Bizarre display of a buyer's feedback left for others
I was just trying to review a buyer's feedback left for others, and it is utterly kookie. With the default set to show 25 per page, the first 5 pages show less, or even zero. Only on page 6 does it start to show 25/page.
Now, if there really were 25/page, then yes 16 would be the correct number of pages to display 382 total feedbacks. But if the first pages aren't displaying anywhere near 25, then are some just missing?
Being a natural blonde, it quickly felt like the math was getting away from me, so I decided to just change the Items Per Page to 200, reducing the number of pages to only 2, and then simply count the feedbacks on both of them. Here's what I got:
So this means 90 feedbacks are just missing completely, and the ones that are showing are spread out in ways that don't match the supposed #/page.
I wondered if it might have something to do with the buyer giving feedbacks for each item in multi-item purchases (I know those don't all display on a seller's feedback), but I noted several instances where multiple feedbacks for the same seller were shown in a row, so that's not the issue.
I looked at this same account on a different browser and logged out of my account, still showed the exact same weirdness.
It's a buyer-only account, no feedback received as a seller. Their feedback received as a buyer displays normally, with the chosen number/page.
I looked at several other accounts and they were normal.
So, anybody ever seen anything like this before? Any idea what could cause it? BTW, if anyone wants to take a look for themselves, PM me and I'll give you the buyer's i.d.
chapeau-noir
·11 months agoGeez - fill-in-the-blank page design, then. It makes sense in an eBay way.
gone.c-33
·11 months agoI looked at that buyer both on desktop and mobile and see truncated feedback left as well.
I’ll be curious to know if it has indeed to do with auto feedback as technically, the buyer hasn’t left those feedback themselves and it could cause confusion.
gurlcat
OP11 months agoI'm 99.9% certain that's what it is. That second buyer I described in message #12 is possibly a better 'case study' than the first. But you make a great point about autos not being "left by" buyers, so there is no reason to represent them even with a number, nor have them carry invisible tallies on the pages. It's very confusing and will only get worse.
eburtonlab
·11 months agoI wonder if this could be tied to automatic feedback.
Perhaps the "Left for others" count includes automatic feedback that is not shown on the buyer's page but only appears on the seller's page.
I notice in my own feedback "left for others", when viewed at 25-per-page I see 23 on the first page, 24 on the second page, and 25 on the third page. Could there be three transactions that have received automatic feedback that I have not left feedback for yet? Could those be the "missing" feedback entries?
gurlcat
OP11 months agoHoly cow THAT'S IT!!
Right away it kinda made sense just because the full-page ones started with months-old feedbacks; it was the "younger" ones with blank and mostly-blank pages . And of course automatic feedback only started September 3rd.
So I went to take a look at some of my buyers whose purchases gave me auto's. This one is interesing: They are now NARU'd for some reason, but they only started that account less than 2 months ago, and you can see they did a LOT of buying in that time, and received lots of feedback from sellers.
But their 'left for others' has a number only about half of their received feedbacks .... and even those don't represent any actual displayed feedbacks. Every page is blank!
So it would make sense that if they bought about half their purchases before auto-feedback began, and simply didn't give feedback, those numbers wouldn't be tallied anywhere. But the ones they bought after the start of auto's (like the one I got from them) -that IS being tallied .... just not shown with comments.
As for the buyer in my OP, apparently she bought over 100 items since autos began, but manually written only 3 positives for sellers -all the rest were autos. And the display isn't as "inconsistently inconsistent" as it seems @chapeau-noir -the manuals she wrote are showing on separate pages because they're still indexed in real consecutive order with the (invisible) automatic ones. Hope I'm making sense, lol.
retiredchickie
·11 months agoI too have noticed this lately. Thank you for bringing it up as I thought it might have been my computer not loading the page fully.
The last few times it's happened, the first page has only had one feedback left for others (but there were LOTS of pages of recent feedback from sellers). Realized something was up when one of the seller feedback mentioned a neg that was left from the buyer ... but only the only feedback left for others showing was that one positive ... weird.
I'm not positive, but I don't even recall that more than one page was available to click on until I began poking around through the received feedback as a buyer.
Personally, I think it does matter when one of the tools used to "vet" someone making an offer or asking a question is no longer functioning as clearly and smoothly as it used to. A bit unsettling when the other pages finally show up and the feedback is cluttered with accusations, threats, and negatives.
gone.c-33
·11 months agoThat is odd indeed. I remember a few weeks (months?) back when a lot of people were missing feedback all of a sudden and it was a db issue on eBay’s part and it was resolved in a couple of days. People were really mad about missing 25+ years of feedback comments (even though their rating appeared correctly).
Were you able to replicate the same results for another member or does it happen just to this one? Feel free to dm me the member’s id I can check what shows up on my end).
I totally understand just wanting to know when something is odd, I constantly investigate glitches and bugs in my day job 😂
albertabrightalberta
·11 months agoThat wasn't a case of missing feedback. That was a case of how the feedback was sorted.
The new default is by "most relevant" and doesn't show much.
The changing to sort by "most recent" shows all feedback.
gone.c-33
·11 months agoThere was an actual feedback kerfuffle confirmed by Devon back in in early April:
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/eBay-seems-to-have-deleted-10-000-15-000-of-my-feedback-that-was/m-p/35018330/highlight/true#M2546410
gurlcat
OP11 months agoI checked 7 or 8 other accounts and they were normal.
I sent you the link to this one.
Unavailable member
·11 months agoWhy does it bother you? I mean no disrespect when I say……I think you are over thinking this. It’s not your feedback page, why waste energy on it?
gurlcat
OP11 months agoContrary to your disclaimer, it is inherently disrespectful to ask someone why they find something relevant while simultaneously making it quite clear that you find it utterly irrelevant, in fact "wasted energy" to ("over") think about.
Unavailable member
·11 months agoWhatever……
chapeau-noir
·11 months agoIt's called an 'inquiring mind' and it's good to have one!
@gurlcat I haven't been able to replicate that - it's weird that it's so inconsistent (is it possible to have an inconsistent inconsistency?).
albertabrightalberta
·11 months agoI totally understand the desire to be able to see all feedback left. Since that's one of the few ways sellers can proactively block and avoid doing business with problem buyers, being able to see a full history give excellent insight to that buyer.
I've even seen buyers' feedback in which they stopped leaving negs after learning that their history gives them away and they were finding themselves blocked. But in looking back over the previous history, it's clear exactly why they were blocked and why they're no longer leaving feedback.
grand-and-glorious-purpose
·11 months agoMore ebay glitches?
Those bother me for sure.
gurlcat
OP11 months ago"Glitch" was my best guess too. But instead it appears to be a foolish programming choice.
grand-and-glorious-purpose
·11 months ago6 of one, half dozen the other.
Or in ebay speak: that glitch is a feature and not a bug
gurlcat
OP11 months agoHa, TRUE! Also known as "a distinction without difference."
grand-and-glorious-purpose
·11 months agoWatching blues twist themselves into pretzels trying to explain glitches as features is peak ebay...or rather WAS
They have all but abandoned the forums for us to do the work for free but man...those were good threads.
powell-collectibles
·11 months agoAt a minimum, it is a curious thing - a little puzzle to solve. Always fun to solve a puzzle, right?
gurlcat
OP11 months agoAnd this one already got solved by one of our house geniuses, eburtonlab. ðŸ˜
I also think this weird little feedback page "phenomenon" will get noticed by more sellers as they encounter it, while trying to 'vet' buyers. The longer auto-feedbacks go on, the more weird that tab is going to look with buyers who never (or only sometimes) write manual feedbacks. -Now if anybody comes to ask about it, we'll be able to tell them why it's so weird.
adamcartwright
·11 months ago@ebooksdiva
IMO -- usually not a waste of energy to ask questions about things that affect your business.
gurlcat
OP11 months agoThe reason I was even looking at this buyer's history was because I noticed they recently made me offers on 2 items that were auto-declined .... but in both instances they just barely missed my auto-minimum. So I was thinking of offering them a bundle deal, but first wanted to make sure they aren't 'trouble.'
Upon noticing so many missing 'left for other' feedbacks, I wondered if they could possibly be ones that got REMOVED because they violated policy. If that was the case, I obviously wouldn't want to deal with them! But now I know they just don't leave feedback for a lot of their purchases, or maybe tend to procrastinate longer than the time when auto's kick in. I did find a couple of negs they left back over a year ago, but those appeared to be justifiable.
So from starting this thread, I learned what I needed to feel confident in making the offer to this person. And I'll also know what this weird page thing is about in the future, and so will anybody else who reads this post.
adamcartwright
·11 months ago@gurlcat
Your curiosity has now benefited us all.
gone.c-33
·11 months agoAnd that was extremely brave, considering our gurl is a cat 😹