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eBay PowerSeller Nick Sevino (a pseudonym) answers questions about buying and selling on eBay.
Dear Nick,
The first thing I do when I see an item I like up for auction on eBay is check the Seller's feedback. My problem comes when trying to check out the negative feedback shown. I would like to see it, because it tells me whether to bid or pass the item by, but when a Seller has many transactions covering many pages, it is extremely time consuming to try to find these negative feedbacks.
There is no way to tell which pages they are on, unless they occurred in the past month, and I don't have time to go through every page.
Does anyone besides me think that eBay should pull these negative feedbacks and put them where we can see them quickly and easily? I wrote eBay and asked about this problem, and got the answer that I needed to check through and find them myself. A lot of us are busy and don't have time to do this, especially when we have a little time to scan the offerings, and hate to waste it on going through someone's feedback, page by page by page.....
Is there any way to get eBay to see that this is a problem and is probably cutting down on sales on their site? I would surely hope so!
Thanks for your time and help.
Karen
Dear Karen:
eBay does not have a feature to show only negatives and neutrals because they feel that too many buyers, especially new ones, might not interpret the pages correctly.
Since many sellers have thousands of transactions under their belt, they will accrue a certain amount of negatives and neutrals just by virtue of the law of percentages. Seeing hundreds of negatives in a row might scare off unsophisticated buyers.
At the bottom of this column, I'll include a reference to a software maker that provides the tool you requested, but in good conscience I feel like I should explain a little about Feedback to our newer readers so they can interpret the results from the software properly.
It takes a certain level of sophistication to interpret Negatives - no seller is perfect. When you see a negative, examine the seller's response, this will give you a key to the customer service level. An apologetic seller as opposed to a ranting maniac may be the kind of company you want to deal with.
Also examine the total percentage of individual negatives to positives. If the same person purchases 17 items and gives a negative on all 17 it could really skew at least one of the figures.
The amount of Negatives is not significant, the amount of Negatives taken into perspective with total amount of transactions is the key figure. Pay attention to reasons given for leaving negatives. For example if a seller has 16 negatives and 8 of them happened 6 months ago and the seller's reason is "So sorry I was in the hospital for two weeks," this should be a mitigating factor. I especially like the seller who says sorry and I've taken steps to avoid this error in the future.
The rule of thumb is less than 1% Negatives with many transactions under the belt indicates a strong seller. Over 1% is probably good, but pay a little more attention to the reasons. A seller with a 4% level, such as one major retailer I know, and you may still want to buy from them, but use them as a last resort and expect the possibility of a screw up.
There are lots of reasons that sellers can get unjustified Negative feedback, including "NPBs," (Acronym for Nonpaying Bidder). By the way, NPBs are probably the biggest culprit second to Newbies (New to eBay). eBay claims that Nonpaying bidders are less than 1%, but any PowerSeller will tell you that it's running at least 3 to 5 % if not more. I invite other PowerSeller to write me with what you feel your percentages are!
A seller with a perfect or near perfect feedback record may just know how to manipulate the system. eBay claims that it's a level playing field, but any Gold or Platinum PowerSeller knows they receive much better service as they reach the higher levels.
If sellers are willing to spend $20 a pop, they may also get some Negatives removed through Square Trade as long as their trading partners agree or don't respond to the email. I don't like Square Trade and dislike this policy.
Other reasons why a seller may have a blemish-free record is they don't leave Negatives for any reason. This lets them avoid the inevitable retaliation. But are they doing their duty to the eBay community?
To answer your question, HammerTap offers a program that does what you want, but please take the time to evaluate the feedbacks: BayWatch Pro
http://www.Hammertap.com
If any of our readers know of another program that does the same thing, please write me. I'd love to hear about it.
Good luck,
Nick
To comment on this letter, post a message in the forums at
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=4218.
If you have a question you'd like Nick to consider for a future issue of "Dear Nick," send it to nick@auctionbytes.com.
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