Feedback forum

[gwzcomps]

Found an old page from the better days of eBay.  Granted long before my time.  Thought it was an amusing reminder of how eBay used to want to build good relationships between sellers and buyers.

https://pages.ebay.com/services/forum/feedback-foundersnote.html

[slippinjimmy]

Unfortunately not enough sellers nor buyers could handle this part "conduct yourself in a professional manner".

 Instead they wanted to play games and retaliate against the most minor perceived issue.

[gwzcomps]

Yeah so glad sellers can't leave negatives.  I just hate the whole automatic returns thing.  I had less returns and more happy customers when they had to contact me first.

[picknparley]

That seems like a great business plan and I did sign up about 3-1/2 yrs after this was written.  And at the time ebay lived up to exactly what was written.  This was the most fun you could have online!  It wasn't perfect, nothing seldom is.  

Overall ebay hasn't changed - people have. 

Ethics, respect and honesty aren't taught as much as entitlement, greed and annonymous theft.  

I wonder how many people would sign up on a NEW site today with that message from the founder. 

I would. 😊

[slippinjimmy]

Did you know that when that statement from Pierre was made, any eBay member could leave feedback for any other member at any time for any reason. An actual transaction was not required.

That approach was done away with in late 1999 or early 2000, only users involved in a transaction could leave feedback for each other.

I find it amazing that there wasn't total chaos back then, one thing I do know is that many if not most people would open accounts (buying or selling) and get their friends to leave a bunch of feedback "to get started".

On my original selling id the first dozen positives are all fakes that friends gave me and of course I reciprocated by leaving feedback for them.

When eBay started to require a transaction sellers moved on to selling 1 cent items to build their feedback (e-books and recipes).

A lot of things have changed since the days when eBay had far less than a million users.

[gwzcomps]

I did not know that.  Granted I started in 2006.  It is ironic things were better back in the more "anarchy" days than now with eBay's death grips on our throats.  Selling here is more and more like going to battle than anything else.

[slippinjimmy]

"Better", well I like the flood of envelopes containing cash that pretty much all my International buyers used (except Canada).

On the other hand it often took a month or more to finally know that you were not getting paid, the daily trips to the post office to line up and buy postage was no fun either. Having to pay 35 cents or more if you started them at more than $10 (more if you wanted pictures) for every single listing (except one day per year) was quite costly.

Even though FVF's were much lower my overall fees were higher than they are now.

On the positive side it was the gravy days, buyers hadn't yet realized that almost nothing was actually "rare" and buyers were still used to the crazy high prices (for "collectibles") that a lot of B&M retailers charged.

Lots of things to like in the "good old days" but also plenty of things that no seller would tolerate if it happened today.