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Can someone clear the air on feedbacks?
 

Ok, I'm constantly hearing people say "feedbacks don't matter" or things like that. How is that true? Feedbacks DO MATTER. If you have 99.9% feedback rating, you'll make more sales, and rank higher in the pages than if you have a feedback of 96.4% and others say that ebay might come after you and shut you down for having a low feedback score.

So what is the truth? My experience tells me feedbacks ABSOLUTELY MATTER. Which is why as a seller, I am so frustrated why it weighs so heavily for small-time sellers who cannot absorb 1 or 2 negatives every year for a long time. Sellers that sell 1000 or 10000 a month can afford to eat 3 or 4 negatives per month and their rating will still be 99%

Sellers that only sell 100 or less per month can't take much more than 1 negative feedback else your rating drops significantly and would take months if not years to get it back up .3 percent!! It's so frustrating and difficult.

I'm taking a quote from someone here that said:

"Feedback as a buyer is meaningless.

The best feedback is no feedback at all. No feedback is calculated in your dashboard as 100% and 5 stars across the board. No feedback is perfect feedback. Why ask for less?"

IS THIS TRUE? I don't think so.

If a buyer doesn't leave you any feedback, you don't get +1 feedback for completed sale. You get nothing for a complete transaction with no positive feedback left. The only positive thing you can say is, "at least you didn't get a negative feedback, so you might as well shut up and be happy you got no feedback instead of a negative".

I'm going to use ebay's own logic. When a case is opened by a buyer and the buyer does not respond to the case after 30 days, the case is AUTOMATICALLY CLOSED by ebay in favor of the seller! That's great !

So why isn't it true if a buyer doesn't leave any feedback after a sale and the time period to leave feedback has expired, why doesn't it just add a +1 score to your feedback rating? It means a huge deal for many sellers. Most buyers that don't leave positive feedback (or any feedback for that matter) are just buyers that can't bother, don't have the time to, forget to do so, or simply doesn't even know about it. It's not likely that they are committing a passive aggressive act against the seller by leaving no feedback because they weren't terribly happy with the product but not bad enough to open a case or warrant a negative. I don't think most buyers would attempt communicate like this: "I got my item no problem, but I'm not overly happy with it so to get back at my seller, I'm not going to leave any positive feedback". <---- I really doubt buyers think to themselves like this. It's more likely that if you didn't leave a positive feedback for the buyer FIRST, then they might think to themselves, "hmph! I''m not going to leave a positive for my seller until I get a positive first!"

So the reason why it's so important to have all completed and no problem transactions count as +1 to feedback is because let's say out of 1000 sales in a year, if 5 people gave you negative, and 995 sales were all OK, then you're score would be an exceptional 99.5%

But the same seller who made 1000 sales and 5 people left a negative but out of the 995 completed sales that were no problem only 300 people left you positive feedback, now the score of 295/300 is 98.3% which is bordering on suspension or RED ALERT.

In both cases, the seller's performance was the SAME. Both exceptional. But the difference is only 30% left feedback vs 100% Why do sellers get penalized for buyers not wanting to leave feedback? Our survival pretty much depends on some luck and hoping that the buyers are not lazy or ignorant who don't leave positive feedback.

Re: Can someone clear the air on feedbacks?
 

Yes, thanks for the reply and welcome.

What about the latter part of my post? Do I have a point or am I missing something? Yes, it is obvious that one can simply say to keep a high standard
of everything and you shouldn't have any problems but of course even that is not true.

995 / 1000 result at a 99.5% success/positive outcome is an exceptional score nevermind ebay's standards....anywhere in life in anything you do 99.5% would be astronomical and beyond excellent.

But outside of the control of the ebay seller, 700 buyers are lazy or uninformed and just don't bother to post a feedback but they had no problem with the order obviously since no negative was given or a case opened.

Those 700 successful transactions and sales that have gone silent should still result in a recorded score or benefit to the seller! 295/300 is much worse score than 995/1000 for ebay standards (although 295/300 would still be a majestic score/rating anywhere else in the world).

There's not much more one can do as a small-time seller if people only leave positive feedback at a 20 or 30% rate (even 30% is high...it's more like 15-20% respond).

In my exact case, that is what I'm dealing with. 995 successful sales/transactions out of 1000 the past 12 months. But my feedback score is only 98.2% Why? Because only 300 people of the 1000 left feedback, 295 positive and 5 negatives. So my rating is only based out of 300. 295/300 is a much worse score than 995/1000.

Ebay should know sellers are pretty much at the mercy of buyers because we can't force them to leave a positive even when the sale was completed, successful, and the buyer is satisfied with it (given the fact they never reported a problem, opened a case ,or wanted to return it or even just mention something they were not satisfied with). It's 99.1% more likely they just can't bother to leave feedback OR they forgot/uninformed/ignorant). I only give about a 1-2% possibility that the buyer is actually trying to be passive aggressive by not leaving feedback.

Re: Can someone clear the air on feedbacks?
 

I've had to stop selling on one account because of low feedback, my sales plummeted. I am assuming it put off buyers and also eBay placed my listings lower down the pages. I am having to rest that account for 12 months. It is so frustrating when buys cannot be bothered leaving a positive but are quick to leave a negative.
If i could add to the above previous posts by oatmeal with a question?
I have opened a second account with eBay using the same details as my first account will eBay also place the second account lower down in listings? I ask as my sales have been terrible.

This and eBay sponsored listings has basically destroyed my business so badly I've just closed my business with HMRC, the bonus being I won't have to filling those bloody awful self assessment forms anymore.

Re: Can someone clear the air on feedbacks?
 

I don't get why this isn't a bigger or more talked about issue?
Ebay are the ones that placed such a massive importance on this "feedback rating" scheme. Big time sellers on amazon are able to have feedback rating of 75% and still
be allowed to sell with tremendous volume and success, but if you hover around 95%, that is considered bad on ebay?

The simple remedy is if the buyers do not leave feedback, then after say 90 days or something, it should just automatically count as a +1 for the seller! It was a sale, it was shipped, it was delivered, customer had no problems with it, so what's the problem ebay? Why determine a seller's success and reputation on the habits of ebay buyers rate of leaving feedbacks? If they don't want to bother to leave feedback, that's fine! They don't have to spend a minute of their precious lives to leave feedback, but then it should just count as an automatic +1 for sellers.

What I've been doing the past few days is I started listing cheaper items and marked them down so that I'm taking a loss (a few cents to a dollar) per sale just to try and see if I can make more sales/transactions and hope that some of them will leave feedback. I've upped my sales from 1-2 per day to now 4-8 sales per day but I'm only going to this for a limited time because I can't keep taking a loss on every transaction for long-term.

Re: Can someone clear the air on feedbacks?
 

Welcome to the forum - all the best as you master stealth :thumb:

Re: Can someone clear the air on feedbacks?
 

Feedback has ZERO value. There is no metric for feedback. It is meaningless opinions. Ebay does not monitor feedback.

You could easily have 97% feedback and be top rated seller.

The best feedback is no feedback.

Re: Can someone clear the air on feedbacks?
 

The reason noone talks about feedback anymore is because it is useless. Why talk about something that has no effect on anything?

Re: Can someone clear the air on feedbacks?
 

I've been hearing this but can you prove this? It's not enough to just have you state an opinion. I think it does matter because I've experienced how it does affect sales. I'm still a top rated seller whether I was at 98% or 99.5%, but as soon as my rating dropped under 99%, I already noticed a difference in sales drop. Can it just be coincidence? Perhaps, but not likely.

Yes, I have seen big sellers with low ratings like 97.2% still sell high volume and listings show up in the 1st page of searches but that's probably because they are such high volume sellers.

For small sellers, I think you're listings drop quite a bit if you were a 100% feedback rating to a 98%.

Now, on a personal note, I do hope you are right. I would be glad if you are right. But % does matter. Buyers are more likely going to buy from a seller who is rate 99.5% vs a seller who is rated 94%. And why would ebay put items from a seller with 94% over items from a seller that is 99%? That wouldn't make sense either. Ebay would want to promote items from their top sellers and best sellers right? They wouldn't promote their less than stellar sellers above their stellar ones.

What I said is still true. If buyers either leave feedback at 100% rate or ebay can just automatically count it as +1 if no feedback is left after 60 days or 90 days, I don't know what's wrong with that? All it would do is give us the most accurate statistics of a seller's selling performance. That's all I'm asking for.

If a I sold 1000 items and 995 were successful, why wouldn't I want myself to be advertised as a seller who has 995 successful sales and not a seller who has just 295 successful sales? The reality is I have 995, so I want to be shown as having 995, not 295 because 700 deadbeat buyers didn't bother or care to record a feedback for me.

No feedback is NOT the best feedback. Positive feedback is the best feedback.

Re: Can someone clear the air on feedbacks?
 

Too much overanalysis OP

Re: Can someone clear the air on feedbacks?
 

No, I disagree with you.
Feedbacks affects the seller's status and reputation on ebay.
That's how ebay made it. I didn't make it like that. So ebay wants sellers to
do their job well and that's what I do. I do it well. 995/1000 ...how is that not considered top rate? The problem is ebay doesn't solve the problem of deadbeat buyers who should leave feedback when they ordered something and it arrived exactly and perfectly as advertised. They are supposed to leave feedback but since they don't, that's why I said in the very beginning, ebay should just make it automatic +1. I don't care for feedbacks either. I just want what I'm supposed to get and that's 995/1000 not 295/300. That's ripping off sellers like me simply based on the lack of effort on buyers parts to leave feedback. So just make it an automatic +1 if buyers don't leave any after 90 days? Ebay already does this when a case opens and the buyer doesn't respond in 30 days, the ebay automatically closes it in favor of WHO? The seller. My point.

Having been an ebayer since 2003 (probably longer than you), every single order I have ever made on ebay in the 16 years I've been using it, guess what? I LEFT FEEDBACK. Every single order. So yes, I have the right to call out buyers who don't leave feedback when they should. The system is designed for it. If it wasn't, I wouldn't care then, but ebay made it that way. So the problem is with ebay's system not me complaining why ebay doesn't fix this flaw. And yes, feedbacks is still a HUGE issue, just do a simple search and see the thousands of questions constantly being asked about it still.

Re: Can someone clear the air on feedbacks?
 

Really? 995/1000 = 99.5 vs 295/300 = 98.3

Not sure what's so hard about that?

:)

Re: Can someone clear the air on feedbacks?
 

Well, sorry, you are wrong and too arrogant to admit it.
I asked you for proof and you can't provide it because it doesn't exist.
Feedbacks do matter. Just admit when you can't back it up. So long.

Re: Can someone clear the air on feedbacks?
 

It is fact. You keep on making everything up. It is fact feedback is not a metric. It has no meaning. Yes, fact. You can read the policy.

I have many accounts top rated seller, collecting tens of thousands of dollars a month with 98% feedback.

We could not care less about feedback. Really, why would we?

In order to have 100% feedback, you would have to be low volume, never make a mistake and issue a refund for every scammer and for what? You will make less money and get scammed more often. **** that!

Re: Can someone clear the air on feedbacks?
 

You are the arrogant one here. It is your opinion.....It is NOT fact. It is just what you think. Nobody cares, so why keep on repeating yourself? You just sound more arrogant and ignorant doing so.

Re: Can someone clear the air on feedbacks?
 

He never said it was hard. He said YOU over analyse feedback as if is somehow important.

What is so hard about that for YOU to understand?

We get it, you think feedback is important. Good for you :)

Re: Can someone clear the air on feedbacks?
 

Talk about being emotional.
If you can't prove that feedbacks don't matter, nobody is forcing you
to comment here. I thought you said you were leaving? lol.

Yes, it seems it's too difficult for you to understand simple math.
99.5 is better than 98.3

If you are saying feedbacks don't matter, then why does ebay even
have a feedback rating/score and system? Huh? I got you there didn't I?

Yeah, if feedbacks didn't matter, then why even have feedbacks on ebay?
You need to take it up with ebay and not with me. I'm simply pointing
the flaw with ebay and you are taking out your emotions on me.

It's really simple.

Re: Can someone clear the air on feedbacks?
 

You would REALLLLY hate me lol

I routinely buy $20,000-$40,000 a month on ebay and I NEVER leave feedback. :lol:

Re: Can someone clear the air on feedbacks?
 

And I'd wager a bet that the vast majority of buyers never even SEE the seller's feedback score when they are buying on mobile devices.

The shiit is hidden at the bottom... that's how important eBay views it lol

Re: Can someone clear the air on feedbacks?
 

Why would I or anyone waste time proving something that is not even provable? LOL

It is opinion based. Fact of the matter is, almost nobody cares about feedback, especially not ebay. You CAN NOT get banned by feedback score. You CAN NOT have any negative effects by paypal or ebay or feedback.

100% of my accounts are Top Rated Seller and not a single one is 100% feedback. We handle millions of dollars total and we do not manage feedback and hardly even look at it.
If you love feedback, good for you. I nor anyone else cares what some random dude from the inter-web is saying about it. All big sellers care about is Cash Flowing in, ROI and Profit margins. Feedback has nothing to do with any of that. Never once has a lender asked me for my feedback score. Never once has a partner asked me what my feedback looked like. Never once have I asked my wholesale buyers what their feedback score is.....

This thread has a 1 star review. Does that mean anything? According to you, it does. Take that for what it is worth.