i agree the whole fucking thing with ebay is absolute bullshit. as a seller ,when you have a problem both ebay and paypal join forces to fuck you in the ass and take your hard earned cash. i have been fucked on ebay so many times with the shit head buyers its a joke. the whole system needs to be changed back to the old ways….

Ebay restricted my account with 270 plus feedback and 99.1% percent feedback. Because of selling performance bullshit. This happened after I receive a negative feedback.

Ebay is total bullshit.

I just got negative feedback on an item the fucking buyer NEVER PAID FOR!!!!!!! Then she got upset b/c I didn’t send it. Ebay gave her an unpaid item strike, but my negative feedback is there forever. This new system SUCKS. i am so pissed. It’s my first negative!

Sometimes, I really wonder who decides to make changes to the already working good system. Only to break it! I really want to know the reason behind the decision to change the feedback system. I somehow suspect that eBay wants bad users to be able to keep the account and keep doing the bad things (it used to be that if you get certain negative feedback you were kicked off automatically). Every bad transaction bring remorse to the seller while brining eBay $0.3+ listing fees. Multiply that by 100,000 bad users doing 3 bad thing in a month = $90K/month profit out of where sun don’t shine. It’s time to start up the new auction business which will compete with eBay with better fee structures & better feedback system. Plus, eBay new site reminds me how MS broke good ole XP with Vista.

today I learned that ebay even suspends sellers if they leave positive feedback for a non paying bidder and enter a comment like “Non – paying bidder, beware”

I believe that other sellers have a right to know that a certain bidder had strikes in the past and that he is a non paying bidder.

It is total BS, we are in the same boat, just sold an item and the buyer didn’t paid, spent 2 weeks for eBays non paying bidder program and got a FVF credit however we can’t leave this scum bag Negative feedback but he can leave us negative feedback!

It is a B.S not only you can’t leave a feedback for those dead beat buyer, ebay fees have gone up collecting about to 12% an item, you really have been getting the product for free to make a decent profit, right now i have so many dead beat buyer, they bid and don’t pay, they are not worried because they know no bad feedback will be left on their side, EBay You Suck i can’t wait til you sit is completely outta of business i used to be a big fan, but not any more

If you read eBay’s terms of service policy, you can get negative feedback removed from a buyer who you left an unpaid item strike against if they didn’t respond to the case when you opened it. I agree leaving negative feedback that is undeserved sucks and that sellers should be able to leave appropriate feedback, but I did want to give you the heads up that you can get eBay to remove that feedback under that circumstance.

They have gotten a little better with it, but not really. Your feedback score is only related to the last year of use, so say you got a neg on September 16 2008, and haven’t gotten any since then, today you’d have a 100% positive feedback score. However it doesn’t help much, the negs are still there and in your history. I just got a neg from a buyer who took 2 weeks to decide to pay me, I filed a non paying bidder complaint against the buyer, and to get revenge the buyer negged me. Totally not fair, but it’s within ebay’s rules and i can’t neg them for being a bad buyer. Oh well. When is Google ever going to do their auction service?

Ebay has ALWAYS been “pro-buyer”. This makes absolutely NO SENSE because it is the SELLERS that put money into eBay’s coffers…NOT buyers. Further, eBay’s Feedback system has always been screwed-up. Very little thought went into the original design of this archaic system. I started selling back in 1999…when there was a nominal amount of listings on eBay. The sad fact is that most Sellers did not want to leave Negative Feedback in fear of retaliation Negative. I say, just have a place where people can leave one comment…NO RATINGS at all….and let people scroll thru the comments. The other part of the problem was that eBay, for a very long time, had a piss-poor security system….which they have “corrected” by placing undue restrictions on Sellers. I HATE the idiots at eBay…they are a bunch of bleeding-heart liberals that have placed their liberal agendas on what can and can’t be sold on eBay…time and time again. Capguns MUST have a red plug in the end of the barrels in your photos…what a crock of crap. You can’t sell BB Guns on eBay anymore….you know….you might shoot your eye out. However, you can sell a CROSSBOW on eBay….I guess no one would try to shoot their eye out with a CROSSBOW.

Ebay needs to be run from a State like Texas….NOT California…..I’ll bet that if eBay was in Texas you could sell a freakin’ BB GUN and not even have to put a fascist red plug in your cap gun photos. I hope that eBay’s stock TANKS as people move to other auction sites. By the way….WHERE is that Google promised auction site?

I’m done with ebay… Seapuppy41 bid on tickets just before the time i said i would end the auction (morning of game). Never paid, never responded. He had been emailing me to close it earlier, but i didn’t want to and I had other bidders. So I opened a case, and it documented everything, which was spelled out in the listing itself. Ebay gave him a strike, and then removed it… Even though none of their documented reasons for not paying existed. All they said was that they wouldn’t talk about the reason a strike was removed from another user. What crap! I was out $260 from the nonpayment plus $50 listing fee from EBAY (feature plus– i really wanted to sell these!). Everyone was paid but me!

I”m in the same boat. Just sold an item to textamaniac who paid with a check through paypal that paypal themselves told me had been returned, and NOT to ship the item. I didn’t ship it, but the girl still left me a negative feedback. It’d be different if I were a regular lister on ebay, but I’ve only got feedback of around 10 as it is, so this negative really dinged my score. I hate ebay.

I’ve bought and sold (more buying than selling), and speaking as a buyer, the previous system WAS broken. Sellers had started to “extort” good reviews or prevent negative ones by threatening buyers right in the listings. I began to increasingly see some variant of “if you leave negative feedback for me I will negative feedback for you” for every listing. The inference is clear — ‘you (buyer) are not allowed to leave honest feedback no matter how I (seller) misrepresented the item, pack it poorly, or delay shipping, because if you do leave honest feedback I (seller) will retaliate, regardless of whether the negative feedback is deserved.’

Unethical buyers certainly did & do abuse the system, but so did & do unethical sellers. If we’re going to discuss a problem, let’s make sure the whole issue is on the table.

I had a fucktard leave me negative feedback when I posted in my auction, NOTE: THE PAYMENT TERMS BEFORE YOU BID! In the payment terms I CLEARLY stated payment is due the same day the auction closes. Winner does not respond or pay. I 2nd chance and sell. 2 days latter original winner finally pays. I refund his money and tell him he violated the auction by not following the SIMPLE payment instructions. He leaves me the following feedback: Suck Seller . You should list payment in detail in the auction not the invoice.

Wrote eBay told them the moron violated the auction THAT PAYMENT INSTRUCTIONS ON THE INVOICE WAS FROM THE AUCTION!!! they gave me the fees back but would not remove the negative feedback. Anyone for a class action lawsuit.

Yeah and what interesting comments here. I haven’t sold on eBay for some time, as a buyer I always pay usually within minutes at the end of an auction via PayPal for items ‘won’. I expect ASAP positive feedback for simply fulfilling my part of the contract. I expected that previous to the changes made to the feedback system. Frankly I feel eBay should initiate a system that automatically gives you positive feedback for paying within ‘x’ time of winning and paying for an item. That is after all your contractual obligation to the seller completed. In the past I was very nervous to leave negative feedback for a seller, as I was very aware that my 100% positive feedback could be affected by some unscrupulous seller. I am aware of some ‘difficult’ buyers, being polite lol. In the past, having to bend over backwards to keep a buyer happy at any cost to protect my 100% feedback (now at 333). I am and would be most nervous now to resume selling on eBay due to the most unbalanced approach eBay has introduced. I don’t have a viable solution to offer, but sure there must be one that is transparent and fair to both buyers and sellers.

I recently got screwed by a buyer because he decided he did not want to pay me on on high dollar item because he decided that it was no longer a good deal for him.

My wife rarely rarely uses her account on Ebay and I am waiting for that Fuck Face to list something very expensive only to bid sky high and not pay him with her account. Wife said I can use her account to do that

Horray! no more fear of retaliation feedback or making you leave feedback first crap from sellers! Sellers dont make money for ebay its the people that actually send in the money, if they go away all you have is a bunh of crap on the internet that everybody is scared to buy.

I am straying far away from ebay next time I sell a nitro r/c car. I sold my old tmaxx and the buyer claimed that it was missing a wheel when he got it with none of the parts I sent with it. Too bad I already left positive feedback for god’s sake. Now he claimed a full refund. Apparently he decided it wasn’t a good deal. I am now extremely angry because not only did it cost 30 dollars to ship it, I will be short a 10 dollar wheel when I get it back, and he might even keep some things claiming “I didn’t get that”! Then re-listing on ebay will cost another 5 for a good auction. Total damage done by idiot buyer : At least 60 fricken dollars !!!!

i know what you are saying, recently i sold an item and the gu idnt want to pay bcause he found a better deal, i told himi would report him and leave negative feedback, he said to bad you cant :). so i got his address from paypal and sent him dead squirells until he paid. He paid

Wow I thought we where the only ones, we sold a Jacksonville Limo package on eBay for the FL vs. GA game and the dead beat never paid, so we held a limo for the game and lost the money we could have had for the weekend. eBay should put it back the old way

It’s a hard one to call. I have both bought and sold on ebay, and thanfully havn’t had any problems as a seller. However as a buyer I have. 6 weeks ago I bought a pair of designer shoes, I still don’t have them, and buyer only sent me the tracking number when I raised a dispute with paypal. I explained in the dispute that I would be happy to close the dispute once the shoes arrived. However the tracking details shows that the package was only mailed TODAY!!! I paid for them 6 weeks ago. The seller then turned the dispute into a claim. I don’t care, I’ll just claim in back from my credit card if I have to, I don’t want to but I will. I paid for the item, so why should I be at risk of getting negative feedback. There has to be some system that gives equality in the feedback stakes, not just tit for tat. It’s a hard one to call, but neither system was particularly fair to either buyer or seller.

Ok. I have read everything on this page, and have to say that all your stories are great. You all have good points. One problem though, everyone is looking at the situation from their own personal perspective. The only possible solution that I can think about is that feedback, if necessary, should be automated. Buyers, sellers should not have a say at all. How is this possible?

Well firstly I said, is feedback really necessary? It is a shoppers market, so instead of feedback, maybe eBay should just give the buyer, statistics of the seller. Total sales, years as a seller, reassure the buyer that the seller is infact an established business and that they have rights as a buyer within the state of their residence. Also they can include things like average dispatch times. This is all easy because the eBay system knows when an item is paid for and when an item is sent. Likewise eBay can give buyer statistics such as average pay time, completed transactions, etc.

The second option is to completely automate the feedback process. eBay knows when a buyer pays, if they pay with paypal it is monitored and when seller receives payment the seller marks as payment received. So if buyer pays, say within 3 days, they get a positive feedback, 3-7 days nuetral 7+ neg. When a seller sends an item, they mark as payment sent. The buyer should also have the function to chose item received. If feedback is really necessary, a system in this fashion will give both buyer and seller an incentive to act fast

I Totally agree. I think its BS that sellers lie ourselves cant leave negative feedback. This buyer purchased somehting from me, 5 days went buy with no payment or contact. I tried contacting this person everyday. No answer. Now all i cant do is leave positive feedback! WTF! Thsi is so stupid. Ebay should let sellers leave negative feedback again!!!!

Idiot racist comments won’t be tolerated on this website.

As with most sellers, I’m totally fed up. For the second time on the same item, I do not get paid. I waited nearly an entire month the first time, waiting for some sort of a response from the buyer. I explained to the buyer that even if for some reason they did not wish to pay for the item anymore to please let me know so I could second chance the offer in time. They did not respond, they did not pay for the item. I let it slide and relisted the item. A new buyer wins. Few days pass, I don’t receive payment. I contact buyer. No response. So, for the second time on the SAME item, I’m screwed over. What are my options? I can spend more of my time in the resolution center, getting absolutely nowhere, and/or I can set the buyer to my block list, which means nothing since they can simply make a new account and mess with future auctions if they so pleased. Because buyers can receive no repercussion for their behavior, they are free to do anything they want and take advantage of any seller they want. These buyers DESERVE negative, yet get away with what they did. I’m so sick and tired of being taking advantage of. eBay needs sellers, but we don’t need them. If they do not care about their sellers, I don’t care about them. I am officially done with eBay.

Hi there

We had a buyer, she bought a broken iphone from me, she paid for the item and i posted 1st class and thankfully registeredpost. She contacted me saying that she had not received the item. When I told her it was tracked and gave her the trackign number we never heard from her again and she hasn’t left us any feedback.

Somehow i think becuase she didn’t see a special delivery sticker that she could claim it was lost when infact she had it all along.

I was lucky to have used registered delivery……SOME buyers are abusing the system becuss they knwo they can get a way with it.

EBAY needs to consider a solution.

I worked at eBay as Senior Manager of Database Analytics, and one project was the “International Customer Satisfaction Survey” – There were several segments of buyers and sellers we contacted each month (random, high value, lapsed, new, etc – thousands in each). One of the most valuable aspects of that survey was the comments. I would apply advanced text mining (semantic weighting) to capture the most valuable insights from these comments (especially from sellers) and then submit these excellent comments to category and senior managers. The comments often suggested ways to improve the Feedback system, PayPal, and fee structure. The survey itself and especially the comments were routinely ignored. The key analysis was associating satisfaction levels with loyalty and profit. The category managers often expressed little passion for their category or interest in their buyer and seller comments. Except for Business & Industrial and eBay Motors, I found the category managers to be uninspired, lazy, and condescending. They don’t care about sellers – just getting their nails done and buying new BMWs. After my most recent eBay sale in December, even I’ve decided to look elsewhere (Craigslist, etc) to sell future items. My last item was an Apple iPhone 3G. The buyer paid with a PayPal “eCheck” which took several days to clear, then PayPal put a hold on my account for the funds until the buyer left positive feedback (fortunately he left it once he received the item today). Otherwise, PayPal would have held the funds for 16 days! Plus, I had to send the item BEFORE the funds were released – so he could have ripped me (or any seller) off easily and gotten away with it. He threatened me with negative feedback for not sending the phone the same day he sent me the stinking eCheck, but I explained to him that PayPal advised against sending the phone before his funds cleared. I could only leave him positive feedback, since negative feedback is no longer an option. So in my comments I honestly stated: “Paid promptly with PayPal eCheck that required 10 days to free funds.” eBay is “selectively honest” I’ve learned. While at eBay, I sent their legal team a warning that Meg Whitman was routinely over-stating the number of eBay members on her analyst calls to the investment community by about 15% due to duplicate records (people who register under several different IDs). That led to what I feel was retaliation and my eventual departure. The legal team felt that even though the reported numbers might have been inflated, it didn’t have an impact on dollars reported and didn’t need to be reported to investors.

I have bought and sold on E Bay. I have only sold probably 50 items, but have purchased 1500. I have 2 accounts. I have 100% feedback on the one account and 99.8% on the other. The ONLY negative feedback I ever received was from sellers that were jerks.

I bid… I won…. I paid immediately. One item took 6 weeks to arrive when the auction said 5-7 days. It was also not what the auction advertised. I could get NO email response from the seller. After leaving negative feedback, which he deserved, I get negative feedback!!! That has happened twice in the last 3 years. In my over 1500 transactions I have only left negative feedback probably 4 times. And two of those times I had negative feedback left for me simply because I left it for them.

While I agree with you guys that you should be able to leave appropriate feedback, it should be APPROPRIATE.

I don’t know what the answer is, but it doesn’t seem fair this way either.

I agree this is by far the most fucked up thing ebay can do. I sold an item the other day and it clearly stated in my listing that i dont sell to people who have 0 feedback. So i messaged the dipshit saying i cant send u item…so wat does he do? leave me a FUCKEN negative feedback!! what can i do? FUCK ALL. Ebay get your shit together, ur all a bunch of fucken monkeys who have no idea wat your doing. Anywayz best thing to do now is get the dudes address drive or fly their and beat the shit out of him.

Peace out.

Before Ebay changed the rules I was a buyer and been sent the item after 6 weeks. When I left bad feedback, the seller then also left bad feedback against me just out of spite. This happened a couple of times before I complained to Ebay.
I agree that he current system doesn’t work either though.

I think the system should be that Ebay should not publish either feedback until both feedbacks have been submitted. If both sides hadn’t submitted feedback after 3 weeks Ebay should not take any more submissions and publish whatever had been submitted.

That way, either side wouldn’t be able to publish bad feedback or withhold feedback as revenge.

People bidding on the same item can’t look at the feedback of the other bidders. Who knows if these other bidders are legitimate or not.
High seller fees and paypal fees have made me dump my Ebay account.
All I can say about the excessive hard feelings expressed here is that……….if you think ebay sucks DON’T USE IT!!!!!

it is major bullshit! buyer won item, never paid, I opened dispute then they say they paid and has the delivery confirmation for proof. I say delivery confirmation? I only accept 1 form of payment, which is electronic through moneybookers, then they say Oh they paid through MB’s and it went through three times. I say I haven’t received payment, confirmation email, checked MB’s again, never had this problem and asked if they paid that way, what was the delivery confirmation about? next thing I know, they leave me negative feedback full of lies and there is nothing I can do about it. I wrote ebay about it, they say well my feedback score is all total feedback, not just one negative and future buyers will understand. fake negative w/lies when I did nothing wrong & I can’t leave this buyer negative, or get mine removed from them. this is bull, I’m done w/ebay after the rest of my items sell. all sellers should boycott the site

What really sucks is that there is no other site that can compete with Ebay’s popularity and most people that seek to buy things at a cheaper price go on Ebay.

I too, hate the fact that you cannot leave a buyer negative feedback for their incompetence. After sending invoices and messages for an item that a buyer CLEARLY bought, I have received no response. Therefore, yesterday, I finally said “Please pay me by tomorrow or else I will have file a report and repeated reports may result in account suspension.” Well low and behold, the buyer actually responds when I say his account might be suspended. Apparently that scared him. BUT he insisted that he did not purchase the item and hasn’t received the item in the mail. WHAT THE HELL lol. Either he is playing funny or doesn’t know the ebay rules. How am I going to send something to him if he never payed me? Stupid. And plus, he said that he never bought it. Stupid again. He insists that I cancel the transaction mutually and that he doesn’t want the item. Out of the benefit of doubt, I did that…I was playing to send him a non-payment strike. I HOPE the stupid moron doesn’t leave me negative feedback and that I can get my fees back. =/

After 242 positive feedbacks, I ran into the buyer from hell! Steven Nickodemski (09htc) and his goons over at the Rolex Forums (Stevo especially) tried to extort $610 dollars out of me a month after he had received the item and was happy with it. Turns out he broke his item by abusing it and he now wants me to repair it and restore it to new. Thankfully I didn’t give in to Steven Nickodemski’s very dishonest and untrustworthy tatctics.

I also agree, eBay is full of retards, allow buyers to leave neg feedback but us sellers are fucked in the ass. I have an aussie buyer who I have made contact with 4 times but not a single reply. Have now got the retards involved but what good is that, I can get my listing fees refunded but the scumbag can go off and screw over another seller. A more realistic approach to the whole feedback system is positive feedback option only for both buyer & seller, if not happy then involve ebay and they leave an ebay intervention feedback which would act as a warning for the guilty party, buyer or seller, this is carried out automatically if ebay are involved to settle a case, this would be fair as the buyer would have to prove they paid for an item and the seller to provide proof that the item was posted in time as stipulated in their listing with a tracking reference and photo evidence the item was posted in the condition described in the listing. If this does not work then R.I.P. eBay.

ok i found this wbesite and i cannot possibly agree more everybody that ebay SUCKS. ive been using ebay since 2003 and in the beginning it was great! not to mention fair! NOW EBAY CHANGED ITS POLICY AND IT SUCKS SHIT! i am a seller on ebay that recently just decided to leave the website, reason being is because terrible buyers are trying to take advantage of the negative feedback system. they will threaten and blackmail sellers and there is nothing us sellers can do about it. im leaving ebay for good and im going onto another website. maybe ioffer. i suggest that everyone spread the news that ebay is a JOKE and BULLSHIT so that ebay loses as many customers as possible. that way one day ebay will hopefully change its policy to protect buyers AND sellers!

My 2 cents. have been selling on eBay for almost 4 years, both on a personal and corporate level. Both accounts were 100 % positive feedback until today. Via my personal account I sold 4 excellent condition, like new Dell monitors that were used only by me. Got an e mail from one buyer after his receipt.. “Not happy, in poor condition, I want my money back plus shipping”. With no other detailed explanation as to what he considered poor condition. There were 14 photos on the auction clearly indicating the excellent condition ( cosmetically and graphically ) and clear return terms: “refunds available, seller not responsible for both original and return shipping”. I emailed him again…..Whats the poor condition? and again and again.. Finally 3 days later ( I guess it took him that long to think of something ), he claimed the graphics were all green. Sorry…Graphics do not go from excellent to poor while in transit. I explained to him again, ship it back and upon my inspection, I will refund the purchase price in full. He did not want to ship it back. I’ve had a few problems with buyers, but always have resolved them. This dude was trouble from the beginning. I could tell by the tone of his first e mail. He probably found one cheaper and thought he could pull this off. Sometimes one just has to take a stand. After his threatening me with negative feedback, I once again told him he could return the item. But no, he decided to keep it and leave a negative. So, now what do I do? ebay doesn’t give a shit about me, the seller who pads their pockets with $$ from their fees ( which by the way.. the new structure coming on March 30th screws the smaller seller royally ). Granted there are abusive buyers and sellers, but for those of us who always do it the right way, to have something like this happen ( to see your feedback score go from 100 to 98.9 because of a buyer that had an ulterior motive ), leaves one with no other choice but to ditch the ebay venue and its not just this incident. Ebay’s new rate structure increases the smaller sellers listing fees by more than 6 fold and if you pay up for their intermediate store package, your listing fee will be up 66% and if you decide to pay the 300.00 per month, you can still have the same store listing fee rate as you have had at the same 15.99 per month for years past. I have to think that the majority of ebay sellers are not the high volume type. So by their advertising new fixed price listing rates as low as .03. Well I had that by paying 15.99 per month for the past 4 years. Now I have to pay them 300.00 per month up front in order to enjoy that same rate. How about the “better search results” for offering “Free shipping”. Does any buyer that has never sold on ebay have any idea how much it really costs to purchase top quality shipping materials and packaging + the actual cost to ship? So, in order to offer FREE SHIPPING, the seller naturally has to increase his/her listing price. What does that end up doing? Higher Final Value Fee on the sale because of the higher priced item sold via free shipping and more money in EBAYS pockets. Regarding the feedback issue, their customer service pretty much blew me off. So, pro buyer, false advertising, manipulative advertising and so much more is what ebay has come down to. Time to move on.