A Thought on Feedback

I frequently peruse the eBay discussions boards, rarely posting anything, but seeing what everyone else has to say.  My favorites are "Seller Central", "PayPal" & "Feedback".  It is interesting to read about some of the problems people run into, and some of the solutions suggested.  I've learned quite a bit, but you also have to take a lot of things with a grain of salt too.  On Seller Central, for example, there is thread after thread about how sales are down after eBay made their big changes on March 30.  Well, our sales are up since March 30, and we continue to sell at a bit better rate than normal for us.  I don't particularly like the changes because it costs us money in higher fees, but it hasn't bothered our sales, at least up to this point.  BTW, only in the eBay world can "the lowest fees ever" cost us about $75.00 a month more than previously.

On to feedback, though.  One thing I find interesting on the Feedback board is that people are still arguing over who should leave feedback first.  There seem to be two armed camps all over America who feel strongly about this subject.  Buyers say sellers should leave it as soon as they receive the money for the item - after all at that point the buyer has met their obligation.   Many sellers say, hold on there, pardner, (not partner, but pardner - all sellers are from the south or southwest, apparently), not so fast.  In their minds, the transaction is not complete until the buyer receives and is happy with the item they bought.  The only way a seller will know that is through communication and/or feeback from the buyer after the buyer receives the item.

As far as I'm concerned, the whole discussion is irrelevant, a complete waste of time.   Although thru the ages, I've actually been on both sides of the issue.  The rules changed, so my position changed.

Ok.  The IN-sane people on eBay are probably evenly distributed among sellers and buyers.  Since I am predominately a seller, I'm more worried about the IN-sane buyers, and I've ran into a few. 

When I first started on eBay, sellers could leave neutral and negative feedback for buyers, but since 2008 (I think), sellers can't leave anything other than positive for buyers.  Up until that point, I generally waited until I received feedback before leaving it.  It was my major protection against an IN-sane buyer.  I have never left retalitory feedback, and probably never would, because feedback says as much about the person leaving it as it says about the person it's left for.  But the IN-sane buyer does not know that - the IN-sane buyer asumes I think like they do, and so was more likely not to leave any feedback than they were to leave unfair feedback.

Now however, that little defense is gone.  Sellers can only leave positive for buyers & buyers know it, so what does it matter?  I now leave positive feedback when I ship out the item.  If the buyer leaves feedback for me, great, if not, I'm not going to worry about it.  It's completely voluntary, something else that a lot of people don't seem to understand.

A lot of people act like collecting feedback is the object of selling or buying on eBay.  That's just weird.

These boards sometimes identify IN-sane eBay types, both seller and buyers.   For example, there is a buyer out there who has bought maybe a couple dozen items in the last two years, and has left negatives for every one of them.  He came to light on the boards because a seller posted that he'd received negative feedback the same day he mailed the item - in other words the buyer hadn't received it yet.  I looked at the buyer's feedback page, and sure enough, he's left negatives for everyone he's ever bought from.  Either he has the worst luck in the world, or he is classically IN-sane.   Either way, I blocked him, just in case.   There was another buyer who leaves an extremely high rate of negative and neutrals - and some of the comments seemed to be about things completely out of the seller's control, like post office transit times.  IN-sane.

Insanity isn't limited to buyers though, not by a long shot.  But they're the ones I worry about.