mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
@gurlcat wrote:
@palominoproductions wrote:Why shouldn't sellers warn other sellers of a buyers bad behavior? Why can't sellers leave negative feedback?
It's a complicated subject, but one that has been discussed here countless times. You can find tons of threads about it by using the search function. Sorry if that sounds flippant but I don't want to steer this thread too far off-topic. The only reason I brought it up was because (as the rules stand) it IS a violation for a seller to say anything negative about a buyer in feedback, so now I wonder if buyers who report it get equally bad responses from eBay as sellers (now) do, when buyers violate policy.
Basically the gist is, eBay laid off tons of employees recently, so there just aren't enough (especially English-fluent and eBay-fluent) ones to handle the workload. I figure if the default is to NOT remove feedback for sellers, then it should be the same for buyers, but who knows.
Isn't that a bit of an overstatement. Ebay laid off about 1,000 employees or around 8%. While any layoff is very bad for those losing their jobs, overstating the issue serves no good purpose.
I did not see or find a break down of which jobs were laid off. Where did you find that it was a significant loss of fluent English speaking employees?
Amazon is cutting more than 10% of their employees.
Paypal is cutting about 9%
And many others this year unfortunately. It is really very concerning to be sure as it is all kinds of industries that are laying off people.
@gurlcat wrote:Whatever the reason, there has been a recent, very sudden, spike in posts by sellers describing cases of eBay refusing to delete policy-violating negative feedback from buyers. EFB has even stated they will no longer review feedback removal requests. Also they are using instant automated responses for many sellers seeking resolution there (for all kinds of topics, not just feedback), apparently by utilizing AI to "read" their messages and determine whether they "need" humans to read and respond or not.
These are all recent changes. And if they have nothing to do with understaffing (particularly understaffing English-fluent and Ebay-fluent ) employees, then I don't know what the reason is. Maybe it's what the most rabid Community posters seem to think, that eBay just wants sellers to fail, and leave eBay, sue eBay, etc.
You are absolutely correct, but "whatever the reason" matters. Each one of those has to be taken on a case by case basis and each have their own individual circumstances. I've been involved on quite a few of those threads. Most that have recently been posted are because they couldn't get the FB removed because they didn't breach any rule.
Just because a seller thinks the FB should be removed doesn't mean it should. Most that posted on the threads were pretty happy that Ebay ended the perk some sellers had getting negative FB removed [a certain amount every 90 days] just cuz they asked. Two of the more recent threads were by sellers that were upset they lost this perk.
The FB removal request is a function each of us can do on the site. That is what they were talking about. And yes it is mostly processed by AI.
https://www.ebay.com/sellercenter/protections/seller-help
If this request doesn't turn out the way the seller wanted, they can then contact Ebay for a review of the FB. But when a seller contacts Ebay to appeal the decision, the FB still has to break some rule of FB to get removed. FB is no longer being removed just because the seller doesn't like it or agree with it.
It is unlikely the layoffs had anything to do with it, but my crystal ball isn't telling me why they started this more difficult process. Ebay makes changes all the time to all kinds of things. Some make sense to me, others don't.
With that said we can typically get an FB removed if it breaks policy. I help sellers accomplish this all the time and that hasn't recently change. Sometimes I've helped them on the threads, other times someone contacts me via private message.
With all that said, the subject of this thread, the situation the OP finds them in, I see as a failure of Ebay to apply policy. The OP should be able to get that FB removed for cause. But unfortunately I can't make this determination for the OP, Ebay has to do it and they seem bent on ignoring the issue.
As you know I've been trying to help you. Just so you know, the fact the buyer may be TRS and have a long history, has nothing to do with this at all. Ebay doesn't take that into consideration in this process.
I am very disappointed for you!
@rockyroadtradingpost wrote:I'm sorry this happened to you. To avoid this type of retaliatory behavior in the future, buy from a separate account.
How would that help? I think you misunderstood something.
The buyer purchased from the seller [OP] before, it was a problem [I don't know what the issue was]. The Seller put the buyer on their BBL. Then the buyer used a different account to circumvent the block to purchase from them again.
