eBay UK – Judge, Jury, & Executioner, but no warning
By Ed | April 30th, 2008 | Category: eBay UK | 5 comments
Imagine if you woke up this morning jolly as ever, went onto ebay, and to your horror your account had been restricted for 30 days as your performance had not met eBay standards.
That’s exactly what happened to UK Platinum PowerSeller electronics-save this morning. They state,
“There was no warnings or anything All my listings have been removed. Yes I have had a few problems lately but I have been solving these issues like any other business. As a platinum seller and the shocking amount of ebay fees i pay im just gobsmacked. My feedback is not perfect its not that bad either. I have not spoke to my account manager yet as im just trying to get my head around it. I have another account can I still use that or is it straight to the dole queue.“
Is this the first victim of a new policy by eBay UK, whose paying customers growingly believe they have severely overstepped the mark? In another eBay UK PowerSeller forum thread, seller greatbigbeadshop relates, “I’ve just received this from my account manager in what I assume is a mass-mailout to all her accounts:”
“Although it has not been announced, eBay are taking Seller Non Performance very seriously with regards to the negative and neutral feedback that you receive as a seller. Whereas in the past you would receive a phone call giving you a 30 day grace period to resolve negative and neutral feedback on your account before action was imposed, we are now taking a more aggressive approach to this policy and there will be no more 30 day grace period.
“I understand that this may seem harsh and that is why I am emailing you to let you know. If you have any negative or neutral feedback in the last 90 days, I urge you to file a Mutual Feedback Withdrawal form. This form can be found by typing ‘Mutual Feedback Withdrawal’ into the help pages and clicking on the first option that appears. Halfway down that page you will see a link for the form.
“If you have tried this and the buyer has not responded, please email me the item number of the feedback in question as it may be removable according to internal policies. Also, if the buyer has acknowledged via email that they wish to cooperate and have the feedback removed, you can forward me a copy of the email. Please be sure to include headers so that I can determine that the email is genuine.”
Those are just the first indications that eBay UK is implementing a “shoot to kill without warnings” policy, and it appears they are doing so unilaterally with no other eBay site displaying parallel policies. Is this a pre-global trial they have been ordered to undertake?
As ajs0074646 said in the second thread,
“That does not seem to be at all a proper attitude.
“If one of my buyers were unhappy with my service or product, I should by no means attempt to silence him or to “persuade” him to retract his considered opinion. If several of my buyers were unhappy, I should concentrate on improving my own practices rather than trying to pretend they weren’t unhappy.
“And I should take a similarly dim view of any buyer or seller who asked me to withdraw feedback which I had given.
“For an eBay employee to advocate the wholesale wiping of feedback left by buyers, in order to facilitate the continued trading of sellers who are unable to please their customers, is little short of a disgrace.”
This of course ignores the fact that in roughly three weeks time, sellers will not be able to leave any feedback that buyers would be willing to mutually withdraw. Perhaps that is the trigger for the mass mailing from the account manager? “Do it now or lose the ability to do so”?
However, there is a deeper legal and contractual issue behind these events…
When eBay as vendor, and the eBay seller as purchaser, have entered into a contract for (on the UK site) 90-day shop listings, that were placed and billed BEFORE this change of policy, are eBay then in legal default of their contractual obligation by pulling listings using the terms of this post-contractual new policy?
That’s one for the legal beagles to chew on, but I’d love to hear your views about it. Especially any advice anyone has gleaned from Trading Standards, or the Consumer Protection Agency.
Ed
Goodness me, that advice from the Personal Account Manager is flawed at best
Surely, in their aim to encourage businesses on the site to behave in a more professional manner, their first advice ought to be for the seller to attempt to resolve the issue amicably with their customer
Then (and only after that) look into defamatory comments and/or Mutual Feedback Withdrawal
I dread to think what sort of advice these account managers will be issuing when the Mutual Feedback withdrawal process is withdrawn later this year
The current Mutual Feedback Withdrawal system will remain in place until the second half of 2008.
Hi All,
I think with eBay removing the Feeback from seller to buyer and the issue of non perfmonace we will start to find many and I say many BUYER who will rip off the seller. The buyer has nothing to lose at all if he places a negative.
eBay did not provide an apprpriate counter back.
I think the fair thing is to let a third party to like SQAURE TRADE to be a mediator and if the buyer losses the case he/she pays the fees they don’t have a choice. So it will let them think if they are serious about the necative they are leaving out.
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Get the facts before you go off on ebay over this one!
I pulled up their closed listings and looked at them. If you look at what and how they sell, the way it’s described, the use of stock photos rather than actual photos of the damaged items, and most importantly, their feedback trend over 12 months.
Guess what, any seller who was paying attention to their business could see this coming.
34 neutrals! that almost 3% of customer that could not rate them positively. Plus 9 negatives!
Bargainland was selling carp, but at least they sold it as carp. These folks were selling open box, damaged goods but presenting it as if it was new and perfect.
Tuffy
Oh dear Tuffy
From your tone it sounds like you were one of their customers who gave them a negative?
It also sounds like you have completely bought into the eBay spin and double-talk.
When I was a school, if a rating system had 3 grades, then one was bad, one was good, and the other was average / as expected / normal / nothing outstanding.
That was also the original intention of the eBay feedback system, time has shown that some people use it that way, some people don’t.
eBay’s own forums (all countries) are full of threads about complaints from both sides that “it was only a neutral”, when, as I blogged last year, eBay has twisted the knife and made neutrals into negatives, but never told the buyers.
So on basic feedback, we have the situation of buyers being led to believe, “hey, if it’s neither bad nor good, give a neutral”, and sellers being told, “if you get neutrals, you get restricted, suspended, or banned”.
The same double standards are being applied in the Detailed Seller Ratings – it’s a five point scale, and therefore a ‘3′ should be the same as a regular neutral, a ‘4′ should be good/above average, and a ‘5′ should be excellent.
But, eBay are financially disadvantaging sellers with a less than 4.6 average on each DSR, and if they go under 4.3 they get dumped to the bottom of all search and browse results.
If they fall to a 4.0 on any one of the 4 criteria, eBay splashes a big red warning on their listings saying, “WARNING, this seller has a poor rating for xyz”.
Now hang on a mo’ – on a 5-point range, the ‘2′ should be the rating of ‘poor’ with a ‘1′ as ‘bad’, so why tell browsers a seller is ‘poor’ when they have a rating of ‘4′, which eBay then tells to buyers is a ‘good’ when they are leaving the ratings after the purchase?
Your comment – “34 neutrals! that almost 3% of customer that could not rate them positively.”
Try reading that as “34 neutrals! That’s almost 3% of their buyers didn’t have a clue about the importance of feedback, or how it’s used to punish sellers on eBay, and bought into the eBay spin.”
Or, “34 neutrals! That’s almost 3% of their buyers didn’t have a problem with the product or service, but didn’t believe it was exceptional either”
eBay ARE playing divide and conquer – they’re giving the buyers TWO different messages (before and after purchase) about the same rating, and both of those messages are different to how they’re used against the seller.
It’s a bit like the different modern translations of the bible compared to those of the 17th Century King James version. Today’s “Thou shall not murder” is very different to “Thou shall not kill”.
Ed