Hi Sterling, I was astounded at the contents of your email and I found them to be a real "eye-opener"! Many thanks for sharing your personnal experience. It appears that eBay should take a more professional approach regarding situations such as the one you have just described. If I may, I would like to ask Steve Schoner for his comment? Regards to you both José
----- Original Message ----- From: "Sterling K. Webb" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "Adam Hupe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2003 8:09 AM Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Seven New Galaxy Class Meteorites on eBay > Hi, > > The real topic here is feedback on eBay and its effect (or lack of it) on > bad sellers. > Negative feedback, even massive amounts of it, will not necessarily stop a > seller of less than perfect honesty. Last spring, I made the mistake of > impulsively buying an item I stumbled on to just before auction close -- no time > to check feedback -- but the seller had a positive feedback rating in the > thousands; why worry? > Ah, well, he also had negative feedbacks by the thousands, too. He had over > 26% negative feedbacks (about 1600!), all with the same complaint as mine turned > out to be: took the money, never mailed the item. I wrote him lots of emails; I > filed complaints with eBay; I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau > in his state. Nothing. > eBay was useless against this guy. I send them statistical summaries of his > feedbacks, showing that this was a long-term pattern of behavior. I wanted them > to get him off the site, shut him down, or at least suspend him for a while. > They were not interested in moving against anybody who was generating that much > income in eBay fees, clearly. > About four months into trying to get my money back (or product delivered), I > sent a fat email with documentation to the State's Attorney of his home state > with an inquiry as to whether this was their jurisdiction or should I send this > to the U.S. Justice Department's Internet Fraud office. The next day, I got a > refund from the guy. Took 127 days. This seller (name withheld to protect the > guilty) is still selling on eBay today. He has over 400 items up right now. > Now that eBay shows the percentage of positive feedbacks, you might think > someone like this would be in trouble with potential buyers. No, eBay calculates > that percentage you see for each seller on the basis of ONLY the most recent > negative feedbacks against the total positives for the entire history of the > seller, yielding a meaninglessly high percentage. So, this seller shows a 96%+ > rating right now, even though for the past 1 month, his positive percentage is > 89%, for the last 6 months, 87%, and for the last 12 months, only 74%. > This means that the positive feedback percentage you see on eBay item > listings is, if not statistically fraudulent, at the very least misleading. A > 99.9% rating could mean a seller who has always been great, or it could mean a > seller who has momentarily stopped cheating his customers. That eBay provides > this statistical fraud as a cover for dishonest sellers is a little > discouraging, although it may be encouraging them to clean up their act. > And the last moral of this story is: I never posted negative feedback on > this thief, because I could see that he invariably posted negative feedback > right back on anybody who posted it on him! I wanted to hang onto my 100% a lot > more than he cared about one more negative feedback added to his thousands. It > made me wonder how many others did not post negative feedback on him, for this > or whatever other reason. > At any rate, there seems to be nothing to suggest that any amount of > negative feedback would prevent any bad seller from continuing for as long as > he/she wanted to. Certainly, eBay won't. After all, they just provide the > venue... and the fraudulent statistics. > > > Sterling K. Webb > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- > > Adam Hupe wrote: > > > I think people were too embarrassed to leave negative > > feedback which allowed him to continue for some time. > > > > Adam > > > ______________________________________________ > Meteorite-list mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
