Weird reason why ebay removed a neg I received
Not sure if I received the wrong canned response or what. But I recently just got a negative removed after I filed the request.
The issue was pretty straightforward. A buyer buys 6 different colors of short sleeve shirts. The listing offers both short and long sleeves shirts (multi variation). The buyer left a negative feedback saying something like "this isn't what I ordered. I ordered long sleeve. If you never had any long sleeve in stock to begin with you should at least cancel my order instead of bait and switch." Anyway I filed the removal using the reason "buyer error."
It got approved, but I got this weird confirmation email from ebay about it.
I never received any cancellation request from this buyer nor have I ever communicated with them. So what's ebay talking about here? Did something happen that I wasn't aware of when I shipped the item? Anybody ever get a message like this from ebay before?
glorybells
·10 months agoA frightening thing I’ve come across with AI this . . . after a couple of my hospitalizations the last couple of years, I’ve gotten my medical records. At the bottom of each page it will say, “this document was prepared using AI and is subject to errorsâ€.
Say WHAT? Something another doctor might see down the road and base my care on has ERRORS???
We’re allowing AI into too much of our lives.
mam98031
·10 months agoWell that is down right scary. Ebay holds its sellers to a higher standard because sellers are responsible for whatever they put on their listings via AI or not. Wow, what you shared is down right scary.
iamalwaysright
OP10 months agoSo another interesting update. I didn't mention this at the time but when I received the 2nd neg from this buyer I also reached out to him to see what's going on. This was the first communication I've sent to him. I sometimes message the buyer for clarification and stuff, but apparently I didn't during the first neg probably because it got removed so fast and I thought it was going to be the end of the issue.
Anyway, so I showed screenshots of the order details highlighting the variation areas where it shows he chose the "short sleeve" option on every shirt telling him this is what I see and that's what he was shipped. Then I asked if he sees otherwise as his feedback states to please confirm and let me know where he sees it or provide a screenshot so we can get this sorted out.
He replies with a "No!! Enough, I'm good. BYE!!!" And I surprise surprise I find a 3rd neg with pretty much the same verbiage saying he bought long sleeve. This time he called me a scammer. Again, Seller Help feedback removal request is denied and I'll probably go with social media for this removal as I don't want to call my buddy ebay phone support for something as small as this. I just wish the buyer would just cut to the chase and leave the remaining 3 negs so we can end this show.
gurlcat
·10 months agoHas he left the 3 feedbacks (from the same order) within a week's time? I thought that wasn't possible. Or am I confusing it with how many feedbacks a seller can leave for a buyer from the same order?
iamalwaysright
OP10 months agoAre you asking within a weeks time from the delivery scan or a weeks time from each other? To answer both, it's been over a week. I can't remember if the increment between feedback 1-2 was over a week or not as it was pretty close to it, but the increment for 2-3 is actually like 3 days only.
I think for one order, a seller can leave just as many feedbacks for the buyer as the buyer can for the seller. Which is the number of different items (including variations) that are on that one order. Which in my case, is 6.
mam98031
·10 months agoTRS have a perk that does not allow any buyer to post a negative or neutral feedback within a week of the purchase. It has to be beyond one week before they can post one.
gurlcat
·10 months agoI looked it up, and if I understand the policy right, sellers can leave multiple positives for buyers (for a multi-item purchase) but the buyer will get only 1 added 'point' to their score. Meanwhile it appears buyers can give feedbacks (pos, neg, or neutral) for all the items in an order, and they will all count. But I don't see how that could be allowed in all cases. Say a buyer bought 10 items and was only dissatisfied with 1 or 2 of them (maybe even returned them, or just wrote to the seller about them) but wanted to be a real jerk so they give negs on all 10 items, with comments that don't violate policy. Or heck, what about a competing seller of the same items, buying up a bunch just to give negs for each?
broto_64
·10 months agoHere is what the AI in charge of processing your removal request found:
The buyer left a negative feedback saying something like "this isn't what I ordered. I ordered long sleeve. If you never had any long sleeve in stock to begin with you should at least cancel my order instead of bait and switch." Anyway I filed the removal using the reason "buyer error."
Which is why the AI removed the feedback, it believes your buyer asked to cancel.
This opens up a whole new can of worms.
On a sidenote, I am struggling trying to envision how the upper brass can so easily adopt AI and believes it is the bees knees, they probably think events like this one are the exception and rarely if ever happen (AI just needs a little more training, they are told, soon it will never miss).
Life was so much better before the mass stupidity arrived.
meme6253
·10 months agoThat's a strange one, But take the win!
luckythewinner
·10 months agoIt sounds like eBay's feedback removal bot saw the phrase "you should at least cancel my order" and assumed the buyer had asked.
iamalwaysright
OP10 months agoUPDATE:
Even weirder. The buyer comes back and leaves their second negative feedback. Note the buyer bought 6 of these in different variations, but all of them short sleeve. So they are allowed to leave 6 separate feedbacks. The verbiage of this feedback is the same as their first one, the one that got removed when I wrote the OP.
So I filed the request to remove it the same way I did with the first one. But I added that we went thru this already with the first feedback that got removed. And it's likely the buyer will come back periodically to space out his 4 remaining negatives.
This request got denied.
"Our decision
We reviewed the feedback and can see that the buyer found an issue with the item that wasn't described in the listing."
Wake up on the wrong side of the bed today ebay?
mam98031
·10 months agoNo, it was the right side of the bed. From what you have said previously on this thread and your other thread, nothing the buyer said in the feedback breaks one of the feedback rules. I do understand why you want it removed and if I were in your shoes, I would likely feel the same darn way. You got very lucky with the first one in getting it removed, which is likely what inspired the second one.
iamalwaysright
OP10 months agoTo be clear, this thread has nothing to do with the other thread you are referring to. Two different buyers, two different issues, two different feedbacks.
In this thread, first you said in message 2 that "But at least it was removed as it should be since it was a buyer error." And now you're saying I got lucky I got the first one removed. I'm not following you. The buyer's second feedback is same comment as their first one that got removed.
Regarding my "wrong side of the bed remark" to also clarify I was referring to the reason for denial that ebay gave me. The "We reviewed the feedback and can see that the buyer found an issue with the item that wasn't described in the listing." statement.
The issue the buyer had is that they received short sleeve shirts and not long sleeve ones. Despite the clear variation choice they made for the shirts was for "short sleeves" shown in the listing. Are variation pulldown menu choices not considered being "described in the listing"?
Regardless, this feedback has also been removed by talking to my good buddy ebay phone support. Now just waiting for the remaining 4 negs to eventually come in and I'll just lather, rinse, repeat. But yea, the main point of this thread is the weird reasons ebay gives for approving/denying feedback removal requests.
jonathanbrightlight
·10 months ago@iamalwaysright
It’s my understanding that most of the decisions made when you request for feedback to be removed using the form on the site are made via AI, which means it doesn’t surprise me that it gets a lot of them wrong, especially if it’s even mildly subjective or nuanced. I think the message you get saying that it was or wasn’t removed even says if the decision was made by AI or a customer service agent.
iamalwaysright
OP10 months agoWell mine didn't say that. The closest thing to that is where it says "Please don't reply to this message. It was sent from an address that doesn't accept incoming email."
I know that it states what you mention when you get a listing removed for whatever reason, but I'm not so sure about feedback removals.
lacemaker3
·11 months agoThe buyer said: "... you should at least cancel my order instead of ..."
Maybe that was enough to be detected as a cancellation request by AI?
soh.maryl
·11 months agoFrom what I've been seeing on eBay, it's not easy to get a FB removed. So just be grateful that it happened for you.
mam98031
·11 months agoSome sellers see it that way because they don't have a valid reason / a breach of the Feedback policy in which to get the feedback removed. So when this happens, instead of realizing they don't have a legit reason to get it removed, they think it is Ebay just being hard on removing feedback. But the actual fact is they have to have a breach of the feedback policy for it to qualify for removal.
Starting this month the process changes. When a seller requests a feedback removal and the entire feedback does not breach the Feedback policy, they notify the buyer and ask them to revise the offending parts of the feedback. If they do that and it meets the feedback rules, the feedback will remain. If they don't change it, then Ebay will remove the whole thing.
sosmachines
·11 months agoeBay has been putting AI in charge of more and more of its departments recently, giving it the opportunity to prove just how often it makes mistakes. It's been established that AI will fabricate things in order to come up with an answer or solution instead of giving up or acknowledging its shortcomings or inability to do so.
If you selected "buyer error" as your reason for requesting removal, that will prompt AI to search for that error in an attempt to provide a solution to the problem it's been tasked with, which is basically to find proof that your request is valid so that it can be approved.
It doesn't sound like you specifically said what the user error was, but selected that reason because it can be used broadly to say, "an error was made, but not by me."
I'm suggesting that this was AI generating misinformation in order to quickly check you off of its to-do list and move on to the next task at hand.
(I have been on the receiving end of AI coming to misguided conclusions on eBay's behalf. It's a real problem, especially in the feedback department, which seems to be the one where humans want least to be. Seems like they completely handed it over and checked out, rarely even checking up on the job it's doing.)
bashort
·11 months agoI think this is a serious problem with AI in general. If every answer that AI spits out is just automatically deemed correct it could get very strange.
mam98031
·11 months agoThe issue will only happen on the auto option to have feedback removed. I always tell sellers, that is the first step. If that doesn't work, contact Ebay directly and try to get it removed.
mam98031
·11 months agoThat is odd. But at least it was removed as it should be since it was a buyer error.