Your imput is valuable...I am perplexed.....

michael minarik

This is printed in RED and posted by GB administration:
"You must contact the seller to resolve any questions or concerns before placing a bid."

Buyer follows this rule and submits questions WELL IN ADVANCE OF AUCTION DEADLINE. Seller -for whatever- reason does not answer. Buyer loozes out on auction.

I believe if a buyer "has to abide by the rule" as posted by GB then the flip side of that argument is that the Seller must abide by the unwritten rule and he must answer questions. Sent e-mail verification can be documented!

There is ONLY one honest excuse why a SELLER did not respond and it is based on the imperfections of this computer system. I went on vacation and was gone when it ended; it ended during the hours I sleep...all BS...

What do you think?

offeror

I think an auction member is an auction member. Many buyers are also sellers. Everyone expects to be treated the same. If you're a seller who thinks your buyers have to act any better than you do, wake up.

I think you're entitled to put "Seller doesn't respond to e-mailed questions" in his feedback, but you can't because you didn't win. It's his loss, as the bid might have gone higher.

I have both a seller policy and a buyer policy. There is no reason why only sellers should make any rules. Besides, the auction site rules "trump" any member policies every time.

I try NOT to deal with sellers who act like big impersonal businesses. I don't like e-bot mail and I don't like unanswered questions. Auctions are the great leveller in that sense. Buyers and sellers are equals. Period. Both should attempt to achieve zero negative feedback. If a seller can't achieve zero, he should cut back sales until he can.

Where did any seller ever get the idea that his practices were any more important than the buyer's? We all signed up the same way -- on a purely individual basis. Give me personal service as I give you, or I take my money elsewhere. Demand nothing from me that you are not willing to do yourself.

- Life NRA Member
"If cowardly & dishonorable men shoot unarmed men with army guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary...and not by general deprivation of constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878

dads-freehold

greetings, i agree with offerer on this issue,and another thing is the half a mile of dissclaimer on some of the sellers post,as if their afaid to sellto the public. respt submitted dads-freehold

rodney colson

Mercury

Offerer,
I have 17k+ feedback on ebay.....so I have to say something here as a seller. Basically, how many auctions you run doesn't necessarily impact on how many negatives you will get! This is why: IT DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU SELL!!! If you sell adult stuff, you'll get few. If you sell stuff for kids, you'll get many. For what I sell (lots of kid stuff that kids bid on) YOU WILL GET NEGATIVES, no matter what. EVERY seller who sells what I do has negatives. 99% of them are from idiots who leave you a negative within 24 hours just to screw with you, or people who don't send payment, but think they did. I get a LOT of grandparents who do this.....they just can't figure out paypal, for some reason.

When I went to Ebay Live (Ebay flew me there) I met with the other 117 "shooting stars". Most every single one I talked to said the same thing: "You are going to get negatives, no matter how good of a seller you are."

This is true. My mom has almost 1k positives, and 3 negatives. All 3 were from idiots who just decided to leave a negative, without even sending payment! It happens. She ships stuff out the same day, rarely has more than 10-15 auctions going at once, and answers every single email. She still gets negatives.

I have over 20,000 positive feedbacks total, but they only "count" 17k (rest are repeat buyers). If someone doesn't want to bid on my stuff because I have a few negatives, and yet have 20,000+ positives, fine. Nothing I can do about it, anyway. I actually had someone say "one negative means more than a million positives" Now *that* is clueless!

I don't coddle my buyers, either. If they are idiots, I'll tell them so. I'm definately NOT PC!!!!!

I've had MANY more people write me and say "I wish I had the guts to say what I wanted to in my feedbacks, but I don't." than I've had say "I'm not going to bid because you have a few negatives."

99%+ of my buyers are happy.......I bust my butt to keep it that way. I do all sorts of extras if people ask, no problem.

I TRY to answer buyer's questions, but IF it is covered in the auction, I simply say "Please read the auction, it is covered there, along with other things you should know."

As anyone who has done any amount of auctions (I've been on ebay since 1996) knows, there are a LOT of idiots out there. And more every day, it seems.

Merc



NO! You may not have my guns! Now go crawl back into your hole!

****************************************

"Tolerating things you may not necessarily like is part of being free" - Larry Flynt