Should I feel obliged to leave positive feedback on an eBay item that was shipped without incident or special attention?
I recently placed an order for an MP3 player from Creative Labs. Their entire refurbished sales department operates through eBay. They've sold hundreds of refurbished items, so their reputation for successful transactions is not hurting. Plus they're a giant corporation with a generally good reputation. So why would they send me an email asking for feedback?
We noticed you have not left feedback for item number 5828610064, Creative Zen Micro 5 GB Black MP3 Player w/ Warranty, and we were wondering if there was a problem with the transaction. If your item has not yet arrived or if you are experiencing any problems with it please let us know.
We also encourage you to leave feedback for us as you feel appropriate.
Well, ok, they're concerned that something didn't go well. And that's good. That's a sign of good customer service. But since they've done nothing that I would complain about and nothing out of the ordinary that I would rave about, I would only feel comfortable giving them neutral feedback. And really, that's not what they're looking for. More to the point, being a large corporation, they probably wouldn't care as much as any of the smaller sellers that would prod me into giving them the thumbs-up/thumbs-down feedback.As I buy more things on eBay, I find myself pressed to concoct something to write in the feedback field. I had recently resorted to writing about the shipped product in Haiku:
Book received early
Arrived in bubble package
Blooming spring reading
And even feedback for a buyer:
paypal payment comes
package hits the blistered road
excellent buyer
Who isn't sick of the typical "AAA++++++++ Buyer! Quick Response. Friendly Emails."? As if I ever exchanged email with this person apart from sending PayPal payment. Shouldn't these feedback ratings be meaningful?
I guess the ratings are somewhat useful in aggregate. If you have more just a handful of unsatisfied people in a pool of thousands sold, you're not doing bad. Sales between individuals don't really provide that kind of statistic, though.
If would be nice if sellers would leave individual and accurate responses. Perhaps, "Received paying in 14 hours. Delivery instructions clear. No issues." Or, "Payment only after 5 days and 3 email reminders, but received." Should both be positive? They both paid.
Eh, I'm not going to waste my time trying to find a fix for yet another thing that is out of my power to change. I still find it odd that a seller would goad me into feedback, when I've been purposefully avoiding it.
"Feedback: Negative - Kept spamming me to provide feedback."
Your spot on about the quality of feedback comments, for what they do say, eBay may as well ditch them and just have postive/negative/neutral totals.
For the way I use them, I would be happy with just a total for positive/neutral and then a list of complaints. Seriously thats all your interested in, before purchasing/selling to someone.
I'm glad they do the feed back though, if I'm thinking of buying from someone and they have negatives, I will search them out and see what the people wrote. I also don't buy from someone who has less than say 97% positive.
My beef with the feedback is how a lot of sellers handle it. When I'm selling something and the buy pays, I leave feedback for them right away. Afterall, they held up their end of the bargain. And when they receive and check out the item, I expect them to do the same since I've held up my end of the bargain. My problem comes from about 99% of sellers I encounter - they do not leave feedback for you even if you've paid immediately until after you leave positive feedback for them.
That just rubs me the wrong way because I've felt neutral about a sale before but have been afraid to leave neutral because they've not left feedback for me, they might tranish my 100% rating. Yeah just really annoys me. Last couple of people I've either not left feedback because they didn't leave me any or I waited many weeks and when I saw their feedback for me (I was the buyer), I left some for them.
TMI...
Oh my, I must be tired, look at all those mistakes up there. In my defense, my crazy kid got up at 2.30 am this morning. You know I didn't get any sleep after that... :|
I sell on ebay. I have about 700-800 feedbacks already. Honestly, I really don't care if people leave it anymore, it doesn't hurt or help me. Now, if someone has like 200 feedbacks, sure, help them out a little bit. Because one idiot WILL leave dumb feedback one day, and it will help them at least. Anyhow, I'm one of the good sellers on ebay, that gets your item to you in like 3 days. (ships same day or next). There are MANY out there, who don't belong on ebay.. and you have to let that be known if you have a bad experience.