Seller feedback on ebay.... Worthless?

[wrcsixeight]

I'm usually an Amazon Shopper, but recently got something on Ebay. A simple 9$ PWM motor speed controller.

It arrived today and the heatsink and PCB were sticking through the bubble wrap envelope which was barely large enough to contain the device. There was no other padding/ packaging besides a really tore up, cloudy Zip lock baggie declaring COI and 50% of the bubbles in the envelope were flat.

I could see no physical damage to the device, but when I went to go hook up the wires to it to see if perhaps it was still functional, I noticed that part which accepts raw wires for power in power out was not included. There were just bare pins sticking up from the PCB. Well I don't really have anything I can modify to get the wires safely where needed.

So I contact the seller. They are out of office for another 5 days. I see that they have a 99.5% positive feedback rating.

How is this even remotely possible. I have never seen a worse packaged product, and it is also missing vital pieces. It was not shipped to me from China, but from Brooklyn NY.

A saw the same product on Amazon for a buck more. It will be here before the Ebay seller even deigns to respond to my complaint. Perhaps they will make it right, but how asinine that they'd actually send something through the post with so little protection and with missing pieces to boot yet still have a 99.5% satisfaction rating.

It might very well be the last thing I ever get through Ebay.

 

[The_Jeff]

I formerly had a 99% rating but "something happened" and now I'm back up to 100%.

IDK if the complainer un-registered or if ebay forgave me.

Go ahead and take your pot-shot and leave negative feedback. As you say, it's worthless. Prepare for seller whining. To them, it's worse drama than facebook.

 

[KD0AXS]

I've been buying stuff on eBay for 10+ years. Sold a few things here and there too. Never had a problem with with anything.

 

[Pop_Rivit]

I suppose it depends upon the seller and the variety of products they handle.

If that's the only item they sell and every one is shipped in the condition yours did, then I'd say the feedback is worthless. But if they sell a wide variety of items, and only a couple arrive in the condition that yours did, then it may be fairly accurate.

I'm not sure why any reputable business would be gone for 5 days unless it's a guy working out of his garage, but I'd hold off leaving feedback; wait and see if the seller will make it right.

 

[Donald]

With EBAY you can never tell. People can sell a bunch of $1.00 kitchen spoons to friends, get up the rating % and then start selling $500 electronics with a high % rating.

 

[Panzerman]

I buy a lot on Ebay. When I say a lot, I mean thousands of dollars worth. I probably have been ripped off, maybe 8 times. Ebay was always helpful and I always got refunded. Some people are really cool about it, others are not. I buy a lot of ATV parts, I have got broken parts, I will notify the seller and he will usually want photos of the broken part(not all the time). Sometimes they say sorry, throw it out and we will take care of it. They will then refund my money or send me out another part. 80% of the time, I am able to resolve the issue with the seller. When I do have to escalate to Ebay and resolution, that's when it gets ugly. Usually the seller will demand the product back, which you have to pay for return shipping, they will then refund you the cost of the product and the original shipping cost, so the seller gets 0 and is out shipping too. It is aggravating because you are paying to ship a broken part back. The worst experience I had was I bought a X box game for my son for Christmas, it was a new release at a "Good price" I bought it, from China/literally shipped from China. I got this old WWF wrestling game. I contacted Ebay, the seller wouldn't communicate back, so I had to pay to ship it back to China(you have to give Ebay a tracking number to get a refund). It sucked and I complained about it and Ebay ended up giving me $10 towards shipping, so it only cost me $5 instead of $15 to ship this worthless game back. A month later, I get it back, the address is vacant. I still have the game, I cant even trade it, its a pirate copy. I still love Ebay. I have over 400 purchases and to get bit only aprox. 8 times, is pretty good.

 

[silverrat]

I have bought and sold carefully and have 300 transactions since 2006 with no incident.

 

[SwampSurvivor]

I have had two bad experiences.

First was I bought a computer from NJ on eBay. The seller didn't send it and eventually blamed it on a Hurricane striking Texas ... even though it was no where near NJ.

Another was a remote control car that never came.


Both times I was able to get my money back. Buying from stores on eBay always seems to go well. It's the individuals that have problems.

 

[bepperb]

If the seller doesn't take care of you ebay will. I'm sorry that it's taking too long (and that's debatable) but get over it, that's what ebay is. It's an online flea market. And IMO it's a lot more honest than most flea markets are.

In my experience, which is about 400 transactions with about 50 things sold and 350 purchased buyers are million times worse than sellers. I'm sure the buyer will ship you another, or refund you, and if not ebay will.

 

[spackard]

'Course, price is always a signal.
Really, if it was $1 more on Amazon, who here would have gone to EBay? Doesn't Amazon provide a service that's worth that dollar, and, shipping from NY with the weather the way it is?

You can look for the absolute bottom dollar price on an item, but in my buying experience there's a reason it's the lowest price. I bought several used disk drives, figuring I was building a failure-resistant volume out of them and could afford the risk. What was missing was any sort of anti-static wrapping and shock wrapping that the OEM ships them with. They all worked, but IME they'll fail earlier than a properly wrapped drive.

Another item I bought was an E5 Thermos. Bottom dollar. Their shipping company of choice lost it in Chicago for about 6 weeks.

 

[dparm]

It's a numbers game. If you buy/sell enough, you'll eventually have a shady seller. eBay and PayPal are pretty good about protecting you.

 

[TWG1572]

I've gotten to where I buy from Amazon/New Egg unless the ebay price difference is signifigant.

99% of the transactions I've had on ebay are fine. But the ones that aren't seem to drag on forever to close. This summer, I bought a Briggs connecting rod from someone who represented it as NOS and had a picture of the Briggs rod and box on the listing. When I got it, it was some no-name imported part. It took me over a week to get my money back - the seller never even responded to the complaint. He knew he was in the wrong, but just let the ebay process drag out untill it was automatically closed.

Now the rest of the parts for that motor rebuild were also bought NOS on ebay, and I had great experiences with all those transactions. So it really is just a few bad eggs unfortunatelly.

I had a similar issue with an Amazon purchase of a web cam. It was sold as new, but clearly used. One call and the money was refunded and a new one fed ex'd. That's service.

 

[strat81]

Originally Posted By: eljefino
Go ahead and take your pot-shot and leave negative feedback. As you say, it's worthless. Prepare for seller whining. To them, it's worse drama than facebook.


Don't leave negative feedback until after you attempt to get things squared away with the seller.

If you leave negative feedback first, the seller has no reason to try to make it right.

And, if they do refund your money with no problem, neutral or positive feedback may be more appropriate.


I'll add that Amazon isn't a panacea. I ordered a Kindle Fire case in November from a retailer that listed through Amazon (i.e., not Amazon itself). The seller generated a tracking number but never actually shipped it and did not respond to e-mails or phone calls. Amazon would not refund my money despite the transaction going through them. I had to dispute it with my CC company.

OTOH, I bought Despicable Me from Amazon and the digital download code included with the discs had expired. Amazon refunded the total amount and told me to keep the discs. My daughter loves that movie.

 

[TrevorS]

I've found that eBay sellers from China have no problem putting things right. Really good customer service.

But I've had 2 eBay US sellers get very hostile when something was wrong with what they sent. These were on the only 2 occasions when something went wrong with a US based purchase, so not a good experience and has made me gravitate towards Chinese sellers.

A recent Amazon marketplace purchase ended up being used goods. The feedback for the seller was either really positive or other instances of selling used goods that should have been new.

Amazon customer service were genuinely interested when I pointed this pattern out.

 

[Win]

Originally Posted By: KD0AXS
I've been buying stuff on eBay for 10+ years. Sold a few things here and there too. Never had a problem with with anything.


Me too. I don't even give it a second thought anymore when I'm buying stuff.

I've bought cell phones from China on Thursday night (here), and had them sitting on my desk the next Tuesday morning.

 

[wrcsixeight]

I'll give the seller a chance to correct the situation before leaving any negative feedback, besides E bay won't allow any feedback for a week.

I definitely should have searched Amazon for the same product beforehand. A buck more from Amazon for the same product is a no brainer, especially since I have Prime. Just got a notice that it will be here tomorrow.

I've only had one product inadequately packed from Amazon. Too bad it was a Wagner master cylinder whose plastic reservoir decided to leak from the seam, and peel the paint off of my reman'd POS steering gear.

 

[HM12460]

I've bought and sold on the 'bay now for about 10 years. Including 2 cars. 2 bad experience's and they were resolved satisfactorily. You learn to trust your judgment, if something doesn't quite seem right to you, don't bid.

 

[xfactor9]

Originally Posted By: Donald
With EBAY you can never tell. People can sell a bunch of $1.00 kitchen spoons to friends, get up the rating % and then start selling $500 electronics with a high % rating.


Of course you can tell. Look at the details of their feedback and you can see if the sold items are legit

I once saw a (new) seller trying to pad his rating by selling $0.10 jpg's. He sold many of them

But the Ebay seller rating system isn't worthless. I think it's better than amazon's because EBay's will let you view only Neutral or only Negative ratings, so you can judge for yourself if the buyer was unreasonable or if there's a pattern of bad service or cheating by the seller

 

[Joe1]

One needs to be careful on eBay. A seller l researched showed a pattern of a bunch of positive feedbacks on 1 dollar items following a negative feedback. Moreover, most of those feedbacks were from a small group of people. It was obvious to me what was going on and I didn't purchase from the seller even though it was a difficult to find item.

I reported this behavior to eBay and the seller was suspended for a few days. This was about 10 years ago and things have changed significantly.

 

[Colt45ws]

Im dealing with a bad seller right now. One thing I noticed was people were leaving negative feedback but marking it as positive. So, it showed he still had 100% even though his last two or three sellers complained. So I left a negative and ebay promptly deleted it. Those people must've known something I didnt.
Over 70 transactions and one bad. If I had read his feedback I wouldn't have tried to buy from him. I just thought 100% meant 100%.