One of the major gripes from the eBay sellers who are striking regards the removal of their right to leave negative feedback for buyers. If truth be told, very few sellers leave negative feedback for buyers and even fewer sellers use feedback as a way of assessing the suitability of their buyers. For most busy, professional sellers this change is not important (the changes to DSRs are, though) but a small, vocal group of (typically) small time sellers are up in arms at what they perceive to be an unfair change.
Until the last week or so, I haven’t really understood the rationale for removing the right for sellers to leave negative feedback for buyers. It didn’t seem like a fight worth having. That is until I encountered a seller who changed my mind. I bought three things from this seller in an order totaling about £25. It wasn’t a flawless transaction and although I left positive feedback, I was quite stingy with my eBay Detailed Seller Ratings and referred to the seller’s poor communication and unprofessional manner in the feedback comments.
The seller was furious. Not only did he retaliate with aggressive responses to my feedback, he sent several abusive emails. The experience wasn’t pleasant and I certainly won’t be going back to that seller again. But my experience was the tip of the iceberg. I noticed that the seller has nearly 200 mutually withdrawn feedback and responds to every neutral and negative feedback he receives with an automatic negative. Some of the comments he’s left are offensive and personal.
I contacted some of the buyers who had received negative feedback in the past month or so. They had left negative or neutral feedback for the seller and had all received negatives in return. The seller had also asked all of them to go through the mutual feedback withdrawal process to have the feedback nulled.
But most worrying of all, of the five people I communicated with, all say that their experiences have changed their view of eBay. Three say that they will never use eBay again. Two say that they will be wary of using eBay again but might. A quick trawl through the negative feedback that the seller has left shows that lot of people who received a negative feedback haven’t shopped on eBay again: he has personally alienated dozens of buyers.
Every eBay seller should be cross about the way this seller behaves: he is chasing away your future customers. And how many other sellers are there out there who practice the same principles? Not many, in the grand scheme of things, but enough to warrant action. Those who are striking need to decide whether the right to leave negative feedback for buyers is worth the inevitable misuse by some dubious sellers who are driving buyers away with their unprofessional behaviour.