eBay has gotten rid of the ability to give buyer’s negative feedback at the end of an auction. I held back my dismay from public view… until now.
For the third time, in a single week, I’ve had an international buyer back out due to shipping. They didn’t run the shipping calculator until after purchase. Then, when they realize that shipping from the U.S. is a raw deal for them… they proceed to email me, backing out of the auction.
Now, before this, a bidder backing out was rare. The vast majority were scammers, who were easily identifiable.
I’m not an eBay store. I don’t run an eBay business. I simply use eBay mostly to get rid of the tech junk which I have no use for. This is getting out of hand… because buyers know there’s next to no penalty now for bidding like crazy.
Think about it. The worst that can happen to a buyer now is a non-paying bidder strike. No matter, all they need to do is get about 10 positive feedbacks for eBay sellers to feel at ease. And, NPB strikes wear off much faster than the negative-to-positive ratio of feedbacks.
Why did eBay do this? To triple the value of a listing fee. If you have to re-list an item, you have to pay listing fees all over again. eBay doesn’t care if they have to refund the final auction value two, three, even four times. They still get their cut in the end, now with multiples of the listing fee.
In the end, I think eBay will lose from this. Sellers will be much more hesitant to tack on extras. I used to put Featured Listing ($19.95) on my big-ticket auctions (MacBook Pros, etc)… I sure won’t now. A bidder now has twice the power to back out of a deal, with little-to-no reprisal. I’m going to make sure my listing fees are as low as possible because of that.
So, eBay sellers, enjoy paying listing fees endlessly. Enjoy re-listing items and watching them depreciate in your hands. Google, Google, where for art thou Google?