Sunday, August 30, 2009

FIXING THE FEEDBACK PROBLEM

This is a posting ID. I have two IDs with stores both powerseller level... This is a long post but I think I have some good ideas, so please read it through! I have a 99% rating in both of my stores here. Which I work very hard to maintain. I have been selling on amazon for over a year and I have noticed that sales there have been skyrocketing in the last few months while ebay sales have been stagnating. The problem with amazon is that it is only good for certain types of items, and you can't sell rare and collectible items there as easily. On amazon the buyer can only leave feedback based on a star system (1-5 stars rating the seller overall, not on individual characteristics.) Sellers can leave no feedback for buyers at all. I am one of the few sellers who actually have a 5 star (100%) rating on amazon, most are 4.9 or less. I work hard for it just like I do for my ebay feedback. So why should buyers receive any feedback at all here? Right now I can go and spend $10 on eBooks and have 1000 positive feedbacks and be ready to sell the Brooklyn bridge to the highest bidder. With the new rules ($1 minimum bids) it will cost a bit more to buy feedback, but it is still a major problem. Feedback should only be for sellers, to show that they have completed many transactions and can be trusted. By giving buyers any feedback you are opening the door to massive fraud. If someone wants to start selling on ebay they should have to start small like all of us did and not be able to buy their way in. Ebay should remove all feedback "as a buyer" and move to a star only system. That way buyers will be unable to engage in any defamation, and can simply rate the seller how they truly feel they preformed. This will also make it so that the seller cannot see who left which feedback since it is all averaged together, so this will make it even more accurate. The 7 day repeating feedback is a bad idea. It will only facilitate scammers that have "feedback farms" where they have a pool of user ids with which they sell items to themself at the lowest price allowed. This makes it so they need less IDs to do this and can just keep doing it every week. Ebay needs to require some accountably for the buyers. On amazon they can't buy until the user puts in their credit card. eBay should have some way of verifying users so that people can't create new accounts so easily after being kicked off. I know this is a difficult problem, because it is all to easy to get a new credit card, or email or mailing address (P.O. box) but there must be a way! It's not so easy to legally change your name! Drivers License #s could work well too! If ebay does go through with the proposed changes as stated, I will be emailing all buyers (as soon as payment is received not before) and explaining to them that inappropriate negative feedback will be considered defamation of character and will result in a lawsuit for which they will have to travel to California. I may also include a letter in the box. Lets see how that inspires them to have massive confidence in ebay! I have had a few threats from buyers over the years (less than 1% of buyers but it tends to be on the highest priced items) and feedback or withdrawal is the only thing that has kept them tarnishing my near perfect record. Now the threat of lawsuits seems like the best method to keep scammers and con artists at bay. I also have my own informational website which gets almost as much traffic as my ebay listing have been. I'm definitely looking into moving many of my items exclusively to my website and closing my store due to the store price increases. I'll still run some auctions, but many less. Of course I'll be using google checkout and not paypal on my website, because ebay doesn't seem to care about it's sellers or it would have already responded to these problems with action, rather than just having Griff tell us everythings gunna be OK. The more money I can keep out of GreedBay's hands the better. Is $10 BILLION in profit for one year not enough!? The executives who make millions from this company DO NOT work as hard as I do and I can barely pay the rent on my small apartment which is filled with ebay items! If they want to keep making profit they have to share some of it with the workers or there will be no more eBay! I will be withdrawing my paypal balance on the 20th as a protest and I would suggest that everyone else do the same. Why should ebay be earning even more interest on my hard earned money? Just so I can get %1 back when? I can use a credit card and get a higher % back and still have my money earning interest in the bank till I pay the card each month. TAKE ALL OF YOUR MONEY OUT OF PAYPAL! Lets see how they like it when they unexpectedly lose a major portion of their income! Just like we all will with these new fee changes. I will also be participating in the general strike from the 18th-25 by not listing or buying anything on ebay and hope that you will be too. I will run several .01 cent listings on the 19th explaining why I am striking and hope many sellers will do the same. Thanks for reading my ramblings. It felt good to get that off my chest, but the battle has only just begun! Spread the word! "email the seller" to get more people involved!


Orignal From: FIXING THE FEEDBACK PROBLEM

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