Woman sued for leaving negative feedback

[Panacea]

on eBay.

The woman in question, Amy Nicholls, bought a product that was shipped to her postage due for $1.44. She left negative feedback for this reason.

The company insisted she remove the comment after they reimbursed her for the shipping. She refused, stating it was a hassle for her.

So the company sued. They had a perfect feedback rating and didn't want to lose it.

I think they'll lose more in the long run by pushing this, but it does illustrate the need for eBay to let sellers leave feedback and counter comments the way they used to.

Story here: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...ebay-feedback/

[Andara Bledin]

First, let me agree that eBay really needs to return Feedback to the way it was. They also need to do away with hidden ratings, too and that it would be better if they just educated buyers that bad Feedback for them is mostly meaningless.

After that, however, the seller is going to lose because the only way to have Feedback removed is if it actively violates a rule (complaining about the hassle of a package arriving postage due is not a violation) or if they get a court order based on it being libelous. It doesn't sound like it was.

The seller should really take this as a lesson that they need to get their act together and not send things out with insufficient postage. They also need to learn that about 2% of all buyers are bat-shit insane and there is zero chance of avoiding Negative Feedback, so they'd better just get used to it.

[HYHYBT]

If sellers can't leave feedback for buyers anymore, why are they allowed not to accept bids from people with scores of 0? (And why do they then consider my score to be 0 just because all my feedback is more than a year old?)

[Andara Bledin]

It doesn't work like that. I have a score of nearly 90 despite not having received any Feedback for over 2 years.

[draco664]

I think they'll lose more in the long run by pushing this, but it does illustrate the need for eBay to let sellers leave feedback and counter comments the way they used to.

Could be that they were trying to use the threat of a lawsuit to get the woman to withdraw the negative feedback. She stuck to her guns, and they stuck to theirs. Now, both parties are going to have a long drawn out legal headache over something that could have been sorted out had everyone acted like adults.

[Panacea]

Could be that they were trying to use the threat of a lawsuit to get the woman to withdraw the negative feedback. She stuck to her guns, and they stuck to theirs. Now, both parties are going to have a long drawn out legal headache over something that could have been sorted out had everyone acted like adults.

Oh, that's exactly what happened. And that's my point: threatening your customers isn't a good business practice. You just end up pissing off your customer base, and they go elsewhere. Which I would if I were still buying on eBay.

I had a dispute with a seller on eBay that got rather nasty in the feedback responses. Basically, they did not follow my shipping directions to write DO NOT BEND on an item (a RPG supplement that was rare and valuable) because at the time I had a tiny mailbox at my apartment complex. They didn't do what I asked, and the really cool collector's item went from being mint to being damaged, greatly reducing its value.

I wanted an exchange or a refund. They said no. So I left negative feedback.

I haven't bought from them since. They're still doing a brisk business; they're one of the big sellers in comics and RPGs on eBay and one of the first to embrace the Internet as a way to expand their business way back in 2000.

Fair enough; I got my say, and customers could do as they pleased. I do look at feedback on eBay. I don't look at the positive feedback, I look (or looked) at the negative to see how the seller handled the complaint. Because sellers could respond directly to negative feedback, what they said in response to the customer said a lot about the nature of the dispute and would expose the really batshit crazy SCs.

Now everyone has mostly positive feedback and it's really a lot harder to identify the seller's to either avoid altogether, or to use with caution.

[jackfaire]

From the sounds of it the reason they wanted her to remove the feedback due to the fact that they had addressed and resolved the issue.

That actually makes sense. Normally in customer service if a customer complains of something that you did wrong you fix it the customer goes away happy and their complaints were at best a temporary thing told to friends.

In this case the customer complaint was addressed and fixed but since her complaint is online and attached to their profile they are limited in options.

1) If it is possible she can augment her original complaint to point out that while it was an issue they were prompt in fixing said issue and it has been resolved.

2) If that is not possible she can delete the original complaint so that people don't see it and think they never addressed the customer's complaint.

Honestly if the company pointed out, "Hey btw new customers we did see this complaint and we addressed it" How many customers would be like "Uh huh yeah right bullshit"

If you screw up someone's order in a fast food restaurant often the manager will offer them a free meal. what if after that resolution the customer still kept going around "they fucked up my meal and never fixed it."

The negative feedback is a virtual customer saying, "they never fixed this" after it was fixed.

[Aethian]

You should see how many packages we get from amazon, ebay, and other individual sellers that comes with incorrect postage. Some of them are the small packages that were put in as large envelopes. Or the one lady who tried using the flat rate box when she wasn't using one of those boxes.

Of course it's always up to the reciever if they want to pay the postage, but some need to understand it may be easier to just pay the postage due. Like the one guy who sent back his packages due to 20 cents owing. The sender got the package back and since there was nothing wrong with the product didn't want to refund anything. The reciever then wanted to charge the post office for the loss of money when he could have just paid the 20 cents and then gone after the seller.

Blech...I love having the sellers don't get me wrong...I just wish more of them knew how to buy postage when doing it by themselves.

[Nekojin]

It's actually worse than that. Ebay is attempting to strong-arm sellers into being good merchants, by tying their Feedback and Ratings directly to their level of discount - how much it costs to list on eBay (and even small fluctuations can drop your "seller tier", costing you much more in listing and final value fees!). And naturally, the bad sellers are, instead, strong-arming their customers to remove bad feedback instead of trying to actually do the right thing in the first place. It's getting to the point that you can't honestly evaluate sellers any more - he's got a perfect feedback rating, sure, but how many Negs has he gotten removed for skeevy antics behind the scenes?

Just one of many reasons I don't do much business on eBay any more.

[Andara Bledin]

From the sounds of it the reason they wanted her to remove the feedback due to the fact that they had addressed and resolved the issue.

That actually makes sense. Normally in customer service if a customer complains of something that you did wrong you fix it the customer goes away happy and their complaints were at best a temporary thing told to friends.

No, it doesn't. It was a hassle for her to deal with it, and even if it was addressed, it was still a hassle. That particular comment is utterly indisputable.

As for their options, they have none. Feedback is forever unless it breaks a law or a stated rule, of which her comment does neither.

They could have used it as a learning experience and moved on, wiser, but they decided to go with a legal tantrum, instead, which won't do anyone at all any good.

[HYHYBT]

It doesn't work like that. I have a score of nearly 90 despite not having received any Feedback for over 2 years.

Sorry; I stated it badly. When I looked last (before tonight) what they were displaying prominently wasn't the actual net number of points, but the percentage, which unfairly scores someone who hasn't happened to use eBay recently the same as someone who has done badly on it. That, though, was mostly extra information anyway: the question was how they could allow sellers to disallow bids from people with 0 feedback if, as claimed upthread, buyers no longer *get* feedback. And that question and any valid answers to it are unaffected by my actual score, which happens to be a puny 42.

What *does* affect the question, however, is something I didn't know until typing the pre-edit version of this post: I do in fact have two *new* ones from just last month. Which means sellers *are* allowed to leave buyers feedback, because if they were unable, they wouldn't have done it.

[Andara Bledin]

Oh, they can leave Positive Feedback. Which is about as useful as getting a smiley face sticker on your homework. Once you have more than, say, a rating of 10, it becomes pretty much a moot point unless you plan to run a scam.

[HYHYBT]

It *could* be useful, if it were possible to compare positive feedback with total number of transactions. That doesn't appear to be possible, though.

[insertNameHere]

I have gotten bitched at for leaving neutral feedback, sorry nothing was special about the service you offered and the fact you demanded i rate you great does not make me think you a deserving of a good rating. Good rating comes when you check with me about the product and make no mention that you want a rating.

[Andara Bledin]

Unfortunately, with the way eBay set up Feedback with the numbers and shit, Neutral doesn't actually mean neutral. Pretty much anything that doesn't result in a hassle or a rip-off should get a Positive, regardless of it not really being positive as such. >_>

There's just no way to get around that fact.

Then again, they still let people rate shipping fees, even when you use eBay's fee calculator, which is just about the stupidest part of the situation with the star ratings - I give 5 stars to everybody on general prinicple because it's that bad.