The seller made sure that there would be no winners in this situation when they sent the item with insufficient postage. If that doesn't happen, the rest of this likely does not happen.
"Negging someone on eBay for a buck in shipping is a pretty crappy thing to do"
That's just not true - that may be your opinion but that's the opinion of a very small number of people. The majority - an overwhelming majority - believe that it one valuable part of such community feedback systems to provide a way for buyers to notify other perspective buyers of potential problems.
Yes it is. I can forgive someone for being ignorant of the way the eBay feedback system works, but when you push that button, you are not just "notifying other perspective buyers of potential problems". It hasn't been that way for years. Not since eBay removed the ability to leave negative feedback for buyers, anyways.
If I were the seller in this case, rather than going to court, and negative feedback was still around, I'd have left them the same with something like "PITA buyer, - feedback for being off $1 in shipping. AVOID."
What you are actually doing when negging a seller is deciding "This seller made me so mad that I am going to cost them large amounts of reputation, raise their fees, restrict their ability to list, and possibly help drive them out of business". This is not an idle threat. Feedback is calculated over a 12 moth period, meaning if you only sell a couple things a year and get a single neg, you'll trip over all of the eBay restrictions and fee increases.
Now let's get some perspective here. The seller delivered the item, as described. There are no complaints about the item itself, so we can assume the buyer is happy with it.
Buyer's willing to mark the whole transaction as terrible over a freaking dollar?
There are some levels of shenanigans to which this is an appropriate response. $1 is not.
The more I think about it, the more I think there may be some merit to this case. If the seller offered to make the problem right and the buyer hit them anyways, given the effect that hit will have, is it possible they have a case?
> Buyer's willing to mark the whole transaction as terrible over a freaking dollar?
Why not? The proper course of action (provided the buyer didn’t mind waiting for the delivery) would have been to reject paying said $1.44 and let the seller try to ship again. By then, the delivery certainly would have been late, easily justifying negative feedback.
Furthermore, the seller even acknowledges that this particular problem happened a lot lately[1], so they really have no excuse whatsoever for underpaying their shipments.
Oh, and it may be a good idea to think about what ‘-’ means – to me, it doesn’t mean ‘terrible’ but ‘there was a problem’, and postage due is a problem (as is late delivery). I don’t want to buy from people who deliver late/with postage due and I am happy if ebay ensures that people delivering late or trying to get another $1.44 from me are stopped from selling on the platform.
If instead of showing up at my door I got a note that said you need to come down to the post office during business hours and pick up your package and bring an extra $1.44, I'd actually be kinda put out.
This was a mistake by the shipper for mis-weighing the package (as they note in the feedback "This has happened alot from USPS lately." - maybe they need to get themselves a new scale) it should get negative feedback, and if this is the tactic they take to get rid of that negative feedback, then that seller shouldn't be selling.
Right. This was an intentional attempt to cheat the system that the seller fails at, repeatedly. They attempted to screw the USPS and the customer got the bad end of their incompetence.
>This was an intentional attempt to cheat the system
You don't know that. Say the seller has a faulty scale and does large numbers of transactions at once. 100 packages go out, and 100 postage due complaints come in.
A non-scumbag would resolve the issue for the customers and fix the systemic issue. That this continues to be a problem is a sign of a bad seller. The first time this happens, you need to re-calibrate your scale.
In their defense, at least they offered to refund the extra shipping cost, but relying on not being caught to save a small amount of money is not worth it in the long run.
The buyer is not driving them out of business, Ebay is. Why does Ebay need to react so harshly? They should care more about the hardship they inflict on their sellers, and not blindly measure each piece of negative feedback equally.
Blaming the seller is a bit like blaming someone who calls the cops on a loud party, for bad behavior by the cops.
If the cops are known for breaking up parties by beating people to death (and you know of this), don't you hold some responsibility if you call the cops to break up the party? You're not 'solely responsible' for whatever happens, but you have some amount of responsibility.
The thing is, eBay's feedback system has changed over the years.
I first registered on eBay (only as a buyer) about a decade ago, and I've been an active seller on eBay's properties (DeRemate.com and MercadoLibre.com) for a long time.
Negative feedback used to be very common and appropriate in cases such as this one, sellers on MercadoLibre get negative feedback a lot.
eBay's official guidelines (just checked) for leaving feedback are just:
"Share honest Feedback to help members buy and sell with confidence. Give sellers detailed ratings to let them know where they're doing a great job, and where there's still room for improvement"
and on the link to the help page:
"Before leaving neutral or negative Feedback, contact your trading partner to try to resolve any issues."
it doesn't say "leaving negative feedback will destroy the seller" or "Negative feedback should be reserved for very rare situations. Additionally, negative feedback should be left only after you have tried desperately to resolve the situation with the buyer or seller in question. "
which is what one user-created (by a seller) help page says
Maybe eBay should guide users better, or get better grading tools. I haven't left negative feedback in a long time (just checked, the last four years I've only left positives), because my transactions all went smoothly (props to eBay and their sellers).
Edit: the buyer definitely didn't even attempt the first step (contacting the seller). I would have. They acted too fast (maybe in anger or something, they had a bad day, who knows).
> What you are actually doing when negging a seller is deciding "This seller made me so mad that I am going to cost them large amounts of reputation, raise their fees, restrict their ability to list, and possibly help drive them out of business"
What you are actually doing is noting dissatisfaction with the buyer through the system eBay has set up. The consequences you describe are a result of the system, not the willful action of the buyer. Savvy and unscrupulous buyers might hope that those are the consequences, but one neg doesn't directly translate into that quoted intent.
>The consequences you describe are a result of the system, not the willful action of the buyer.
And if you take that action as a buyer, you are either ignorant of what that negative feedback entails (which is understandable, eBay doesn't go out of its way to post this except on seller only pages.. they DO however say that you are supposed to contact the seller, and in fact if you attempt to leave negative feedback, they stop you with an "are you sure you haven't done X Y and Z" page before actually submitting it)
Or, the buyer knows, and decides that these consequences are worth ruining someone over a dollar.
Right, so a buyer who is unaware of the way that negative feedback can impact a low-volume seller is doing nothing wrong. They are using the system that they have at their disposal to leave feedback.
I think you're being a tad over-zealous with your talk of "ruining someone".
>Right, so a buyer who is unaware of the way that negative feedback can impact a low-volume seller is doing nothing wrong.
Correct.
>I think you're being a tad over-zealous with your talk of "ruining someone".
Hardly. Remember, eBay feedback is calculated over 12 months.
If you have a chain of good sales, don't sell for a while, sell again, and something happens that causes the buyer to leave a neg, you are in deep shit with eBay.
Your listing fees will be higher, your number of listings will be restricted, you have funds availability holds from PayPal.. it's a real mess. Lesser things can and have put people out of business.
If you are primarily an eBay seller this can completely ruin your business.
Now, obviously this is the absolute worst case scenario, but the point is the amount of negative feedback you need to start getting really nasty restrictions put on you is miniscule. Anything that drops you below 98 or 95% positive (haven't been a seller for long enough that I honestly forget the exact number) is enough.
Going back to the subject of the TFA, (and we're venturing deep into conjecture territory here, but bear with me) what if they ended up with a faulty scale that weighed everything a pound less than it should be, and as a result a cluster of buyers ended up with packages postage due?
If it weren't for eBay this would be no problem. You make it right with your customers, refund them, maybe give them a future discount for their trouble, hopefully most of them are happy and you continue on your merry way.
Instead, the buyers are encouraged to vent on the feedback system, which is tied directly into how the platform treats you. Even if you make it right, there's nothing stopping a buyer from trashing on you, and your recourse is precisely jack and shit.
There are three very important things to remember here:
1. eBay is enough of a jerk to sellers that you should really think twice before submitting bad feedback, especially if they fixed their screwup. This is what neutral is for. The seller got you your item but did so in such a way that you don't want to increase their reputation.
2. Enough bad feedback (and "enough" is a very, very small number) most definitely can ruin an eBay seller's business.
3. eBay is a terrible company ripe for replacement.
Yeah, eBay seems like a piece of shit to sell on. But that's eBay's fault, not the person who leaves bad feedback. And if you're an eBay seller, then you should know the risks of dealing with them to sell your stuff.
There are no winners in this situation.