Quite literally the dumbest and most unreasonable customer ever. (long with minirant)

[Aethian]

past 16 years.

Making me feel old...thanks. Was trying to not think that I've had my email address from yahell for that long. Heck their stock price was still under a dollar when I got that address.

[RayvenQ]

*raises hand*

*raises hand too* I've been using it, probably very nearly daily, for the past 16 years. (Albeit, I used to do a lot of Text Based Roleplay on there, but sadly, thats slowly died an ignoble death)

[emax4]

"i jus rmmbrd somthing i want u to do to the compter if you can cud u install yahoo messeger n norton b4 u send it to me plz i wont giv u postive fedback if u dont"

You have an airtight case. You couldn't do it because it wasn't advertised in the original sale. The buyer was asking "if you can", which you could not! ^_^

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

The reason the Bay of E no longer has equal feedback is because extortion used to run quite high the OTHER way. This is what frequently happened when both buyer and seller could have negative feedback.

Buyer: Ahem, seller, I have a problem with what you shipped me. Can we talk about fixing it?
Seller: Nope!
Buyer: Well, I think I'll give you negative feedback then.
Seller: If you give me negative feedback, I'm going to give you negative feedback.
Buyer: What! But I paid! What else is a buyer even supposed to do?!
Seller: Oh, I dunno but...there goes the black mark! Nice doing business with you.

Basically, since the only legal responsibility of the buyer is to pay, as long as they paid on time there should be no reason to be able to give negative feedback. The customer is always right and such.

That's what the Bay decided to do about the massive amounts of sellers blackmarking buyers in retaliation for their own negative feedback. Naturally, buyers buy a whole lot less than sellers sell...a dedicated seller usually sells thousands of items and a buyer usually only buys dozens of items. So one black mark on a buyer means "byebye!" in one hit as opposed to the sellers, who can take 20 such hits before their rating even drops one percentage point.

I can understand why the Bay would decide sellers had too much power in that situation.

Several things here:

1. If sellers are extorting feedback from buyers, you deal with them as the cases arise. You don't create a blanket rule that punishes the good sellers along with the bad. You don't take all the power away from the sellers and create an unfair situation in the other direction.

2. IMO clicking a "pay now" button does not entitle a buyer to positive feedback. If there is a problem with the item, I expect the buyer to work it out with me, and I will do my best to resolve it. Not just a negative feedback left because they know I can't respond to it.

3. This policy doesn't really weed out bad sellers at all. Sure, if they don't sell in high volumes a couple negative feedbacks will get them shut down. But a Chinese dropshipper selling counterfeits, or filling orders correctly only 75% of the time can hang on because they sell in such high volumes a few negative feedbacks here and there won't hurt them.

4. This isn't the place to spout "the customer is always right." And in this case, the "customer" is the ebay seller, since they pay fees to list their items and to use certain features when listing their items, and ebay takes a cut of the sale price of every item they sell. Buyers pay nothing to ebay.

As for ebay's feedback system: it is totally voluntary. The seller can leave it first, the buyer can leave it first, both sides can choose to leave it alone. Personally I never leave feedback when buying things on ebay. This is part laziness and part not feeling like taking part in an unfair system.

[mhkohne]

I've never bought or sold anything on the Bay of E. Still, this isn't the first time I have heard of sellers complaining about an uneven playing field and not having any knowledge of potential problem buyers.

It's been getting more and more uneven over the years. The lack of feedback seller -> buyer is only the latest. Mind you, it DOES fix a problem with sleezebag sellers holding your feedback hostage until you give positive feedback. But I'm pretty sure the cure is as bad as (or worse than) the disease here.

[Powys]

The reason the Bay of E no longer has equal feedback is because extortion used to run quite high the OTHER way. This is what frequently happened when both buyer and seller could have negative feedback.

Buyer: Ahem, seller, I have a problem with what you shipped me. Can we talk about fixing it?
Seller: Nope!
Buyer: Well, I think I'll give you negative feedback then.
Seller: If you give me negative feedback, I'm going to give you negative feedback.
Buyer: What! But I paid! What else is a buyer even supposed to do?!
Seller: Oh, I dunno but...there goes the black mark! Nice doing business with you.

Basically, since the only legal responsibility of the buyer is to pay, as long as they paid on time there should be no reason to be able to give negative feedback. The customer is always right and such.

That's what the Bay decided to do about the massive amounts of sellers blackmarking buyers in retaliation for their own negative feedback. Naturally, buyers buy a whole lot less than sellers sell...a dedicated seller usually sells thousands of items and a buyer usually only buys dozens of items. So one black mark on a buyer means "byebye!" in one hit as opposed to the sellers, who can take 20 such hits before their rating even drops one percentage point.

I can understand why the Bay would decide sellers had too much power in that situation.

[Caractacus_Potts]

I've never bought or sold anything on the Bay of E. Still, this isn't the first time I have heard of sellers complaining about an uneven playing field and not having any knowledge of potential problem buyers.

I'm surprised no one has started a moderated blog or website where sellers can submit the usernames of problem buyers and, provided the complaint has merit, add them to an easily searchable list of problem buyer names. Sort of a BBB for sellers, "Have you checked if your buyer is legitimate?"

Hell, someone might pay money for that kind of information.

[An Haddock]

The rules have not changed. I'm a seller and cannot give negative feedback and yes, that unlevel playing field does irk me. But eBay has been quite reasonable when I've had to complain about a buyer. They'll check the messages and decide who's at fault. And judging from the messages sent to the OP, it would be blatantly obvious to even the village idiot that the buyer is at fault here. The OP can click "report buyer" and let eBay know about it.

I concur... I buy and sell on Ebay regularly. Not only does this idiot need a remedial English class, but he's attempting feedback extortion.

I suppose you could send him a message informing him of such and mention in passing that his account can be banned for doing so. If he still insists on being an idiot, you might want to try calling Ebay support directly. I've had good luck doing that before.


Oh, and...

[Aethian]

AIM never worked for me. But Yahoo was used until I found MSN but since MSN went to Skype only...I went back to Yahoo.

[ShinyGreenApple]

Huh. Maybe it's just me, then. I thought it had gone the way of AIM. Ah, good ol' AIM days . . . but Yahoo always froze or crashed my computer or made my phone act weird.

[Aethian]

And I'm just sitting here thinking, 'Who the hell still uses Yahoo messenger?'

*raises hand*

[ShinyGreenApple]

And I'm just sitting here thinking, 'Who the hell still uses Yahoo messenger?'

[Bob The Random Boy Wonder]

Do let eBay know about this idiot (and forward idiot's e-mails to them, too). Feedback extortion is against the rules.

But eBay has been quite reasonable when I've had to complain about a buyer. They'll check the messages and decide who's at fault. And judging from the messages sent to the OP, it would be blatantly obvious to even the village idiot that the buyer is at fault here.

All the communication being on the eBay messaging system is what I'm banking on to cover my ass here. Your thoughts are exactly the same as mine, and the fact that it's so obvious that none of this is my fault is the reason I'm not worrying about it.

Oh, they say it's against the rules, but as a practical matter it's A-OKAY. Unless something changed, buyers cannot be given negative feedback, but sellers can.

This is true. I agree with XCashier: not being able to leave negatives for buyers really ticks me off. How will I know how if a buyer has caused issues in the past if the only option sellers have is reporting a buyer privately? That doesn't seem like an amicable situation for the community at all.

On top of that, how will I know if a buyer is a scammer if I can't see the warnings before I do business with them? Anyone can be involved in a scheme where they create another account and use the scam account to "buy" positive feedback.

If the Bay of E is going to restrict sellers from leaving negative feedback, they should at least put something on everyone's feedback page letting us know how many cases a buyer has had opened against them in the last 12 months. If they can do it for bid retractions, they can do it for "report a buyer" cases.

I would like to present a story...told to the class on first day about a 4 PAGE PAPER/ESSAY written entirely in txtspk. Handed it in with a serious face, then loudly complained about the grade she was given and then told that she would have to take the grade.

I had an ex-friend in high school who did this. He spent half the day complaining to me because he felt the teacher graded his paper unfairly. I asked to see this paper and saw a paper in txtspk and abbreviations. I believe I said something to the effect of, "dude, I've edited a lot of papers, but I'd have to go through a box of Bics before I'd be able to fix everything that's wrong with this steaming pile of garbage."

(FWIW, I had the same teacher the next year. He was one of the best teachers I ever had.)

Will this do?

YES! I'd say that's just the right amount of facepalm.

I say contact the Folks in Brown, and get your computer back, then sell it to someone else on the Bay of E.

That was the original plan, but it was delivered today. No negatives yet.

I agree with Jester. And in the future, don't offer to put any software on the computer. Explain that it gets sold as is.

My listings always state that anything not listed, described, or pictured is not included and nothing is returnable for any reason due to the fact that everything that leaves here works when it goes out the door. (I also heavily photograph serial numbers and other identifying marks.) For computers, this includes software.

That's as far as I'm willing to go for a very common occurrence:

Client brought a computer into our office with virus issues. Client claimed they didn't know what had caused the problem. I traced the problem to a piece of "Make My Computer Faster!" crapware the client had installed and made a note of it in the repair log. That system was on our test bench for a week while I made sure whatever virus this program was hadn't caused any further damage and briefed my coworkers on what to do if any more systems came in with the same infection. After that was finished, I had the client pick up the system that Friday.

Fast-forward to Monday, and the client came back complaining that we hadn't fixed the problem, his computer was still slow, etc. Naturally, the boss buckled and told the client the problem would be fixed for free this time. I took the computer back and put it on the bench again only to find out it was the same damn problem, and the crapware had been reinstalled that weekend. There's just one little problem: our office is closed on weekends. Cue the boss ranting to us after the client left that I didn't do my job properly, and my coworkers needed to hold me accountable...

Note to people who think this software will make their computers faster: it doesn't. The only things that can speed up your computer are a faster CPU, an SSD, and more RAM. Anyone who tells you this computer optimization/speed-up crapware works and claims to be a computer professional is just trying to line their pocketbook.

[strawbabies]

I agree with Jester. And in the future, don't offer to put any software on the computer. Explain that it gets sold as is.

[Jester]

I say contact the Folks in Brown, and get your computer back, then sell it to someone else on the Bay of E.

Refund Idiotica's money, report him to the site for attempted rating blackmail, and find someone who can rub two brain cells together without killing one of them, and who would appreciate your computer.