I really didn’t understand all of the changes made to eBays feedback system until I recently sold a bunch of stuff. I found out the hard way that there really is no longer a method to provide visible feedback stating that a Buyer is a dead beat or unreasonable. Here are two examples where that I had with some troublesome buyers.
I list groups of items together so I have time to get payments, package them up, and then ship them all together. I stated very clearly in my auction that I expect payments within 24 hrs so I can do this. I had one buyer who did not contact me and didn’t pay me until 5 days later. Rather than taking the time to ship his item by itself I waited for the next batch which was four days away. I said I would send it via USPS priority mail and I did.
I get a correspondence from the buyer stating that they are angry that I charged $5.00 for shipping and sent it via first class mail which only costs $0.48. They were also very upset that I waited to ship it even though they didn’t follow my instructions. I responded back with the USPS Priority Mail tracking number to show that I did indeed ship via that method. I even showed that shipping cost me $6.00 while I only charged them $5.00. I also explained that the reason it shipped later was because they were late in paying and I shipped it with other items. The kicker is that this user was able to leave me negative feedback but when I tried to leave them feedback all I can do is leave positive or nothing at all. There is no method for me to communicate to other sellers that this buyer is a little bit high strung.
The second scenario is with someone who did not pay me at all. The user would not communicate and even though I can file a non-paying bidder and get my funds there is once again no method for me to communicate that this person is a deadbeat. So when you see buyers with all positive feedback it’s very misleading because there really is no way to get negative feedback. I really think eBay messed up here and put all of the sellers at a disadvantage.