Should eBay have a metric for non-delivery claims by buyers?
Summary: sol119 expresses concern about USPS tracking issues and suggests eBay implement a metric for monitoring non-delivery claims by buyers. gurlcat explains that eBay tracks claims and imposes limits, although these are not publicly detailed. iamalwaysright and gurlcat discuss the importance of reporting suspect buyer activities to eBay, noting that this does not immediately penalize the buyer but allows eBay to review their behavior. The conversation highlights a preference for being able to block buyers who frequently request order cancellations.
I am increasingly disappointed with USPS tracking missing scans including delivery. I have had a number of situations where the item was not scanned as delivered but fortunately the buyers gave positive feedback that showed they received the item. However, I am aware that some buyers may be tempted to claim they did not receive the item if USPS does not post the delivery scan. (Long ago, I went to getting tracking on my shipments and afterwards there was a sudden miraculous stop of non-delivery claims.) Should (or does) eBay have a metric for buyers that measures how often non-delivery claims occur?
Now there are all sorts of reasons other than dishonesty that a person could have a number of non-delivery claims ( especially problems with the post office). However, if there was a metric that measured the number of non-delivery claims per number of orders per year expressed as a percentage ( or total number) and if sellers could elect when they list items to not allow buyers with more than a certain percentage (or total number )of non-delivery claims to bid on their item, it would discourage factitious non-delivery claims. Of course, if the problem was in the regional or local post office it was not the buyers fault but still sellers should have the option to not have to send items into an area the has problems where the sellers are at risk. (Just like I don't do international on my items because of problems I have run into.). Just a thought.
annadryl
·2 days agoThey absolutely do have that metric, as does any other major ecommerce site out there. The upper limits before consequences (and they may be as-per-case) are not published though, so that offenders can't know their limits and stop just short of hitting them.
iamalwaysright
·2 days ago · EditedNo there isn't currently a formal one. The unofficial way, and likely ebay's response to this, is to report all of these buyers and let ebay sort it out. For those saying they don't want to report a buyer when they are uncertain if they are doing anything wrong, solely reporting a buyer does not penalize them. It merely tells ebay to give a closer look at their account and activity. What they find will dictate what actions ebay will make if any.
And for what it's worth, I'd much rather have the option to block buyers who chronically file cancellation requests rather than ones who claim non-delivery.
gurlcat
·2 days agoeBay does keep track of how many claims (of all kinds) that buyers file, and there are limits, but those are secret. This is true for all kinds of things that buyers and sellers do, and not only are the limits not stated, nor are the consequences of exceeding them. Or rather they're stated but always with the word "may".
As in "A buyer may lose their Money Back Guarantee privileges" or "A seller's listings may be displayed lower in search results."
iamalwaysright
·2 days ago · EditedYes, more the reason to report these buyers when they do any of these activities regardless if you believe the buyer or not.
gurlcat
·2 days agoI absolutey agree. But that said, reporting buyers is another one of the things that eBay keeps track of, and has a secret rate per time of reports that they consider excessive, LOL. Hopefully it's HIGH-high, not just high compared to peers (like they do with Service Metrics) because I suspect the majority of eBay sellers aren't even aware they can report buyers. For anything.