Attn eBay sellers

[Archive]

Posted By: Jeff Prillaman

I'm not sure this is a good plan.

Ebay's intent was to make buyers able to leave feedback of their buying experience without the fear of retaliation. While many of us see scam artists on the buying side, the number of unresponsive or scam sellers is multiple times more rampant. Unresponsive sellers are the worse, you can look at any of the large sellers and see a level of customer service that is horrific. Many sellers take the attitude "go ahead and leave me a negative, you get one right back." Many sellers are unresponsive to damaged items, lost items, items that were never shipped -- etc. Ebay was simply seeking to make buyers feel more comfortable about leaving appropriate feedback.

However the idea of a national blocked bidder list will only exacerbate the problem. While currently many buyers are afraid to leave negative feedback because of the threat they will get one in return. Now the threat is "I'll add you a national block bidder list thereby reducing the number of people you can deal with on ebay." I'm not sure how this is a good thing.

Let's say you order a DVD and get the wrong item, you email, no response, you wait a week email again, no response. You leave feedback that says "seller shipped wrong item, fails to responds to email". Now instead of a retaliatory negative the seller adds your name to the "National Block Bidder list" and now when you try and purchase something you keep getting the "Seller has blocked your user account" message. How long before that person gets frustrated and leaves ebay for other venues?

Ebay should simply require persons to maintain multiple id's -- one for buying and one for selling -- that solves every problem and it could have been left the way it was. I know personally I have one selling account and two buying accounts -- I leave negatives when it is justified from my buying accounts and don't look back.