Yesterday, eBay announced that they’re going to stop allowing negative feedback on sales. Sort of, anyway – only buyers will be allowed to leave negative feedback, with sellers having to make do with positive or nothing. Of course, this now means that (for sellers) no feedback is the new bad feedback. I believe it’s a backwards step. I’m not saying the positive/negative feedback thing is the best solution, but this is even worse.
I lost any faith in eBay years ago when they couldn’t sort out a problem I had with someone who sent me a non-working Dreamcast game. They made out it was up to me to contact the seller, even though I’d emailed them several times and sent messages via eBay (which they had logs of) – all to no response. In the end, I just gave up on it and left them bad feedback (which they somehow convinced eBay to remove).
Then there’s the problem of pirated products. Until recently, almost all GBA games on eBay were pirated copies. Did eBay care? Clearly not, as the traders kept on trading. the only reason the number of knock-offs has declined is because interest in the console has. Sellers have moved on to selling dodgy DS titles instead. Almost every DVD I’ve been interested in (mostly anime stuff) has blatantly been a copy, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a non-pirate Ranma 1/2 DVD box set on the site.
And the fees! There’s a fee for listing. There’s a fee once your item has sold. There’s a fee if you use Paypal to receive your money. There’s a fee if you then take your money out of your Paypal account and put it back into your bank account. Lets not forget who own Paypal – eBay! Oh yes, and for many (perhaps all, now) categories on eBay you now can only accept payments by Paypal. eBay is forcing you to use their other service, so they can ensure they scalp you twice. Or four times. Surely this is illegal?
Of course, eBay say the reason they “prefer” Paypal is so they can help their customers when things go wrong. Except they don’t help their customers when things go wrong. In fact, they help scammers instead – far too many people have sold items, sent them with proof of postage, only to have the buyer complain the items never arrived and had money claimed back from Paypal and/or eBay. The seller has no comeback. Now, they have even less, as they’re not allowed to leave bad feedback for the buyer.
Madness.
