Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Bad Ebay experience-help!

In case anyone's keeping score, I just received my money back today. PM me if you want to know who not to buy a mobo from--I'm not going to publicly smear him.

Ooh, a private smear!


How dirty. . .

In the immortal words of Dorothy Parker "If you can't say anything good about someone...........................come over here and sit by me."

Indeed... Well, I told the guy I wouldn't leave any feedback. Let's just say that people should read feedback pages very carefully before buying things on eBay (duh...) Don't just look at the numbers. There could be retractions.

98% sounds pretty good, but in the world of Ebay, I'm reading all the feedback from anyone who's feedback is below 99.9% I've been an avid ebayer (both buying and selling) for several years now. Reading feedbacks is essential for safe Ebaying.

i wish ebay would allow you to sort feedback. i would love an option to just show neutral/bad/retracted feedback. no sensein reading the good ones it tells you nothing.
Jake

It's good to see them in chron order though too. Sometimes someone with a spotless record might have a spat of two or three negs all within one week. Obviously something went bad at that time. Usually still a safe person to buy from.

I do the same as far as looking at anyone without a perfect rating. Not that I expect everyone to have 100%, but more of a check as it if they have had problems recently or if it was something from years ago. I usually hunt for the last negative feedback even if it has been a while and see what it says.

On an opposite note, just because someone does not have 100% doesn't mean that they are crooks. I've got a rating of 99 (waiting 2 weeks for one guy to give me my positive feedback) but my percentage is 98.1%. I've had 117 positives received, but it doesn't count them if they are from the same person. I have 2 negatives. One from May 2000, and the other from July 2004. The first one I paid the guy and he didn't ship and never responded to emails. After about 2 weeks, I left a negative for him. That got his attention, so he left me a negative in retaliation. He had my money but didn't send anything to me because he was on vacation. What a dumb time to have an auction end, right as you are leaving for vacation. Anyway, I completed the transaction with him in another auction after he appologized, and the very next feedback on my account was a positive from him. Too bad I can't go back and erase that unjustified negative. The second one was similar. I made my payment minutes after the auction, like I always do when buying, and no email, and no package. After 3 weeks, I left a negative. They too retaliated and left me a negative with the words "Sellers Beware!" claiming that I hadn't paid them. I, to this day, have the PayPal transaction record to prove that I DID pay right after the auction. Again, I wish that I could get that one wiped off my record too. That eBayer has a 12,452 score with 97.7%, but hasn't sold anything on eBay since 2002 and is no longer registered. But I can't make it go away, so I will forever have to live with a less than perfect record.

Now, if I had these negatives more recently on my account, I would expect some people to be cautious, but since they are from 5 and 7 years ago with me having 81 positive transactions since then (no negatives), I feel that people trust me (as they should) on eBay.

So check out everyone before bidding. Someone that looks pretty good may not be, and someone with some negatives, may really be a super star on eBay.

Part of it is the total number, not just the percentage. In your case, 117 is a fairly high number of auctions, but enough that 2 negs screw the numbers. If I got a negative, I'd probably have a 90% or so, just because I've bought such a small amount of stuff. This dude had about 3-4000 auctions. So 98% is much more significant.