To neg or not?
This is a posting ID, but I've been on eBay since the 90s. Contemplating whether to give my first negative ever.
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Pro: The seller truly deserves it.
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Con: It would probably help kill his nascent selling career.
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Longer version: I "won" the seller's auction of a signed book at the starting price of 99 cents plus shipping. Received an immediate e-mail lamenting the low price but pledging to ship "as soon as possible." Seller claimed the item was worth "many times" the price, but I could buy a comparable copy of the book elsewhere in the $10-15 range. Seller has sold just three items and has no seller feedback. He does have a track record as a buyer for at least a decade, so he's no newcomer to how eBay works.
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My item was never marked as shipped, so I politely inquired after a week went by. Rather than respond, the seller relisted the item for $65 (a silly price, as noted above.) After a few days with no takers, he took down the listing and hasn't relisted. I inquired again anyway to ask for shipping information. No reply so I waited out the delivery date, filed an INR, and was refunded by eBay after there was no response from the seller.
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At present, the seller has one BIN listing for $300 that will never sell. (It's an item available from other sellers for about $20.)Â A neg would be deserved on top of the defect(s) he already received for my transaction. But would it serve any purpose?
12345jamesstamps
·3 years agoConsidering other sellers can read the your feedback I would just let it go. You got a refund through eBay.Â
myangelandmyprincess
·3 years agoSomeone who makes me wait to get a refund until after delivery and wait until I can escalate to eBay doesn't deserve any grace with my not giving a bad feedback. If they apologized and were like I didn't need to sell it this low and cancelled for out of stock I won't leave one.  But not for this. The seller didn't care about inconveniencing you. Â
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Also as a buyer I'd like to be warned about it.Â
lux.ra_14
OP3 years agoUnderstood about the payment hold for new sellers, but it's hard for me know what the seller doesn't know ...
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As mentioned, he has a long track record as a buyer and probably wouldn't appreciate the same treatment. Even if he initially assumed the payment hold meant he didn't have to ship, he should have gotten the idea when I inquired a couple of times, or when he received eBay emails that he needed to respond to an INR case and/or provide tracking. He never bothered to respond.
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All that said, I'm probably not inclined to blow up his account with a negative -- especially since he's doing such a good job on his own.
ga_open_box_llc
·3 years agoYea, he most likely will ruin his account all on his own with a bunch INR cases with the new policy.
mudshark61369
·3 years ago@lux.ra_14,
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"Understood about the payment hold for new sellers, but it's hard for me know what the seller doesn't know ..."
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Basically, it's like this. Always check a seller's feedback profile page, before buying from one, no matter what their feedback percentage is.
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I am not given to assuming things usually, but in the cases of beginning sellers on ebay, I do assume they do not know about the payment hold. That is because even though I am a long time member who started selling on another ID, before this one was created. I did not realize until after being bored one day during the Covid lock downs, just how deeply buried in ebay's jumble of confusing selling policies, the information about the payment hold was. I was over an hour into reading the info about starting to sell on the site, before I found it. IMO, something that important, should be in the first two paragraphs about starting to sell on the site.
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Like as @ga_open_box_llc wrote, I too auctioned some items at first that sold for less than I hoped to get. However, because the check, money order or cash was sent, by mail back then before PayPal or automated card payments, I shipped the items, and ate the loss.Â
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 I'm not sure now, if I were a new seller, that I would ship anything until I had a payment marked Completed, because of the number of scams reported about concerning online buying or selling. This is a different world of online buying/selling now, than the one I entered back in the late 90s. If I had done an ebay Rumplestiltskin in say `02 and woke up today, I'd feel like a stranger in a strange land. Que up, the Twilight Zone theme.
mudshark61369
·3 years ago@lux.ra_14,
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Longer version: I "won" the seller's auction of a signed book at the starting price of 99 cents plus shipping. Received an immediate e-mail lamenting the low price but pledging to ship "as soon as possible." Seller claimed the item was worth "many times" the price, but I could buy a comparable copy of the book elsewhere in the $10-15 range. Seller has sold just three items and has no seller feedback. He does have a track record as a buyer for at least a decade, so he's no newcomer to how eBay works".
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Comparing buying on ebay with selling on ebay is like comparing apples and grapefruit. If you have also sold on ebay at one time it may have been before eBay started placing a 21-30 day hold on new seller's or those who have not sold anything in over a year, first few payments. Many new/returning sellers are not aware of the hold, and do not ship because they see their payment status marked as Pending. They also take ebay's poor advice to start auctions at a low starting price "To encourage bidding" which often does not work out well for them.
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"My item was never marked as shipped, so I politely inquired after a week went by. Rather than respond, the seller relisted the item for $65 (a silly price, as noted above.) After a few days with no takers, he took down the listing and hasn't relisted. I inquired again anyway to ask for shipping information. No reply so I waited out the delivery date, filed an INR, and was refunded by eBay after there was no response from the seller".
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Now that you know about the payment hold, do you really want to destroy their reputation? Not only did ebay issue the refund, but the seller was charged the final value fees for the sale, and given a defect on their account, which will extend the time that the hold will be in place on their future sales. IMO, that's enough for a new seller to overcome.
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Since ebay has issued a refund you may not be able to leave a negative feedback. They have this crazy idea that a refund precludes leaving a negative, because a buyer didn't lose anything, even though they are unhappy with not receiving an item.
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lux.ra_14
OP3 years agoNovice seller, but he has 300 or so feedbacks as a buyer.
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Forgot to mention that he sold a couple of other 99 cent auctions the same time as my purchase. If he decided not to ship those items as well, I'm thinking his selling career will be over soon without my help!
rustydalmatian
·3 years agoIf he doesn't learn NOW how to operate on eBay, he will soon become an ex-seller. Now that eBay gives enough space to write War and Peace in the feedback section, I think he deserves a negative with a long, courteous explanation as to why he earned it. You would be doing him a favor. Whether he listens or not is his problem.
soh.maryl
·3 years agoSo this was a new kid on the block? I might forego the negative but would definitely message him to explain where he went wrong. And then stand by for the barrage of denials. Â
ga_open_box_llc
·3 years agoYou're a good person for considering not ruining the feedback of the seller but seems to be warranted. I've had a few auctions sell for much less then they should have, but still sent just on principle and I even lost money on 1. If you are concerned about ruining his reputation over all, you could do a neutral feedback instead and just explain exactly what happened and say that the only reason why you didn't give a negative was to benefit the seller. On the other hand, it does sound like a total negative experience and who's to say this person may not do the same thing over again? I would sit on it and think about how much of a inconvenience it may have caused or how upset I really was about the situation. Oftentimes, after a certain period of cooling down, you may realize it's not worth the effort of wasting the extra energy.