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Why Can’t a Seller Give a Negative to a Buyer?
Feedback - buyers can only get a positive feedback rating, but sellers can get a negative, neutral or positive. Why is that? Does eBay think that there are no bad buyers and that other sellers shouldn’t be warned?
3 comments
woodland_gnome
·2 years agoSellers can't leave negative (or neutral) feedback for buyers because too many sellers were using the threat of negative retaliation to discourage less than positive feedback from buyers no matter how warranted it was. And then if the threat wasn't enough, they would leave a scathing negative feedback for the buyer and seek a "mutual withdrawal." Since accurate and honest feedback for the seller is so much more important than for the buyer (all buyers have the ability to examine the seller's feedback profile before anything happens, while the seller is seldom able to do so and there are issues with taking action after the fact) eBay did away with negative and neutral feedback for buyers in 2008 and banned getting around that by leaving a negative comment on a positive rating.
On the other hand the Buyer Requirement that blocks those with 2 or more strikes in the past 12 months (or the more lenient settings available) acts automatically to block bids, offer, and BINs from serial deadbeats (IF their sellers used the proper unpaid item process) and so is far more effective than expecting to be able to react to feedback.
eburtonlab
Mentor2 years agoLeaving negative feedback for buyers does not actually discourage bad buyers, though it can discourage many good ones. Buyers that are scammers do not care about feedback at all.
In most cases, transactions are initiated by buyers, not sellers, so by the time the seller has the opportunity to read a buyer's feedback, the seller is already involved in a transaction and cannot cancel without violating policy, other than for nonpayment after four days. Feedback does not help those sellers.
When sellers could leave negatives for buyers, some sellers would use the threat of negative feedback to deter buyers from leaving well-deserved negative feedback for sellers. Some sellers would leave negative feedback for buyers, then push for mutual withdrawal of feedback. This allowed some sellers to avoid getting the negative feedback they deserved, and made it harder for buyers to distinguish between good and bad sellers, which is the whole point of the feedback system.
There are other ways to deal with nonperforming buyers, such as canceling for nonpayment and preemptively blocking buyers with two or more nonpayment cancellations in the last year.
disneyshopper
Mentor2 years agoSellers have not been able to leave neutral or negative feedback for buyers since 2008. When a buyer left a neg, many sellers retaliated. That caused many buyers to leave the platform, so ebay decided not to allow a seller to leave neutrals or negs.
If the buyer has not paid by day 4, on day 5 the seller can file a Cancellation with the reason Buyer didn't pay. The seller gets his/her FVF credited, the buyer gets an unpaid strike recorded on his account, no one can leave feedback. Two or more unpaid strikes, and the buyer will find it difficult to bid/buy from sellers who block buyers with 2 or more unpaid strikes. Do you have your Buyer Blocks in place?
https://www.ebay.com/bmgt/buyerrequirements