posted on May 20, 2002 09:17:42 AM new
I just need to get this off my chest....
I have not listed anything on Yahoo for almost a month. I'm still waiting to be paid on several of my last auctions!!!!!
I started through the hoops that we must go through to get our "shared revenue" back and I have one bidder who doesn't seem to care as I have not heard a thing. Even after posting my 1st NEG ever. She has 10 already, but is still bidding. It seems she bids/wins/then chooses which to pay for.
I have another one who won and responded to my EOA that payment would be made by PP the next morning. A week later, I email about it and get told that her bank messed up her account and she can't make a PP payment now, but she will send a MO. I wait 10 days and email again. Get another story. Wait another 10 days and send the first "complaint". Get a respose I will pay when my SS check comes in on the 3rd of May. I hate getting those kind of emails! I wait until the 10th, email again, get no respone so on 5/15 I esculate the "complaint". I got an email this AM where this person tells me that since she had not heard from ME, she thought I had just cancelled and relisted.
She told me that several other "experienced" sellers have told her that it's no biggy to cancel and re-list and it doesn't cost them anything to do that so why didn't I just do that? She went on to say that the email she received from Yahoo said that her ability to buy/sell on Yahoo is in jeopardy because of this one little miscommunication and since she plans on starting to sell (she needs the extra money especially since 9/11 because everything in her area has gotten so tight), she would greatly appreciate me notifying Yahoo that everything is OK and she promised that she would try and send me money to at least cover my FEES and she would leave me POSITIVE FB. Guess I know what to expect if I don't just let it go...
I emailed her back that I had spent $1.75 to list, $1.00 reserve fee(credited due to sale), $10.00 to feature (1/2 was credited because the item sold) and $2.00 in what Yahoo calls revenue sharing. So, I was out $8.75 on the auction and was she planning to pay all of that and we'll just call it a completed transaction? I added that if I just cancel her as the high bidder without filing the NPB alerts, I'm not sure if they will reverse the credits they have already given me and if they do, then I will be out $14.75 since I don't plan on re-listing on Yahoo at this time. I haven't heard anything back, yet....
Since she has mentioned several times now about other sellers having no problem just cancelling her bids and relisting, I believe she probably makes a habit of this and the other seller's just let it go.
Now, she is asking me to let it go. If she paid me my $8.75, I might be tempted to do so. I need the money. If I don't "ignore" it, I will probably get a NEG and she probably won't loose her "privileges" since Yahoo does state it's totally at their discretion whether to suspend a buyer for non-payment or not. I found that on their "facts" page about filing NPB alerts.
She'll keep pulling this stunt and some seller's will get paid and some won't. I truly hate the thought of my last FB received, and the one that will remain on top since I don't list there now, will be a NEG! Of course, if I don't list on Yahoo again it's no biggy, but if I do decide to try again later and my history shows no activity for several months and the last comment showing is a NEG, that sure won't help me get started again will it? Especially if the other non-payers I have filed on decide to add their NEGs too! Drives me crazy.
Maybe it should be MANDANTORY for all sellers to file the NPB alerts on every buyer who did not send payment within 30 days or the item couldn't be relisted and a NEG would automatically be given upon completion of a FVF refund. The only exceptions being muturally agreed upon non-completion of the transaction or if the transaction was completed and a refund was issued after the fact. Of course, they would need to add a couple of links to do that and they would have to make it a pretty visible "fact" maybe across the bottom of the closed auction and in the automated EOA Yahoo sends out:
IN AN EFFORT TO IMPROVE SUCCESSFUL TRANSACTIONS ON YAHOO, IF YOU DO NOT COMPLETE THIS TRANSACTION YOU WILL AUTOMATICALLY BE GIVEN A NEGATIVE BY YAHOO AUCTIONS WHEN THE SELLER FILES FOR CREDIT OF FEES AND/OR RE-LIST THIS ITEM.
If this was done, maybe we would get a true reading of what a buyer was really like and how hard could it be to put something like this in place.
Sorry this is so long and thank you if you made it to the end. I feel a little better now.
Sulyn
Former Yahoo Seller
edited for typos-please overlook any I may have missed...
[ edited by sulyn1950 on May 20, 2002 10:20 AM ]
posted on May 20, 2002 03:41:52 PM new
Yahoo and eBay are vastly different in many ways and one of them is feedback. It does seem that a lot of the sellers/bidders may have a high feedback rating yet have a LOT of negatives and they seem to bid away and then pay for only the items they really wish to pay for. The fees are so low that I simply neg the bad users and move on. Expect a few negs back occasionally and know that nobody cares about feedback on Yahoo anyway.
The sellers/bidders on eBay tend to be a classier lot than the sellers/bidders on Yahoo and the sellers/bidders on Yahoo tend to be a classier lot than sellers/bidders on the unknown third tier sites. I said "tend to be" as there are many excellent sellers/bidders on the third tier sites but on a whole the level of excellence tends to dip as you go from the higher traffic sites to the lower traffic sites.
That theory is sure to rile a few third tier site users but that is my expierence after four years of online auction selling.
posted on May 20, 2002 05:28:08 PM new
I have wondered how some sellers with such high NEG FB on Yahoo still seem to get bids and buyers are still able to bid. You could be right BidsBids, maybe most Yahoo users just don't care or haven't figured out what it's suppose to be used for.
This buyer did say in one of her last emails to me, that she wished I had just given her a NEG and not filed for my fees back which could mess up her account so she can't start selling. I'm sure she did, then she would not be out anything at all and obviously doesn't mind a NEG.
She also has not sent another email since I asked her if she was willing to cover ALL the fees incurred by this transaction if I cancel the escalated complaint. She had mentioned that if I cancelled the complaint, she would try and send enough to cover my fees. Somehow, the "try" word didn't give me much hope that I would ever see a penny and once the complaint is cancelled, I have just lost out.
I'd feel sorry for her if she hadn't of won and paid for several auctions (1 for over $400) since winning mine. She has received glowing FB from those paid sellers with comments like "super fast payer, one of the best on Yahoo". I think that's what really got under my skin. All I needed was $106! She couldn't pay me, but has managed to pay for several auctions with a total value well over $600!
posted on May 21, 2002 02:21:05 PM new
We've given up on Yahoo, and aren't listing there anymore, it's just a hopeless cause. We wish it wasn't, but they're just jerks at Yahoo! I don't know why they won't make even simple, sensible changes, I guess they actually like their site like that, and are happy to be beaten by ebay.
There was never any point to this whole fee re-structuring last fall, all it did was waste a lot of time and energy, and now after being burnt by Yahoo a second time, there isn't a lot of friendly feeling for them by most people. A lot of our customers quit Yahoo when they started the credit card verification thing, before they came out with the fees - after the fees started there were almost none left - and no one has returned. The crowd is mostly trouble causing deadbeats (credit card verified deadbeats, however!)
That really hurts, too, a deadbeat like that!
At least at ebay the deadbeats almost always pay enventually...
posted on May 22, 2002 08:14:46 PM new
I hate the idea of not having an alternative selling site other than Half & Yahoo Warehouse. A nickel for an item under $10 isn't that bad and there are sales on Yahoo ( and a good share of deadbeats too ). There are enough sales to make it worth while but a monthly or bi-monthly free listing day would be nice. If Yahoo is worried about letting sellers wait on the FLDs then they can limit the listing duration to only 7 days including bulk load items for the FLDs only. That would limit the free items time on Yahoo.
For regular auction items ( non FLDS ), Yahoo could make auctions last 14 days if the buyer chose the free Buy-It-Now option. More for your nickel that way and bidders would have the opprutunity to buy the item and not wait 14 long days.
I think Yahoo may be getting ready to pull the plug on the auctions once the Yahoo Shopping gambit starts getting buyers. The auctions may be competing too much with their own Shopping network and causing sellers to not use it.
posted on May 23, 2002 02:02:55 AM new
HI GUYS,,,check this out,ebay has bought the yahoo overseas auctions sites..no wonder they didn't give us any support or advertising...grr
read this i am at syi now much better good luck here it is from www.cnet.com
posted on May 23, 2002 06:30:10 AM new
I think it's just going to be ebay and the small specialty sites from now on...
(We sell a lot on smaller sites, and I think really, they're more reliable than Yahoo!)
It looks like Yahoo gave up on those loser markets and the conceded them to eBay just like eBay recently conceded its Japan auction market to Yahoo a short while ago. The only money talked about is eBay running some ads on Yahoo to promote those abandoned markets.
[ edited by sulyn1950 on May 20, 2002 10:20 AM ]