eBay Buyers: Please Help Us Sellers And Note The Following

[rons]

I won and paid for an auction on 7/25/07. The seller indicated they would send the dc# upon request. I waited until 7/30 to ask since there was no notice of shipping. I received a note today with the number and it was finally mailed 7/31 at 3:15 with no reason as to the delay. Whose fault is the delay the sellers or mine? What should the feedback be? The cliche that there are 2 sides to every coin is very applicable to this thread and we can all learn something.

[DC Dawg]

Would you like to wager on that (the faster part)?

Since I have worked on quite a few USPS contracts over the years I have been doing my work for the government, and since I worked on the address service system and know what they are doing, I will use my insider knowledge and take your bet. Anything you want to bet. Name it!

 

I know for a fact that every package is scanned by a machine. Envelopes go through a highspeed reader and packages go through scanners. They look for well formed city/state and zip codes for routing purposes. Addresses like "NY,NY" and "NYC,NY" will cause an exception. Capitalization helps because of the scanning software, but lower case charaters, in general, are not a problem. However, lower case letters are more apt to cause an exception.

 

When a package causes an exception, it is kicked to the side and has to processed manually. Shipping to a city like New York, a package will go through 4-5 sorting processes. So if the package is subject to 2-3 exception processes, it will add 1-2 days delay to delivery.

 

NCMS goes out of their way to provide tools for a lot of people to better address envelopes and packages to allow the postal service to process mail faster using automation. As an eBay seller, it benefits both of us to be able to ship your product with a good address. It gets to you faster, which makes me look like a good guy and it gets to you faster, allowing you to enjoy your product sooner. This is what we call a win/win situation.

 

So stop kvetching and give us a good address!

 

Scott

[MikeInFL]

I will bet you $100 that a certified package to the following two addresses will be delivered at the same time:

 

mark feld

pobox 1163

lajolla ca 92038

 

and

 

Mark Feld

PO Box 1163

La Jolla, CA 92038

 

Do you agree?

[gmarguli]

Why certified? Why not just regular mail that does not require the postman to get a signature. Perhaps just delivery confirmation we can all check along with Mark's word on when it arrived.

 

Dump them in separate mailboxes at the same time.

[gmarguli]

Also, I'd suggest using a street address instead of a PO Box. Force it to be delivered outside a post office which could increase the chance of the addressing error causing a slow down.

[jesbroken]

 

eBay also recommends that feedback should be give once the transaction is complete and it is complete after the buyer has accepted the item.

 

Sorry to take so long in responding, but I've waited until Ebay responded to my request for information as to Feedback policy, while Ebay has no mandatory Feedback response time, it is usual for the following:

 

 Buyers leave feedback after they have received the item and
sellers leave feedback after they have received payment for the item.

 

So, as I stated before, by not giving feedback as soon as a buyer completes their transaction(which is to pay for the item) this can only mean that the seller is trying to intimidate the buyer into leaving positive feedback with the threat of negative feedback even though they paid in a timely manner. Thus, the seller is nothing but a bully and should not be utilized as there is no excuse for not giving feedback as soon as paid other than the above. Am I wrong? Tell me why a seller should not give feedback as soon as they are paid, as the buyer has faithfully completed their bargain.

Let's hear it.

[WinstonWare]

[bsshog40]

eBay also recommends that feedback should be give once the transaction is complete and it is complete after the buyer has accepted the item.

 

Sorry to take so long in responding, but I've waited until Ebay responded to my request for information as to Feedback policy, while Ebay has no mandatory Feedback response time, it is usual for the following:

 

 Buyers leave feedback after they have received the item and
sellers leave feedback after they have received payment for the item.

 

So, as I stated before, by not giving feedback as soon as a buyer completes their transaction(which is to pay for the item) this can only mean that the seller is trying to intimidate the buyer into leaving positive feedback with the threat of negative feedback even though they paid in a timely manner. Thus, the seller is nothing but a bully and should not be utilized as there is no excuse for not giving feedback as soon as paid other than the above. Am I wrong? Tell me why a seller should not give feedback as soon as they are paid, as the buyer has faithfully completed their bargain.

Let's hear it.

 

I agree Jim. If a seller is secure with what they are selling, they will know that the buyer will be 100% satisfied. Feedback should be left when payment is received. When fedback is left for me as a buyer before I have received the item, it makes me feel much better knowing that the seller is secure with what he sold me. I have no doubt, that what I bought is exactly what I bid on.

[wayneherndon]

 

I agree Jim. If a seller is secure with what they are selling, they will know that the buyer will be 100% satisfied.

 

I wish that were the case. It is for probably 99.9% of the buyers. But, do enough transactions on eBay and you'll come across the .1% before long. I've had a few the most memorable of which is the guy who bought some Ike rolls that were cut from Mint Sets and still in Mint cello and left me negative feedback that the Ikes were not BU as advertised but only (I kid you not) "MS 68 obverse, MS 63 reverse".

 

That said, I DO leave feedback when I ship the item and deal with the nut cases later. I know there are few negatives it won't make a big difference to my feedback and also know that anybody who's been on eBay more than a day or two knows there are nuts and will ignore a few negatives. Basically, if someone has a legitimate issue I'm going to take care of it whether the use feedback threats or not. If the don't have a legitimate issue I'm going to tell them to pound sand whether they use feedback threats or not. Since feedback threats don't influence my response, I go ahead and leave it up front and am done it with. The only thing I lose is the personal satisfaction of being able to give them a negative back. However, these nut cases are usually NARUed or using a different account soon anyway so it doesn't make much difference there either.

 

I think Greg's approach is a good compromise between the two standards. Frankly, however, I'd rather avoid the email traffic and leaving individual feedback after the emails. By doing it upon shipping, I can leave feedback in batchs and it is a much more efficient use of my time.

 

WH

[Connecticoin]

Everything Greg said in the OP is totally reasonable. His suggestions to make the process run more smoothly take very little effort from the buyer's standpoint.

 

I felt bad about asking for pics 18 hours before an auction close, but seeing that some ask for them 10 minutes before, I feel better now!

[stev32k]

Overall I think this thread was a mistake. It's tone is confrontational - it makes very broad accusations of incompetence directed at buyers in general and insults a lot of people. That's not a very good way to win friends, influence people, or sell coins. Sounds to me like the OP is in the wrong business.

[MAULEMALL]

Overall I think this thread was a mistake. It's tone is confrontational - it makes very broad accusations of incompetence directed at buyers in general and insults a lot of people. That's not a very good way to win friends, influence people, or sell coins. Sounds to me like the OP is in the wrong business.

It's the Numismatic Tangents section of the boards..By definition your supposed to Rant a bit..

 

I believe it should follow the example of the Japanese executives who take their managers out ,Get stupid drunk and they get to rage on the Boss..

 

Next day ,,,Back to work and all is normal..

 

No attitude... (thumbs u

[WinstonWare]

I think the post was fine. I don’t believe that it was directed at members of this board. I think it was just a rant on some of the folks who are buyers on ebay. I myself buy coins on ebay and found the rant funny. I don’t think that Greg’s intentions were to belittle board members…

[JamminJ]

 

[JamminJ]

As a seller I would also leave feedback in bunches and very rarely for anyone who I didn't know to be reasonable or leave it first. When getting bugged to leave feedback I eventually adopted a policy of offering to leave immediat negative feedback or positive feedback with my next batch. They usually stopped bothering me. (thumbs u

 

God, I hate the scummy buyers on eBay.

 

 

[World Colonial]

I'm more of a buyer than a seller on eBay but some bidders who make some of the requests mentioned in this post must have never sold anything or at least sold it in quantity. Because if they did, they would not do it. Selling involves a lot of administrative work (though perhaps I could be a bit more efficient at it) and I do not see how a large volume seller would have the time to deal with these issues in volume.

[just-john]

Feedback lets see I sell 10 things to you.You send 10 things to me.then we send 10 things to a friend then a brother next a sister maybe mom then dad. We never really send anything we leave great feed back give ebay their cut .Rip off the next 50 people x 10 get banned start again in a few weeks ect ect

[ldhair]

I used to leave feedback when buyers paid. Then I started getting scammers trying to take advantage of that and threatening me with negative feedback.

I can see Greg's point on this.

There are a lot of nut case buyers out there that neg people over almost nothing and this made many sellers change the way they handle feedback. These buyers are the ones that messed up the deal for everyone. Some buyers will not even try to work things out. They just neg people for the fun of it.

I have no problem with the way any seller handles feedback. The truth is, I don't even care if it's given at all. It's just not worth the worry to me.

 

 

[bsshog40]

There's always that 10% that messes things up for everyone else that just want to have a smoothe transaction.

[JammnIT]

Yes, I would like my package shipped as fast as possible, but again it is not the buyer's fault that your demands on address capitalization and punctuation are greater than those requried by the USPS. Like I said before, the PO will have no problem figuring it out, so why are your panties in a wad over it?

 

You didn't seem to grasp the part where I mention that many sellers have software that automatically grabs the addresses from PayPal. If your address is screwed up, the software will tell you it is incorrect and prevent you from printing postage. A shipper then has to manually edit this information. This causes a slow down in shipping. If your software doesn't catch it, it may result in the package being misaddressed and potentially getting lost or delivered to a wrong address. That is something a buyer should worry about.

 

Actually USPS will actually modify the shipping information and/or "Standardize" it before printing the information. Although it does show you how it is changed, and as a result occasionaly will ask for a confirmation from you. Things like removing the punctuation such as the periods after the Apartment line so that instead of being APT. ###, it is changed to APT ###. This is just one of many things that USPS actually does for you. And if it is PayPal handling the shipment information, they actually send you to the USPS site to do the labels as well.

 

As far as Tracking #s, at first the tracking number that the Seller and the Buyer receive if email notification is used, usually only states: Electronic Shipping Info Received but does not confirm whether the item was actually shipped.

I spoke with USPS pertaining to this and how tracking information was basically worthless until the package is actually delivered. They told me that they were aware of this issue and it was being taken care of. I used to get more useful information about a year ago or so, but someone had changed and/or stopped following the procedures of how they were actually handling the Priority mail packages.

 

 

Just my

[JammnIT]

I used to leave feedback when buyers paid. Then I started getting scammers trying to take advantage of that and threatening me with negative feedback.

I can see Greg's point on this.

There are a lot of nut case buyers out there that neg people over almost nothing and this made many sellers change the way they handle feedback. These buyers are the ones that messed up the deal for everyone. Some buyers will not even try to work things out. They just neg people for the fun of it.

I have no problem with the way any seller handles feedback. The truth is, I don't even care if it's given at all. It's just not worth the worry to me.

 

 

Actually I have found that trying to have someone's feedback mutually retracted, used to cost $20.00, this was really hard to stomach when the items purchased had actually only cost a little more than $7.00. The really thing was that in my example, I had only given the seller a Neutral feedback and that fact resulted in him leaving a Negative feedback.

 

Really a system that gets abused, but feedback can only be left for items that you are actually involved in, and multiple feedbacks do not count. Only the first one feedback per unique buyer/seller is used in your Feedback standing, all the others are basically displayed for informational purposes only.