Got a negative feedback on ebay

I got my first negative feedback on ebay, almost 300 positive, Unbelievable, I sent her a plant that broke, she contacted me and said she would leave negative feedback if I didn't replace it, I wrote her back and said of course I would replace it. and If I didn't have one I would have refunded her money. She wrote back and said thanks, she hated to leave negative feedback and she left me the .@>XAQ! negative feedback anyway. Unbeliveable, I had a perfect record, and she ruined it for this, NOTHING> How can you satisfy jerks like that. I was completely nice to her, and she did this to me. Now I'm @#X@# off . I already left her possitive feedback because she did pay right away. which it wouldn't have been right of me to leave negative for her, because she did pay right away. I feel like I just got a but whippin from my dad. And I didn't even do anything. Ok, i'm over it now, I think, I did send her a email letting her know a few choice things. And I won't let her bid on my auctions any more.

kathy_ann

Sorry I was so aggressive here, This just severely upsets me.

I think Ill call you the next time I feel the need to have someone talked to. LOL

That is so messed up, even tho you can post a response to that it still dosnt change your record. Im sorry.

One negative out of 300 positives won't hurt. You will still have a high percentage positive and when people bother to read, it won't matter. I always overlook one or two negatives if most ratings are positive.

me to ,if I see one or two maybee more dending on how many sells, I wouldnot worry about it,,, just make sure you leave feed back about her as well,,,, I love ebay !!

The sad truth as a seller on ebay now is that you do have to wait until they leave their feedback. I do break that rule if I am having good correspondence but it could come back at any moment.

The main thing to remember here is that you are a small % of ebay. Yep. The sellers are a tiny bit in comparison to the buyers. There are over 30 million active buyers on ebay right now.

I don't like the thought of negative feedback either but you need to change the way you are looking at this. That was one person. There are 30 million more. If they don't like it, there will be tons of others who will be nice and pleasant and treat it like the business it has become. An average feedback of 98% and up is awesome because we all know that there are miserable, grumpy folks just looking for a fight whether they are at the grocery store or online.

I had a grumpy person incident this week, not ebaY, but annoying just the same.

I had a missed call on my cell phone 2 days in a row, from the same number (reception is iffy in the mountains). So, I called to ask who and why there were calling me.

The young-sounding woman who answered asked my cell number and when I gave it, she said she and her husband have cell phones whose numbers bracket mine by one digit on either side. Her young daughter is learning to use the phone to call "Daddy". I simply asked her to get the daughter to be more careful about dialing so she doesn't use up my minutes.

She responded with a very ugly expletive and hung up. I just shrugged it off and thought no more about it.

Then starting Tuesday morning, I have had a zillion calls asking about my living room furniture. Apparently someone (same ugly young woman?) put a free ad in the local want-ads offering FREE living Room Furniture, and my cell number.

The ads run for 2 weeks. Can you imaging someone doing that? What a sick person.

The good news is that my cellular plan does not charge me minutes for incoming calls from my "home" area, where this ad originated (Asheville). I have changed my message to state I don't have anyy free furniture and my number was listed in error. Won't stop the calls but shouldn't clog my voice mailbox with messages, either.

unbelievable darius that there are such sick people out there. jeese!

kathy

kathy - i would definitely add a response and explain exactly what you did above. i've had 1 negative feedback after i left that person neg feedback for non-payment....sometimes i almost want to not even 'sell' anymore

Contact the paper that has the ad and explain to them that your number has been printed in it as a very bad hoax and that you suspect it was done by a vindictive crank. They can pull the ad early and should. They should also contact the party that place the ad for a correct number and bar them from future advertising.

kathy_ann,
Sorry you have had a bad experience but please don't let the bad rating upset you, it's the % that is important...

Zany, cannot have the ad pulled as they only publish once a week and the papers will be everywhere all week. Plus the ad was placed by phone, and being free, they have no records to check except my cell number.

I may be able to get them in time to pull it for next week IF I can get them by phone Monday when their offices open again.

I did get an email from this lady, she said believe it or not, it was an honest mistake, go figure. How can one make a mistake leaving negative feedback, She said I can go ahed and block her from bidding on my auctions, I wrote her back and said I already did block her and that one bad feedback won't hurt my record. I did leave a response to her negative feedback, LOL "I sent a replacement, what's wrong with you lady, You jumped the gun here. LOL That's what I said, I know this won't hurt my record, it just really upset me, or actually made me mad.

My mother has always had a saying, "Kill 'em with kindness." Kathy Ann, I think I would have said something like. 'imagine my surprise when I found this negative feedback after our kind phone conversation and then sending you a replacement'.

Darius, I had a similar experience several years ago. We used to have a toll-free number (on our home phone) that we gave to our LD customers. A very large medical supply company in Atlanta, GA had flyers printed up with an error in their phone number, they had MY toll-free number on it. They in turn faxed this flyer to thousands of doctor's offices, labs, hospitals, etc. all around the world!!! My phone would ring all day and all night and when I would answer it, all I would hear were fax sounds. This went on for about two months. In the meantime, I called my phone company and they couldn't figure out what was going on, they searched and had no answers. Then one day, I thought, this is getting ridiculous, so after the first few calls that day, I decided (smart thinking that took a long time to reach my brain!) I would turn on MY fax machine and see what they were trying to send. I spent the whole afternoon watching faxes come in with people's SS#, addresses, phone numbers, etc. information you would not want to get in the wrong hands. I was shocked reading all these faxes. Then I looked up the regular numbers on the fax messages (not patients, but the docs, hosp.) or looked up the regular number with directory assistance. I was told that they were sending orders for medical supplies with a certain company (can't even remember their name now, I wish I could and you'll see why soon.)

I then got the number for the company, got a copy of the toll-free phone calls that had been made and I answered, you see for 2 mths I had answered the phone everytime it rang. The charge? .25 cents per minute, so .25 cents each time I answered. You think that doesn't add up? It did, to the tune of $250! That's a lot of calls and will give you an idea of how many times I answered the dang phone.

I called the company and was very nice to them and told them I had found out that they had printed MY toll-free number on their flyers. I talked with the secretary who said that Mr. so and so would take care of it, she was certain of that. She told me she would talk to him and call me back. I waited a whole day and never heard back from her, so I called back the next day and boy, did I get the cold shoulder. She told me she was not allowed to talk to me and hung up. I called back several times and got the same treatment. The last time I talked to her, I told her that someone better give me an answer or I was going to the BBB and the State Attorney General. She finally let me talk to the boss!!! Do you know what he said to me? "Sorry about your luck!!!" I called my phone company back up and explained to them everything that had transpired and once they could verify that the numbers on my bills were from medical places, they took them off my bill and sent a bill to that man!!! I asked them to send him a note saying "Sorry about your luck!" but they wouldn't do it. And one more thing, not all calls were .25 cents a minute because many of them were from Puerto Rico, I even had some from Spain, Italy, and Germany. Now go figure. Those were at least $1.00 a minute.

Oh, and they probably went for a while with no outside orders because I immediately disconnected my toll-free number. I thought about faxing a letter back to each one that sent a fax saying this company will not pay me for your call when they printed my number inadvertently, but DH wouldn't let me do it. Darn!!!

So, if you have a toll-free number, beware!! :) Kathy

Kathy_Ann, isn't there a way for her to contact eBay and have them delete the message? Or have her leave another message with the same bid # explaining her error?-how did she manage to leave that error anyway!

Marcia, I tried to contact Ebay when we had made a very large purchase on Ebay and it took almost 5 months to get our goods. It wasn't until I threatened (kindly) legal action that we got some action, but I don't believe that there are real people that work at Ebay. I've never come in contact with one! :) And to the best of my knowledge they don't retract anything that's put on there.

No sweat.

I don't get reviews, but I do find about 1 person per year that I don't like working with, or the way I do a job is not what they expected. Well, maybe one every two years.

But I'm not in a position to do refunds.That's the nature of pruning and design.

Some people say that one dissatisfied customer will tell 10 others - so "watch out"

My way of looking at it is that 99 satisfied customer will tell 990 others.

If 10 people listen to the one, I really don't care about how they form their decisions. Its the 990 plus the originall 99 that I'll be talking to next year and following.

Some people are just miserable all the time and feel they must make others feel they same. I wouldn't let it bother me as we know you are honest and 1 out of 300 everyone else will too.
Hope your day is much better now. Sorry you had to meet someone like this but seems they are around every corner.
Blessings, Sandy

Sandy, LOL did you realize what you said, one out of 300 will think your honest too LOL he he, your silly, I knew what you meant though.

have a good one,
kathy

My very FIRST feedback on eBay was a negative and it was because of a seller disgruntled by my polite request to make an exchange on a piece of railroad ephemera which was not as advertised. I'd even offered to pay the return postage and that of the replacement. His general "NOT VERY NICE PEOPLE!!!" in all caps *really* ticked me off, though now I can (mostly) laugh about it. Still, I have nearly 80 positive feedbacks and would have 100% were it not for this pooper of a vendor.

On the flip side, 1 negative out of 300 is a drop in the bucket. I always see how folks reply to negatives because that often tells me more than a percentage.

now if I just knew what your handles are on ebay. *S* I pay promptly, leave good feedback, do you sell Brugs on ebay?

No brugs here, just the occasional item for a little spending money to spend at eBay (of course!). I use the same name there.

no brugs for me either yet, maybe next spring, sorry

kathy

I sell too sometimes. I know how you feel. It feels so bad when you've done your best and some one decides to tarnish your good feedback for seeminly no reason at all. Some people are like that. Even being just a buyer is tricky. I left a negative b/c a seller shipped my item months after the end of the auction and he decided to leave a feedback out of spite. I paid as soon as the item ended! Did I do anything wrong? No. It didn't sound like you did anything either but some people are just like that.

Whatever happened to professionalism?

Kathy_Ann, Welcome to the mortal world. It's always a shock to get the first negative. I've found it is best to cool off for a couple of days before responding to feedback, and to carefully edit the 80 characters they let you have for a response. Another thing I do now which I didn't used to do is if the bidder has fewer than (50) feedbacks, to not leave them feedback until they leave me feedback. For the rest, if they have lots of positives in their profile, (and I ALWAYS check the feedback they have left about others), I usually give them a positive before they even send payment. Sometimes I wait to leave them FB if they have more than one recent "non-positive" from more than one other user. There is also a link to "mutual feedback withdrawal" somewhere in the eBay feedback forum mess of almost-navigable links. Work on the terms in your auction, and include such phrases as "If the plant arrives dead, notify us within (timeframe) and we'll replace it." State whether they'll have to pay shipping again or not. If I make a mistake, I eat the replacement costs. If a buyer makes an assumption and later gets the thing and writes me saying they "thought it was something else, I try to define the difference between thinking and assuming. TELL buyers to ASK QUESTIONS BEFORE BIDDING. Of course there will always be the one in a hundred or 2 that read the title, look at the picture, and bid without reading anything. IMPORTANT INFO FOR EBAY SHOPPERS (You won't find this on eBay)Here's a link for auctions which are not selling any actual item; they are selling information on where to get the item for cheap. http://search-desc.ebay.com/is-For-information-rug_W0QQsofocusZbsQQsbrftogZ1QQfromZR10QQsatitleZQ22isQ20ForQ20informationQ22Q20-rugQQsotextsearchedZ2QQsotrZ2QQsosortpropertyZ3Q26sosortorderQ3D2QQcoactionZcompareQQcopagenumZ1QQcoentrypageZsearch Usually these auctions require instant payment, and often the sellers have very little feedback. These are usually misleading descriptions, and contain the text: "this is for information..." buried somewhere towards the end of the description. READ everything. All that text isn't just there because the seller was bored.So getting back to your recent neg, well, out of the last hundred folks you met at random, maybe one of them wasn't a very fast thinker but a fast reactor. Big drama is often used to compensate for lousy communication. Of course, If/when I have the occasional "issue" with either a seller or buyer, I
1. Use little words that any junior high school dropout would know the meaning of (2 syllables or less) in sentences with 8 words or fewer. 2. Ask (don't tell) that they not leave feedback until everything is resolved.3. When emailing: Read what I write after I type it and ask myself "How would I like it if I got this mess of words sent to me?". Sometimes I save the email unsent and read it again the next day before clicking the send button. Some other stuff: "30,000,000 registered users". How many of them are deceased? How many registered users have 2, 5, 25, or more eBay IDs? How many registered users have never bought or bid on anything? 30 million certainly sounds impressive. There's also several sellers who have alternate user IDs for bidding on items. It is a strange position when a seller sees that one of their good regular repeat customers is bidding on something they want themselves. It is to the advantage of most sellers to have a separate buyers ID. That way they don't alienate an established customer when bidding on something. Some schmuck sellers have alternate user IDs to leave other sellers which are offering similar wares negatives, out of immaturity or because they ran out of beer or whatever. (This also happens to a large extent on a similar website to this one that doesn't require membership fees, I won't name it but there's a leaf on the logo. There are eBay sellers and nursery owners that hide behind alternate IDs on that WEBsite and say negative things about nurseries that offer the same plants they offer. Like a classy nightclub, fortunately DavesGarden has a cover charge at the door.)I babble. Hope some of this helps you avoid the Jerry Springerettes. -dave

That WEBsite, eh? LOL! You've brought up some really good points here. Wonder if my "first" feedbacker would be willing to withdraw it. I've never thought about asking, though I knew there was a facility there for such mutual things.

I know that some people have set up multiple names to use on Ebay but how can they use that to give bad reports on competitors? The way I understand it, only the actual bid winner/buyer can leave feedback and The seller can only leave feedback on an actual sale. Is this incorrect?

I don't buy a lot on Ebay. Only 10 or 11 items in over 2 years. But when I do make a purchase I read everything twice and do not leave feedback until the item arrives and I inspect it. I did accidentally bid on the wrong book once, and of course I had to win that one. But it came in as advertised so I still left positive feedback since it was my error and not theirs. But I always check the feedback on a seller before ordering. One bad report out of many would not stop me from ordering.

If the high bidder is one of the sellers other alternate IDs, whether they pay or not, they can still leave a negative feedback. I got fed up with non-paying bidders so have stopped listing auctions. After ebay listing fees and final value fees I was lucky to come out 25 cents behind. I'll take my stuff to the flea market; it's a lot less to shell out for showing the stuff; no digi pics or going dumpster diving for packing peanuts, no more coddling to get the payment; no more 25 emails over a 3 dollar item, etc.

You don't have to pay the fees if you have non paying bidders, I always fill out a non paying bidder alert, follow up with it, and ebay always reemburses me my fees for listing it. and it puts a mark against that ebayer for not paying, and 3 strikes and their out , I think that's the way it goes there.

kathy

I think I have a non paying bidder right now. LOL she's not responding to any of my emails, and definitely not lpaying, so we'll see.

Darius, what's really sad is that sick people like that are raising children.

As for the negative feedback on Ebay, you are still over 99% positive, so I wouldn't worry about it. There is a small minority of people who just won't be satisfied and I think most rational people realize that. They'll see that you have 299 postive feedbacks and 1 negative and figure that the one negative is just a fluke. I haven't got a negative yet but I figure it will happen some day, no matter what I do. Jesus was perfect and he still couldn't please everyone, so how can I expect to do any better?

I like the way you think kelli

kathy

Kathy, I have one negative feedback too. I bought an item, paid by paypal, received the item, left positive feedback and nearly one month later the idiot posted negative feedback, said i "bid and hid" , I emailed her to see why she would do that and she said, "oops wrong person", I was irate, she said she'd remove negative but since ebay doesn't remove negative I'm stuck with it, then she said, forgive me for I am old, she's a power seller with thousands of items sold and could of cared less. I know how you feel, try writing a response to her negative, with that and such a high positive percentage people will buy. I think too there are a lot of young brats ordering with daddy's credit card and if they don't get their xbox the next day they leave negative w/o a care saying slow shipment.

yeah, don't you just hate that, them being so careless like that and not giving a flying flip what they did to you. I did leave a reply, it stated, I said I shipped another plant, what's wrong with you anyway lady, think you jumped the gun here . that's exactly what I said, and she said she was sorry, it was a mistake, go figure, she's blocked from ever bidding on my auctions again, I don't need jerks like her. LOL

kathy

Someradiantpig, maybe you could send her the auction# and this link, and you could mutually have that negative retracted? They will do that if both parties agree.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/feedback/feedback-withdrawal-faq.html