Argh Mateys! “Captain eBlay” has wreaked havoc with eBay sellers and we seek revenge!
Mutiny on the eBay bounty escalated on eBay Doomsday, May 19, 2008 when neutral feedbacks retroactively were counted as a negative, and when sellers could no longer leave negative feedback for buyers. If you’re among those sellers still standing at eBay, then you can take a stance and take action to make a difference or eBay will continue on the rampage!
Join us in the mutiny!
Your mission, if you choose to accept it is to:
1. MAKE NOISE WITH EBAY: Blog, file complaints, ask questions of eBay representatives, stop buying, stop selling and fight your good reputation with every feature available on eBay. Be sure to use Live Customer Service and do whatever you can to drive up the costs at eBay to make the senior managers understand of MUTINY ON THE EBAY BOUNTY!
2. SEND UNPAID ITEM REMINDERS: You have two ways to report buyers who don’t pay — the traditional way is through eBay and this will document bad buying habits for all sellers. Best of all, it only takes a couple more strikes for the the bad apple to get a suspsension. You’ll gain satisifaction knowing s/he’s NO LONGER A REGISTERED USER and that negative or neutral will be removed. Another option for reporting unpaid buyers is through a third party service called http://feedback.reliabid.com,
3. REPORT FEEDBACK EXTORTION: Reporting feedback extortion to eBay is tricky — the buyer actually has to spell out that s/he will leave negative or neutral feedback if the seller doesn’t comply with demands to provide goods or services outside the original listing. Buyers can threaten to leave negative feedback as long the demand is NOT outside what was promised in the listing. In other words, they can’t ask you to upgrade them or in a free product, but they can threaten to leave such feedback if “the item doesn’t deliver by Friday.”
4. DOCUMENT AND REPORT FEEDBACK ABUSE. Have you been abused by a buyer? You may think so, but eBay will not remove a feedback simply for having inflammatory language (e.g. “liar”). But eBay will remove it if the comment, reply or follow-up references a completely separate transaction or unrelated experience, or has Profane, vulgar, obscene, or racist language or adult material in it. That’s about the only reason they will remove the feedback. The only other reason is if you have a court order to have it removed. Again, make noise and take up the customer service representatives time, because time is money for eBay!
5. SEND ALL CONCERNS TO TRUST AND SAFETY. When buyers do something strange — ensure they’ve provided the proper contact information to their eBay account and if not you can repor them to eBay. You and should request contact information whenever something goes wrong. A phony phone-number or address is a big tip off for fraud, and can aid your case. Suspiscious activity may encircle a malicious eBayer who provides false or incorrect e-mail address, and you can report such deviances to eBay’s Trust and Safety department. eBay may respond by warning, suspending or terminating, but won’t divulge to you the results of their investigations.
6. CREATE SELLER’S TERMS: Back in the day an establishment might post a “No shirts, no shoes, no service!” sign — today’s eBay is no different. In fact, our eBay representatives have suggested quite frankly that sellers SHOULD make sellers terms, and that they CAN exclude buyers at any time prior to the listing close and SHOULD cancel unwelcome bids. The key is to stop a bad buyer during the bidding process. The specifics are a bit fuzzy for Buy Nows.
While sellers are not permitted to include terms of sale any conditions that limit or restrict the buyer from leaving feedback, they do have some options and can report bad buyers who fail to mee the terms. Examples:
>> Seller states item will only be shipped domestically. Buyer is registered outside the shipping area.
>> Seller states that buyers with negative feedback comments are not permitted to bid. The buyer has negative feedback.
Creating sellers terms will go a long way to thwart unwelcome and malicious buying. Wat’s more, sellers can take note of eBay’s “Report a Problem pages” BOOKMARK THIS SITE: http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/report_problem.html
Generally, eBay is inflexible in removing feedback.
7. GO TO THIRD PARTY RESOURCES: Show eBay how you feel by reporting your bad experiences to third party resources. Make noise in various forums:
Here are some wonderful eBay forums:
http://www.auctionbytes.com/
http://www.powersellersforum.com/
Here are some places to report bad experiences with buyers:
http://www.ebuyer-feedback.com
http://www.mermaidmonkey.com/eBayBlockedList
http://www.buyerbackground.com
Please add to the list and tell us your eBay Mutiny story!
dropping like flies for eBay alternatives like etsy.com (handmade items), rubylane.com (collectibles) and Amazon which has opened the doors to a variety of online merchants.
