Let's say that a newcommer to eBay sees your auction and with just a couple of minutes to go bids an extremely high sum and then "wins" the auction. After winning they then take the trouble to read the description and find out that they have bid on an item they don't want.
Now don't forget that before confirming their bidthey will have clicked that their bid is legally binding but they just click through that warning without reading it either! After "winning" they start to panic and invent all sorts of excuses why they were "misled" into bidding. "You did not specifically state there was sticky tape on the box". "You did not state that you would not despatch on a Sunday", anything, everything that they could think ofto wriggle out of their bid.
The real reason of course is they were greedy, thought they saw a bargain and couldn't be bothered to read the full description before bidding(they are not the sort who could give a dam about terms and conditions anyway). In our case they complained that despite showing 6 pictures of the actual item for sale we did not specifically state the item for salewas a laptop computer! We just gave the make, model a link to the manufacturers web site and 6 photos- yes that was the best excuse that the buyer could think of!
The above is precicely what happened to us and to save grief we just sold to the underbidder (for 50 less as the ebay system removes not just the last bid) and let the winner off buying the item.You see IF we had stood our ground and sent it weKNOW thatthey would have found some stupid reason to reject the item when they got it. We would then have had the trouble of getting it back, would have had to pay the return carriage, probably finding it damaged,and then have had to make a refund - all probably forced on us by PayPal anyway.
Guess what our reward for this was?
After nearly eight years on eBay and with a 100% rating from well over 500 deals they give us a neutral rating stating that the "sale was not completed". Why was it not completed? Obviously implying that the seller was at fault!
So what can we, one of the increasingly fewer honest sellers on eBay do?
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!
Ebay says that even non paying bidders, that is those who bid and don't complete, those who have paid not a single penny, should nevertheless be able to report their "buying experience" for other bidders! Can we give the "winner" a negative rating to warn other sellers that they don't play by the rules? NOPE that facility has been withdreawn - in short we can do NOTHING!
This report is to ask that if you are a seller on eBay you give us a Yes vote below and maybe eBay will get the message that their new points system is just plain unfair. We have never fallen out with a buyer yet we cannot now show that on our auctions. Above this the percentages are not shown correctly either. We have completed over 500 sales and with a single neutralwe show as being only 99% good!
Let's give eBay the bird! Hopefully their loss of income from the UK will do this better than we can!
Since writing this eBay have decided to ignore Neutral bids when calculating seller feedback, so far so good but the whole point is still made. Please check the positive box for this report. Thanks, Rob.
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