posted on September 28, 2000 03:47:56 PM
Why is it so difficult to get feedback from sellers ? I pay by either western union money order, or recently use pay pal.I send money out day after notification of total cost including freight.Generally this whole transaction takes about 7-10 days depending on locations.By this time frame , i mean me sending money and receiving order. i have left feedback for sellers, but get nothing in return, sometimes i dont even get a response from my e mails.Problem is, is that, some sellers wont take a bid from you unless your feedback is at a certain figure.Any advice??
posted on September 28, 2000 04:20:31 PM
Make some guidelines for yourself. If a seller won't take your bid unless you have a certain amount of feedback, then they really don't need to make the sale do they? Sellers not bothering to answer emails? Just another example of poor customer service. I know that some sellers consider selling on ebay a hobby, and are lax about having a professional attitude, but isn't it worth doing right? I think it is.
I leave feedback for every payment that I receive, no matter what. I just consider it to be good business and good will towards the buyer(s). I answer EVERY buyer email I get, even the ones that really add nothing to the transaction. It costs me a whole 20 seconds to give a reply that lets them know that they are being heard. I know your post is from a buyers point of view, but doesn't it feel good when a seller pays attention to your needs and concerns, rather than leave you scratching your head when they ignore you? This is the very basis of customer service as far as I am concerned, and you should avoid sellers that drop clues about how they handle biz, e.g. feedback, etc.
cintar- By the way you describe how you handle your purchases on ebay, I would most definetly consider you to be a dream buyer! Any seller in their right mind shouldn't have a problem with leaving you feedback for such attentivness. Don't change the way YOU do biz, just look for those sellers that do things more like YOU do. The rest will fall away due to their neglecting their buyers, in time.
posted on September 28, 2000 04:25:53 PM"some sellers wont take a bid from you unless your feedback is at a certain figure"
Take a little bit of consolation in the fact that those sellers lose a lot of good customers with the tactic of letting other sellers validate buyers for them. My policy is simple, as a seller I leave feedback on receipt of payment, I make no requirements for the buyer to be happy with the item. As a buyer I leave feedback if I'm happy and only if the seller has left prior feedback.
posted on September 28, 2000 05:02:45 PM
Cintar: This has worked pretty well for me: When the item I've ordered arrives, I leave feedback for the seller, then e-mail the seller that the item arrived in perfect condition, thank you very much etc., I've left +feedback and would appreciate their doing the same for me. I make sure the subject line includes the item name and number.
There are still a few (but very few) sellers who ignore everything, but I think mostly it's that people are sooo busy they don't want to look up in their records who you are and what you bought. If you make it super easy for them, they have really no excuse.
posted on September 28, 2000 05:04:01 PM
UARU wrote:
>>. As a buyer I leave feedback if I'm happy and only if the seller has left prior feedback. <<
Yup, the only smart way to do it. If a Seller (or Buyer, probably) deserves a neutral or a negative, you risk feedback retaliation by leaving feedback first. Sad, but true. Just another thing that IMO ebay could come up with creative ways to *fix* something that's obviously broken.
posted on September 29, 2000 12:10:52 AM
I am so busy that it is just all I can do to get the stuff shipped before the UPS and Post Office close. I always answer e-mails and I always return feedback for those who leave it or ask for it in their payment. I OFTEN get payments that say what they are for but do not give any clue as to the user name or e-mail address. As I sell a lot of identical items at Dutch auction it is impossible to guess which of 10 buyers this one might be.
posted on September 29, 2000 01:15:43 AM
As a seller, I post feedback first. When I receive payment, and the item is shipped, in my opinion my part of the transaction is over, and the bidder deserves the first feedback.
Not posting it first makes the seller look like they are saving it for retaliation for a neg. This is not the purpose of feedback.
When I mail a package I send an email stating that the package was mailed on x date and I have just posted postitive feedback for the person on ebay.
One seller that I have bought $500.00 worth of merchandise from their web site was fantastic to work with. 6 months later I bid on one item and I get a great email, Hi Kelly, how have you been. I send payment, and when the package came, not packaged well, which also surprised me. There was a zeroxed copy of a form letter - Thanks for bidding. please notify us through email so that we know the transaction has been completed, and we can exchange feedback.
I didn't leave any.
All of my successfull bidders get positive feedback.
posted on September 29, 2000 06:56:53 AM
I totally agree with kellyb1. I go through the exact process she does as a seller.
I think it's worth the time to send the e-mail after payment is received and the package is on its way. I truly believe buyers respect a seller more who takes the time to communicate with them.
I have purchased items from powersellers, and in most instances I don't think they really care at all, other than to make the sale. The majority of them (in my case) have not left feedback and never send e-mails once the payment has received them.
Although, I was pleased with one powerseller, who was courteous enough to send an e-mail letting me know payment got there and package was on its way.
As a buyer, don't you just like sellers like that? I mean, I know it makes me feel alot more comfortable doing business with someone who takes the time to keep me informed.
Anyway, I think communication is key. I don't worry about others who don't leave feedback. If a month goes by and still nothing, I can only assume they've received the item and aren't unhappy, since they haven't left neutral or negative feedback.
As long as you know you've done your part, and have done a good job, no sweat.
posted on September 29, 2000 08:02:16 AM
One seller sent me a Thank You card from blue mountain greetings. It had a line of rats dancing or something and it was so funny that I left her feedback immediately! I asked her about it later and she said she gets 99.9% fb. She has a fb rating of over 1000 all positive. I know she has teenagers and my guess is she pays one of them a nickel a card or something to send them out. I've since tried this and received nothing but positive responses. However, both of us sell almost exclusively to females, I don't know how men would feel about this.
posted on September 29, 2000 08:08:31 AM
This subject is a toss-up. I'm a buyer; I've made 69 purchases on eBay since Oct. 1999 and left 69 FB, all positive. I've received 55 FB, all positive, from those 69 sellers. While I have received nice FB from Powersellers, the 14 sellers who didn't leave FB for me were almost all Powersellers. I suspected from the start that they wouldn't leave FB, no matter what I did or didn't do, because these were obviously businesses, not individuals. So I decided at some point to steer away from these impersonal, warehouse-like sellers, because half the fun of eBay is dealing with the people. (One Powerseller even e-mailed me a form to fill out if I wanted FB from him/her; I filled it out, and surprise, no FB ever appeared.)
Conversely, my sister is a seller. She has listed over 1,300 items since early 1999 and has left 1,300 FB. In return, she has received nearly 900 positive FB, 3 neutrals and 1 neg (from a crackpot who was soon kicked off eBay). What happened to the FB from 400+ buyers? They were all happy with their purchases and told her so, but never left FB.
So the FB subject goes both ways. I was amazed but philosophical when a seller with whom I'd had an interesting e-mail correspondence (she told me her entire life story right down to the kidney transplant) and from whom I bought several pieces of fairly costly jewelry never left FB for me. She was sort of a ditz so I thought about contacting her, gently, to ask if she had seen my FB for her, etc. But then I thought...that is tacky. So I checked how much feedback she had left; turned out she had sales of nearly 200 and had left FB only 10 times, and that for items she had purchased, not sold.
I guess the point of all this is: you win some, you lose some. It doesn't really matter to me who leaves FB first, the buyer or the seller. As a buyer, I'm inclined to think that a seller shouldn't leave FB until the transaction is complete; that is, I have the item and am pleased with it. If we're both happy, let's both leave FB. I won't play "You go first; no, you go first." Someone has to blink! But some sellers, I've observed, have gotten themselves trapped by leaving pos FB upon receipt of payment, only to have the buyer become a problem deserving of very neg FB.
posted on September 29, 2000 07:48:47 PM
thanks everyone for your input. today i did receive one pos feedback, out of three purchases. havent heard from the other two. sword 013 your right about feeling special when a seller seems to be concerned about your needs. i guess ive just been running into the wrong sellers. i just started to sell on ebay myself and i guess i will receive another education. thanks again.
