Why does Ebay hate sellers so much?

[bigbite4me]

I'm not even a personal business or some commercial seller. Just somebody that yard sales here periodically. I had a seller today return an item that was fully functional and I got stuck with the $15 shipping costs. He then proceeded to laugh at me about it and rub it in my face that Ebay has made it so I can't do anything to him. And sure enough when I went to leave negative feedback, low and behold as a seller I can't leave negative feedback now? Who's bright idea was this? When did this happen? Then I dig here and find people getting returned items with rocks in the boxes instead of items and Ebay leaving them high and dry. Yikes. Is there any competitor to this place? Ebay has clearly taken this way too far in the Buyer's favor. To the point buyers can practically act with impunity. I never had these kinds of problems back in the day when feedback was the only mechanism for protection and returns were unheard of or not allowed. And I have been selling on Ebay since it first started. Sellers should form some kind of union or some other mechanism to lobby for some changes to make things fair again. I don't think its ok to have ebay force sellers to take the financial losses because they refuse to hold buyers to account.  I suspect mass selling strikes may force them to listen and change

[divwido]

Have you visited your blocked bidder list?  You will find it by clicking Site map at the bottom right of this screen.

Scroll down the middle column until you see a grey line.  Blocked bidder list is the first category under that line.  Copy that person's name before you go and then paste in on you BBL.  Now you know they cannot bid or buy from you anymore.

As for the buyer and his email-The email has a link to report it to eBay.

Probably you are not the fist person who has been treated badly by him and maybe eBay will ban him eventually.

Keep selling, keep learning and read these boards.  They will tell you more than most eBay reps know.  And keep working on it.

[elanowsky]

Not for anything but ebay ALLOWS buyers to have as many user id's as they want,,,Sooo if you block a buyer for a reason that violates your selling restrictions the buyer will just use another buyer id,,,I has a buyer that used 4 different user ids,,,,I kept cancelling the transaction and guess what!,,,They got to leave me negative feedback even though they violated ebay buyer rules!!!!!,,It is all **bleep**,,,There is no limit to ebay buyer user id's...Ebay helps buyer scams!!!!Makes no sense why ebay would allow this!!

[calntom]

The eBay rules have been basically the same since 2008 or so.  Someone can correct me on that if I am wrong.  It just is not the wild west show anymore.  This is online selling in the 21st Century.

eBay won't be heading back in the direction of past years, ever.  Anything Amazon does, eBay will follow eventually. It won't get any easier. 

[powell-memorabilia]

The vast majority of buyers are great - maybe over 99%.  I’ve never had a box of rocks returned.  I’ve never had a complete nightmare of a buyer.  No, I’m not joining a strike.  

Frankly, eBay can shed some sellers and be better off, as would the remaining sellers.

[dhbookds]

Ebay is a corporation.......it doesn't HATE.............it has rules which people like/dislike/abide by/or not.  Sellers deal with people who may/may not be reasonable on Ebay and off.......the same people you will find anywhere...  Chat boards anywhere attract people who have had bad experiences.........when did you post somewhere that your phone worked?  If you can't learn to deal with the downs as well as the ups......perhaps selling isn't for you.

[luckythewinner]

And sure enough when I went to leave negative feedback, low and behold as a seller I can't leave negative feedback now? Who's bright idea was this?

You have been selling on eBay since it started and are just noticing something that changed a decade ago. That seems like a pretty good run. 

 Yikes. Is there any competitor to this place? 

Didn't you post in 2018 that eBay didn't have any competition? And then in the same post named three of eBay's competitors and said you were moving your listings? 

 I suspect mass selling strikes may force them to listen and change

Three years after you said you were leaving, you are still selling here. A mass seller strike would need someone to lead the way. 

[fashunu4eeuh]

“And sure enough when I went to leave negative feedback, low and behold as a seller I can't leave negative feedback now? Who's bright idea was this? When did this happen?”

You may have been using eBay for a long time, but you are under-serving yourself to not have noticed that sellers cannot leave poor feedback for buyers—for the last 14 years. And that the platform is set up for the buyer’s interests to always be satisfied first.

Gone are the days when a seller could avoid taking returns, and expect buyers to pay return shipping when a buyer reports a problem. Gone are the days when a seller could admonish or criticize the buyer in feedback. Too many sellers abused the process and left unjustified negs in retaliation for a buyer’s justified neg. Plus, ragging on a buyer is just plain bad for business. So buyers are not rated. They don’t need to be. They buy, i ship. I do not need to investigate a buyer’s feedback in order to do this.

In over ten years of selling, i have never encountered a fraudulent buyer. (Bad sellers, yes. Bad buyers, no.) I offer free returns because i don’t want to give a buyer any reason to open a bogus case. (And since i rarely have any returns, this makes sense.) But the wide majority of buyers are honest, and just want their item as described and received in a timely manner.

So, feedback is no longer the method by which buyers and sellers establish their reputations as reputable trading partners. Feedback now is for buyers to vet their sellers and to report their opinion of the transaction.

Though i am a part-time seller, i consider each sale on eBay to be a business transaction. Therefore, the more professional a seller can be in conducting himself, the better the end results will be when eBay measures his performance. And the more satisfied the buyer will be.

[downunder-61]

While I agree that sellers have close to 0 protection here, I doubt there will be any ''sellers strikes'' or ''union uprising''.

Most sellers have pretty tight restirctions in their preference settings - they set their return TOS to best suit their business model, use tracking and other methods to protect themselves, and there has been no neg for a buyer since 2008.

So while I agree this is a completely uneven playing field, none of this is very new to sellers.

[kh-leslie]

Hi everyone,

Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread HERE if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.

Thank you for understanding.