Product Reviews

[cb-boards]

I just had a customer ask to see the "actual picture" of an item we are selling.  I responded and essentially told him that you are seeing an actual picture; we hire a professional photographer to take our pictures and that the item in question is one that we designed ourselves and our supplier custom made for us.  So it is sold exclusively by us and the photographs we had taken are from the inventory we received from our supplier so that he/she would essentially be getting the exact same item as in the pic.

His response was that he had read a review from a customer who said the item was great but the color was just not the same as in the pics.  Again, I explained that a person's monitor and lighting conditions can effect the way an item appears and assured them again that the item they would be purchasing is identical to the one in the pic etc.

But my question is that I don't see any reviews for this product.  Was this buyer lying to me about seeing a review or are seller's just not able to see customer review's for an item? 

My FB score is 99.8% and we have it set to private so that item is not shown in conjunction to the comments that are left so I don't see how they could have extrapolated that comment from FB that has been left for me.   

[chrysylys]

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@cb-boards wrote:

But my question is that I don't see any reviews for this product.    

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Which item?  You can post the number of your own.

[cb-boards]

For a variety of reasons, I wish to remain anonymous here on these boards so I don't want to list the item because that would then give away my listing ID which I do not want to do.  I hope that you will respect that decision.

But the question I am asking is simply, are eBay's setting such that a seller is unable to see their own product reviews that a customer leaves for them?

I searched for the item using the ID for these posts and did not see a review but though that since it is linked to my listing ID that eBay might prevent me from seeing customer reviews in this account.    

[18704d]

Did they specifically say

the product review they read, was on eBay?

?

Lynn

[*madison]

Yes, if a product review is there, the seller can see it.

 Perhaps the buyer is mistaken, or perhaps the buyer didn't see the review on ebay.

[cb-boards]

No but I don't know where else it could have been read as we designed this item and are the exclusive sellers of it.  

[dhbookds]

did you look at your feedback on the item?  Could something on a positive.

And also could be a mistake by the buyer, not necessarily a lie.   He was looking at something else and saw the comment, then mixed it up in his mind as being pertinent to your item. 

As others have said, you should be able to see any "product review" on your items......

[cb-boards]

I read all feedback for this item and nothing even remotely in the feedback either that would suggest the color looks different in person. Just called eBay and they verified that product reviews should all be visible to the sellers.

I jumped the gun a little when I said "is the buyer lying?" He did ask a question earlier which made me slightly suspicious of him but it is certainly pre-mature to suggest he was lying as he indeed very easily could have gotten it confused with another item.

[castlemagicmemories]

Generally a product review will populate out to every listing with that same product.  So a bad review will be placed on all.

But since this item is exclusive to you, that means it could not be coming from another seller who had that item and got a bad review.

If you can't see it as a seller, maybe if you log out of your account, and search for your item, you can then see the review the buyer is talking about.  But maybe the buyer did see something in your feedback and applied it to this item, just to be sure?

[nowthatsjustducky]

The review could have been posted by someone who purchased it from you.  As for being the exclusive seller of it, well, anyone who buys from you would be able to resell it anywhere, even here.  Sure, they will have to raise their price to turn a profit, but price is not always the sole deciding factor in a decision from whom to buy.

[josephrowan]

As a buyer who often leaves reviews, I gave up on doing so here on eBay due to the restrictions that block my reviews. The problem in how it relates to this issue with your customer, is that when a buyer reviews something but the review is rejected by eBay, the buyer is not informed of this. Instead, the review goes into a holding bin for rejected reviews but no email alert is generated. Other than a link to Content Policy, nothing is pointed out as to what the issue was that caused the review to be flagged. 

Bottom line - this buyer may have indeed written a review, but is unaware that it has been rejected. For that reason, nobody is seeing it. The buyer probably does not even know where to go to check for the rejected review.

I try to write honest, unbiased reviews and have done so successfully, thousands of times, on many, many other boards. On eBay thoughm I get a fairly high rejection rate and zero ohelp in resolving the issue (aside from the generic policy link). So I gave up on the whole lot of it. I got tired of writing and rewriting and rewriting reviews, only to get it down to the point where what was being shown was worthless to a potential buyer as an observation of the item. I have better things to do with my time than flounder around trying to satisfy some poorly implemented content policy.