the corporation down through the small time buyer is gone. It died in 2008 with the new DSR ratings and the altered Feedback system.

EBAT has forgotten that their customers are the sellers and the buyers are the sellers customer. The eBay seller is the only paying customer that they have. Now with the new insane rules and the heavy hand of the EBAT Policy Enforcers they are quickly killing their good sellers.

EBAT has forgotten they to need to respond to their customers, the sellers, the life’s blood to the eBay business with fair, friendly and courteous service. Right now EBAT has lost their way and is now wondering in the wilderness without a flashlight or a compass.

One last comment. If eBay does not wake up soon and realize that the sellers need to make a profit to pay their fees. They will die, falling victim to corporate greed and bad customer service. When the sellers leave there will be nothing to buy or regulate. Their income will be ZERO! And it will be well deserved!

Rare items come from some of the most ratty, out of the way places and their inhabitants. If a persons life isnt quite together and they take a week to ship an item… fine. Better that than ebay punishes them, they become discouraged, and their precious items go into the compactor.

The best gravy is full of lumps and I WANT the lumps or at least the choice of whether or not to sift. There should be two buttons in search. Google has them… if I was presented with Safe Search and Unsafe Search I’d click Unsafe.

EVERY TIME!

I loved the early days when everything was handled between the buyer and seller. Who hasn’t received something that didn’t work or was the wrong color? (from a major retailer). You don’t bash them, you return it.

As ebay continues the push to make the buyer happy they are getting more and more demanding and the ebay experience continues to deteriorate for everyone.

Think about it this way — if the next buyer and the buyer after that also have items arrive damaged and the seller has to give out even more partial refunds then the seller isn’t going to be in business very long. There is no need to leave negative feedback if the seller handles the transaction responsible, as was done in this case. The only reason I can see for leaving negative feedback, as Debbie suggests, is to further “punish” the seller for making the mistake in the first place; a mistake which the seller then corrected. It is EXACTLY that kind of thinking that has made eBay the hostile place that it is today.

I can’t think of any seller who would INTENTIONALLY package poorly so that their item arrived damaged. To leave negative feedback for the seller who gave a refund for the damaged items seems counter-intuitive. That seller would then be even LESS likely to act responsibily next time; they would say to themselves “Wow, I gave the buyer a refund for the broken items and I STILL got a negative… what is the point in trying to do the right thing if I am still going to be “punished”?”

A little empathy and a lot of common sense could go a long way in making the buyer-seller relationship so much better.

I do believe in bad ratings for not good sellers. I don’t believe in bad ratings out of spite, extortion, or bitchiness. But if someone shipped poorly and so on, I remember when feedback was supposed to mean feedback… input from your buyers on what you do well or could improve.

I hope the seller learned from your email, but if the next person buys and they do it again, I’m not sure you’ve helped anything by NOT leaving them some not-so-good ratings.