I WAS BUSTED BY THE E-BAY POLICE!!! E-BAY RANT

[sportscardtheory]

To me, that's part of that whole "making things far more difficult than they need to be" thing I was talking about earlier. It also presumes that the buyer is going to try to screw you somehow, which 1). is a very negative outlook to have towards your customers, and 2). isn't really going to be able to be handled via feedback anyway, since all you can do is leave positive feedback in any situation, regardless of what the text may say.

It's not difficult at all. The transaction is complete when the item is received and the buyer is content, not when the item is payed for. That's when I leave feedback. I don't care if other people leave feedback as soon as they are payed, it's their choice. I feel it's very pre-mature, but everyone does things differently. You CAN add things in a feedback after the transaction is complete, so why not use feedback for what it's for instead of "Quick payment!". Who cares if it's a quick payment. There is more to a transaction than a payment.

 

[Sean_C]

You can continue to say and believe "the transaction is complete when the item is received and the buyer is content" as long as you want, but it doesn't mean it's correct or right. I do agree that there is more to the transaction that just the payment, and I believe that customer service doesn't end when I drop the item off at the post office. But to essentially "hold hostage" feedback for a buyer after they have made their payment, especially in light of how little power a seller has on eBay these days, is just making things far more difficult for everyone than they need to be, and also ends up possibly angering your buyers.

Case in point: I recently won 5 items from a seller on eBay. The items sold on the 4th, and after getting a warning 2 days later that I needed to pay (I was trying to buy more from the seller to add to the lot), I paid on the 6th for the items, absorbing the seller's $5.00 S&H fee for the items (part of the reason I was waiting, as I was trying to combine shipping), and waited for them to arrive. The seller shipped the items out 6 days later (the 12th). All 5 cards were bundled together in a team set bag with a decoy card on the top of them for "protection" (no top-loads, penny sleeves, nothing but the bag and the decoy) inside of a recycled bubble mailer (IE, one that had been used before) with a 1 oz label printed on it (was at least 3 oz). I left appropriate feedback for the transaction (combination of neutrals and negatives to ensure that it was noticed). A day later, I get a request to revise my feedback from the seller, with the usual song and dance of "my wife sent out the cards, I didn't know, blah blah blah".

How does this tie in to the conversation? You guessed it, I'm still waiting for feedback from the seller for my side of the transaction. Now this is a seller with over 50,000 total feedback, and who quite obviously knows what they are doing. After a quick check of toolhaus.org, it became clear that this wasn't the first (or last, since there have been similar complaints since I posted mine) time this happened. By not leaving feedback when the items are paid for, the seller is hoping that the fear of "retribution" will keep buyers from giving him the proper feedback they deserve.

Your reasons for wanting to wait to leave feedback until the items arrive may indeed be pure and noble, but from the buyer's perspective, you are in the same boat as the seller I describe above; holding off on feedback until you receive it.

To me, that's part of that whole "making things far more difficult than they need to be" thing I was talking about earlier. It also presumes that the buyer is going to try to screw you somehow, which 1). is a very negative outlook to have towards your customers, and 2). isn't really going to be able to be handled via feedback anyway, since all you can do is leave positive feedback in any situation, regardless of what the text may say.

It's not difficult at all. The transaction is complete when the item is received and the buyer is content, not when the item is payed for. That's when I leave feedback. I don't care if other people leave feedback as soon as they are payed, it's their choice. I feel it's very pre-mature, but everyone does things differently. You CAN add things in a feedback after the transaction is complete, so why not use feedback for what it's for instead of "Quick payment!". Who cares if it's a quick payment. There is more to a transaction than a payment.

 

[hofmichael]

Wow, seems like a lot of folks have problems with ebay, bummer.

I leave feedback once a week, 20 feedbacks take about a minute and a half. Copy and paste is a beautiful thing.

I thought you were the king of Ebay problems?Things must be smoothing out for you I take it?