Ebay distort the feeback from buyers by removing negative feedback

[thomaspalme00]

I bought a part on Ebay, from Germany, that arrived with total damages.

I contacted the seller, who first told me that I had to report it within one day, but still try to solve my case with the delivery company. After when they come back to me, they told me I lost it, and they were sorry for that. I then had legal counsil and that is totally against the law to give one day to report damages. I did not get any answer from the seller, and then contacted Ebay who did not give a **bleep**. 

So what do I do? I write a feedback to the seller including pictures and all information about the process, and I ended the feedback with "Stay away from this seller!".

My review was removed within hours, and I then contacted Ebay who only said, "it is against the policy".

Long story short, I then later got an answer from Ebay that because of the sentence above, they removed the feedback. So, the accuracy of the feedback was not important, just this senstence. And then, during this week, the seller went from having 19 negative reviews to 16 negative reviews and the same day my review was removed, another negative review was removed.

The only true protection we as buyers has, are the feedback/reviews. If ebay removes negative feedback based on their "policy", they distort the perception of the seller, and of course, any buyer that is scammed by a seller will use strong language. 

I will now first deal with the seller, legally, but I am very very interested in the question, can ebay do like this legally? It's fraud! Why do they not report how many negative feedbacks they have removed? 

[giftsatgreatdeals]

I completely agree with you.

Any negative I have given is now removed.

So now my only option to warn buyers is to leave neutral with details.

This is one reason have been avoiding Ebay.

The last half dozen times I have made a purchase here I have had 5 of the 6 with problems.

In part it is due to USPS which has been terrible lately but mostly due to the sellers.

I am one more bad interaction with a seller away from just deleting my 20 plus year account.

[jonathanbrightlight]

The feedback policy is clear and easily accessible: https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/feedback-policies/feedback-policy?id=4208

Feedback is only removed if it clearly violates policy.  And yes, it is 100% legal for eBay to remove your feedback if you violate the clearly stated policies.

Likely the cause of your feedback's removal (though we can't see it now to know if it also violated other policies):

We remove neutral/negative feedback when:

An eBay Money Back Guarantee case or payment dispute was closed with the seller having met their obligations to the buyer

[christworks]

Edit: [It may have been] hard to make out what the issue was. Maybe some of that is emotion from feeling wronged. We write in the heat of the moment and what we say sometimes makes no sense. Still, seller's have every right to ask eBay to remove feedback that violates their policies. That's not the seller's fault. Nor it is eBay's fault. It is the buyer's fault, in this case your fault, for not taking the time to review the policy. Leaving negative feedback was not wrong. How you wrote it was. 

I do my best to my customers right. I'm far from perfect. If I mess up and deserve it, fine. I own my mistakes. In 2-1/2 years I've had one negative where I had messed up. I took care of my buyer and she happily revised that feedback from negative to positive. I've had 4 additional negatives. One buyer left positive comments but clicked the negative button. He revised his once I reached out to him.

The negative I currently have I did appeal to eBay. That buyer created a new account, bought the same item from 5 different sellers, then left all of us the same negative review, word-for-word. This is beside the fact they knew exactly what they were getting from me, and when I reached out letting them know they could return it my expense, they stated they had already thrown it away. Two hours after delivery? Yeah, right. This was clearly a case of a competitor trying to hurt the competition. Though I appealed and argued these points, eBay didn't see that way and left it. The paddle swings both ways. 

Now, I've had two negatives this year. Both were removed by eBay because they violated policy. If you are going to violate the feedback policy, at least do not make it so easy for me to disprove. The first buyer had already been reported by me for abusing the return policy. I reduced his refund by 50% and kept the original shipping, because he returned half-used ink cartridges. He didn't like that he only got 50% of his refund back, and he left a negative staying I refused to give him  a full refund. Well, I did, because he had used the product and I can't resale half-used cartridges. The refund followed eBay's policy, and the feedback was removed. 

The most recent negative was last week. This buyer stayed the 16W shorts she ordered from me did not fit her. She admitted the tag said they were 16W. Had the buyer left the feedback at that, it would have stayed up unless she revised it. But, no, her emotions got the best of her and she choose to lie. She also stated that she had asked me about the size of the shorts before buying. She didn't. She did, however, ask for a discount, which I refused. Of course, eBay can see all the messages, so I appealed based on the fact she lied. The feedback was removed within a half-hour. What's funny is I first mistakenly sent her a revision request thinking I was appealing to eBay. Didn't realize I was on the wrong screen, so the revision request outlined how she had lied. 😅 Despite the shorts being past the return window, I messaged her and told her I'd send her a label to send them back if she didn't want them. This woman could not even pack the shorts well. She stuffed a thick pair of jean shorts in a 8x10 manila envelope, which got tore open during shipping, damaging the shorts. Not to mention they came back to me smelling like smoke. They are not sellable. I issued her a 50% refund and kept the original shipping. She didn't like that, and proceeded to use that feedback revision request I mistakenly sent her to really let me have it. Too bad nobody can see it since her original feedback got removed. 😆

Buyers just need to be honest, not emotional, when they leave feedback. Write complete sentences that people can understand. If you write out of anger, it makes you look like a nut job and does nothing to help other buyers avoid the person you think is a bad seller. This goes for seller who respond to feedback in anger, as well. 

@giftsatgreatdeals you need to read the feedback policy. Neutral feedback can be removed as well, and so can positive feedback with negative text. You cannot circumvent the feedback policy. I can see all the negative feedback you have left sellers. Insane. You seem to be someone who is very hard to please. 

[jameshen1]

The OP is not from the US so English may not be their first language.  You may need to cut them some slack on that.  How would your communication be in German or French?

[thomaspalme00]

Actually, the review I left was not gibberish, it was a clear review stating what has happened including pictures of the damaged part. 

The seller claimed that I had only one day to report any damage of the delivered part,  and this condition is not allowed according to the German law when you buy something online. I am buying from Switzerland and this is the first time I heard this so I needed to clarify the legal circumstances. I hope this makes it clear. 

The review was factual and ended with the sentence "Stay away from this seller!". My problem is that ebay removed my review based on this sentence, instead of e.g. asking me to change it, or just mask the text but still keep it. It was my experience with this seller. I do belive that my experience would be useful for other potential buyers. 

Now, this seller has at the moment 99.4% positive feedback. 

They have 2806 positive, 56 neutral and 17 negative feedbacks. 

2806/(2806+17) is 99.4% positive feedback. But, this is after removing the "unpleasant" feedbacks from the calculations. (I don't know exactly the algorithm they have implemented, if it runs every month, or every day to get the "last 12 months" results. )

Anyhow, during the week I wrote my review, 3 negative reviews were removed.

If I make the assumption that 3 negative reviews has been removed every week, then the calculations would be 2806/(17+3*52)=94.2%.

Now we are talking a totally another number. This is the problem for me. 

Again, the only true protection as a buyer is the feedback system. 

Now, I need to spend more than the cost of the part I bought to press criminal charges against the seller, but I must of course do it, to protect other's from being scammed like myself. 

I hope this text was more coherent and clear.  🙂

[soh.maryl · Accepted solution]

If you had been familiar with eBay's Money Back Guarantee you would be aware that the first thing you needed to do was to open an item not as described case within 30 days of receiving the faulty item.

Feedback is not your first step when you receive an item that's not as described.

Did you open an item not as described case? 

And was this a really rare item? Because that's about the only reason I can think of for buying with a seller who had that many negative feedbacks already.  

[thomaspalme00]

I had several interactions with ebay, and it was the sentence "Stay away from this seller!" that was the cause of the feedback's removal. In my opinion that is not violating the policy. But it does distort the feedback ratings of the seller. 

My own policy: I don't accept being scammed. 

[ittybitnot]

@thomaspalme00  

I don't know what the rules are on the German site, but here in the US (where you are presently posting)  if a buyer gets a damaged item there is a procedure to follow. You don't need to talk to eBay customer support, as the whole thing is automated.    You go to your purchase history, use the dropdown menu and file for a return.  Use the reason "arrived damaged" or any other "not as described" reason that fits the situation.   

The seller has three days to either send you a return label, provide money in advance to for you to purchase return postage, or simply refund and let you keep the product.  Don't fall for any "stalling" techniques, don't agree to a reshipment of the product.  On day 4 you return to your case and "ask eBay to step in"  aka escalate the case. If the seller still does nothing, you will get a refund shortly. 

Since you made the purchase on eBay Germany, you may wish to check the rules there as they may be different.  It is NOT up to the buyer to deal with the shipping company for their refund. You don't close your case if the seller says "they can't refund you until you do", and you don't have to communicate with the seller at all. 

With regards to feedback, I don't know why yours was removed.  However, if you give it some thought the whole system is "DISTORTED".   For instance buyers can only get a "positive" rating.  They can be good buyers, or the biggest scam artists on the site and the rating will be 100% for both sorts.  So it means nothing.  

[powell-collectibles]

Not sure how the MBG is a relevant topic

when a buyer is complaining about feedback removal.  

[kathiec]

---

@powell-collectibles wrote:

Not sure how the MBG is a relevant topic

when a buyer is complaining about feedback removal.  

---

Not sure why you'd make a federal case of telling someone who is apparently not acquainted with eBay procedures how to go about getting a refund. Also not sure you would have scolded anyone else about it.

[christworks]

I did not realize they were not from the U.S. I edited my original post. 

Apologies to @thomaspalme00 . Thank you for clarifying though.

It is a big leap to assume the buyer gets 3 negative feedback removed per week. By your own admission they get every negative feedback removed. The ones being removed are because they violate policy in some manner. It does not mean that the buyer didn't have a bad experience, but what they stated went outside the rules. 

Obviously this seller has what buyers might consider a considerable amount of neutral and negative feedback. I'll point out, they are a high volume seller, so given how much they sell, the amount of bad feedback they have isn't truly staggering. Most buyer's concerned about feedback would not distinguish though. They would see 17 negative feedback and, at a minimum, want to look through it for red flags or common issues. Did you take time to look through their feedback before buying from them?

[thomaspalme00]

Well, since ebay is not transparent about this, I can just make an assumption based on one specific week that I observed, and in that week 3 negative reviews were removed. It's not a big leap, it's an assumption based on the observed data, and the best assumption I can do. It might be worse, it might be better. 

Well, when I bought the product, I saw a 99.5% postive review rating, which I now know, it's a complete fake number. I went though the reviews, and I thought it's just minor things. If I would have known that all the really dissapointed costumer reviews has been removed, I might have taken another decision. 

The point is that ebay removes these negative feedback as "they want and please", since the policy is generally formulated. 

It might be totally ok according to US laws, but they are operating internationally, and they are subjected to other laws as well. I'm an engineer, not a lawyer, but my moral ground is intact, and if the law allows this, the law needs to be adjusted. My moral ground stands above the law. That's my position. 

[ittybitnot]

It is a big leap to assume the buyer gets 3 negative feedback removed per week.

@christworks 

For those of us that have been here long enough to witness the actual "scrubbing", three a week is a "drop in the bucket". 

[thomaspalme00]

Thank you for this insight, I did not know this. I was really an amateur in ebay.