Buyers happy with product but leave a neutral

[kirkie]

Just looking through someones feedback and came accross there neutrals

recieved successfully

the item arrived quickly

accurate description, good quality

happy with my purchase

The boots are great and your communication great, shame the courier cant read!

Good buy

These are all neutrals, what planet are these people on... as if its the sellers fault the courier cant read??

idiots

[rsot]

Some customers just click too quickly - I had 2 negatives with Great product - amazingly fast shipper.

[kirkie]

thats gutted if that happends..

[pod]

eBay does a serious piss poor effort to let people know what the feedback means. Sellers know because their lives hang on it. But buyers get no education at all. No effort to tell them anything.

To some people a neutral simply means it wasn't bad and it wasn't the best thing that ever happened to them. That is what neutral by definition is.... But they dont always know they have put you one step closer to being out of business....

They can put a full page about buyer protection up when you log in, but they cant be bothered to simply let buyers know that neutral isn't actually neutral. And 4 out of 5 is a fail. What in the whole world has 4 out of 5 stars a fail? Thats a great movie or a great hotel or a great restaurant....

There are some days when I want to find who came up with the way the rating system is setup and actually punch them

[siccspitz]

sucks for you :P

i had a negative when i the customer never received the shipment from the seller and he did receive the money LOl

i got scammed : (

[Hrad]

I got a neutral with the comment "as described"

How that buyer is disappointed is beyond me.

[pod]

Originally Posted by Hrad

How that buyer is disappointed is beyond me.

He's not. Neutral by definition to many people is just "ok" nothing spectacular. Neutral just like it sounds.

Neutral for eBay is one tiny hair above negative. It needs to actually be renamed if they want something that close to a negative. Neutral by definition is not "almost" negative.

[First Edition]

In the good ol' days, you wouldn't be kicked off for bad feedback... people would read your seller feedback and make their on decisions.
What happened to that?

[pod]

Originally Posted by First Edition

What happened to that?

It stopped making any difference. People dont even bother with it hardly anymore. Get a 97% and you are long gone.... Got 97% on a physics test once, was pretty proud. Guess I should have quit school actually. Or gotten thrown out....

[pod]

Its so stupid.

They have taken two very familiar and common rating systems and bent them right out of reality

4 out of 5 stars for anything on the planet is pretty damn good! - On eBay its a huge fail
98% for anything on the planet is almost perfect! - On eBay its a huge fail

Expressions you wont see in the real world:
"The Godfather, 4 out of 5 stars. A total failure"
"If you get less then 99% on exam, you fail your biology mid-term"

Stupid stupid stupid.....

[First Edition]

But when it first started, you could have 10 percent positive, and you wouldn't get the boot.... people just wouldn't buy from you!

[pod]

Ya, that was the original point to it. So the buyer can see your track record. Now does it even mater? There is no real track record. You are either alive or dead

[biglouis999]

I include a packing slip with every package explaining briefly how the "stars" work and that anything less than 5 is a fail. I also tell buyers that these ratings are NOT anonymous, that I check every feedback. And I advise them to completely boycot the star system.

If someone leaves me a low rating I contact them. Its against eBay policy but I do it by private email or phone and so there is no record. Ebay does not want to know about anything that did not go through its message system.

One buyer left 4 low stars in error using her Blackberry. Another gave me a "1" on decscription because she misread the description. I persuaded both of these buyers to write a follow up sayng the low marks were in error and then I rang customer services and got the feedback removed completely, including the stars.

If someone leaves me a neutral I phone them. Yes I have phoned the USA sometimes - I can do it cheaply on my internet phone. Last buyer admitted her son left the feedback. I told her she could get her account suspended for allowing an unsupervised minor to leave feedback. She immediately agreed to feedback revision.

Another tactic I tell them is that Powersellers have a part of eBay where no one else can go and we maintain a bad bidders database where we enter the names of all the bad buyers. Its like getthng your name on a bad credit register. So dozens of sellers you never traded with may now refuse to accept your bids. And theres nothing you can do about it. I tell them we also use networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to spread the names of buyers with dirty records.

Scares the living daylights out of them.

[pod]

In my opinion the long detailed notes on how the feedback system works just don't work. The kind of buyer that would read it is not a problem anyway because they get it. The problem buyer who doesn't understand the system wont read it anyway. I have received full page color charts from sellers on how it works. But again, the buyer who doesn't get the system is the same buyer that doesn't read anything....

I think the simpler the better. One or two sentences saying 4 out of 5 is a failing grade and to please contact us if they feel we failed... They are more interested in the item, not reading an essay on the feedback system.
But again, just my opinion.