posted on September 3, 2000 08:01:38 PM
AW gets the occasional thread on ,"The Seller did this, how should I respond with feedback?" A number of Seller/Buyers insist that you should always give them a negative, no matter how inconsequential it seems. For instance, the Seller states that they ship within 3 days, buy instead ships it in 5 days. Some folks call for a negative because of this tiny fault. Others argue that it would be nice to write to the Seller and politely demand an explanation first, or just a polite Neutral Feedback stating the obvious fact.
Well, maybe we ought to give these Zero Tolerance people the benefit of the doubt for a moment. Let's turn this situation on its head and see how it plays out:
* If a Buyer is even 1 day late with payment, the sale is canceled (Seller's Right), a FVF filed for, a Negative Feedback placed into the Buyer's eBay record, a note sent to the Buyer telling them that they are forbidden from placing bids on the Seller's auctions anymore and that a copy has been sent to [email protected]. Any late payment gets refused and returned to the Buyer unopened.
* If a Buyer gets a Negative on their record - even one, Sellers will refuse to accept any bids from this person - unless the Negatives are obviously in retaliation.
So - no matter if there is a real death in the family and that made the payment a day late, no matter if the previous Negs were unjust - >>SLAM<< those Buyers! Remember, we're talking about a Zero Tolerance policy, just like the ones espoused by some folks on here.
What would that do?
The Bright Side would be that pretty soon, anyone placing a bid would send the money as soon as the auction was over and Sellers would get paid. Sellers would no longer have to deal with questionable Buyers because they won't be many - certainly none with a -1 feedback rating!
Sounds great to me! I can't think of any negatives in that sort of system! No more sending out pleading letters and reminders to pay. Deadbeats wouldn't last long as they'd get NARU'd the same day. What an unimaginable Heaven that would be! No More Seller Hassles, as it's the only way to "train" Buyers. Right?
Now don't you think that a Zero Tolerance policy towards Sellers is a great policy too?
posted on September 3, 2000 08:38:44 PM
Interesting thread problem is soon there would be no buyers. So I guess these zero tolerance sellers will shop with one another and then we get to see their ranks thin themselves out.
Then again can we have one for buyers to apply to sellers.
Sellers get the axe when they charge priority and ship parcel post. Sellers get the axe when they fail to answer email questions prior to auction close. Sellers get the axe when they sell three items that don't meet the description. Sellers get the axe whe the routinely cancel auctions when the price isn't to their liking.
What we have left is a select group of sellers servicing a select group of buyers.
posted on September 20, 2000 02:59:48 PM
If someone obviously has negative feedback, then that's one thing. But sometimes problems arise and someone might have great overall feedback (with a couple of negatives). I don't think those people should be punished.
posted on September 20, 2000 03:13:04 PM
Hey, I'll take all of those imperfect buyers off your hands. You can have the perfect one (if you can find him or her).
posted on September 20, 2000 09:09:52 PM A number of Seller/Buyers insist that you should always give them a negative, no matter how inconsequential it seems.
I noticed too, a little band of neggies. However, sometimes through their posts I have been able to determine who they are on ebay, and you know what?
I think they are not the neggies they want you to think they are!
Sure, it is easy to put up a tough stand on a board where no one knows you. But what do they really do?
Maybe because of what I sell, maybe because of my attitude, but I don't have very many bad situations. Very few deadbeats.
I move on, no negs, sorry, I am not going to get into that spitting war. The time and stress a neg war brings on is not worth my effort. The bidder just reregisters under a new ID anyway, what does it prove?
Sellers, If you have to get into a neging war or have a lot of deadbeats, maybe the first place you should look is your own attitude.
posted on September 21, 2000 03:18:20 PM
Thank you for posting some new replies to this thread. This thread is a bit out of date concerning the matters that it was addressing at the time here on AW, yet it is still pertinent in my view.
Of course, I don't advocate such a stiff attitude towards others. Accidents happen, people plain forget things, sh*t happens. To expect your Seller to be more than human is unreasonable in my honest opinion. Truely, there is a difference between being human and being really negligent. I think that it is always better to work with a person first before you put any black marks on their record.
My main concern is that while these same AW posters probably insisted on such an attitude, there are always new Sellers and Buyers that lurk on AW that might not be bright enough to see the petty playing as anything but the absolute truth. Don't we have enough insensitive jerks on eBay right now without creating any new ones?
A recent example: A lady won one pair of earrings from me and then a week later, won a different pair. She claims to have sent a money order for the first, but I only received the second payment. When the first payment is six weeks late and my pleas to the buyer seldom get answered, I had to file FVF on it before it was too late. This prompted the buyer to send another money order, this time by Priority Mail. She also let me know that it was on its way again and apologized for waiting so long. She did so because she was hoping the first payment would eventually show up.
When I received the Priority mail, I noticed that the the package had been tampered with. Someone had taken a wide felt-tip black marker pen and covered up our ZIP code. The Buyer wouldn't do that (she was timely with the second payment after all), so someone was obviously tampering with her mail and I let her know about it (our mail goes to a US PO Box). I then gave her Positive Feedback, as this absolutely wasn't her fault and she had acted in good faith.
Had I used the attitude that some on AW have maybe jokingly expressed about a Zero Tolerance in dealing with others, would a Negative Feedback for this Buyer have been fair?
I have more stories like this one. I don't treat Sellers any differently than I do my Buyers. I treat them as Human Beings first, jerks second.
