Are sellers allowed to leave a negative or neutral feedback?

Plastic-Paradise

I am just curious if there was ever any thoughts, considerations, or changes to allowing sellers to leave a negative or neutral feedback for a buyer if a situation should arrive where it was warranted? We had a discussion going a while back but to the best of my knowledge there was no more responses to the post and I am unable to find it now. I like the looks of the site and where it is heading so far but I am with holding uploading inventory until I see the outcome of a few things, this being one of them. Thanks for any responses and consideration and if I have missed a change or resolution I apologize as I did look first but did not see anything.

Gary

theHellmouth

With immediate checkout and payment I don't see the reason to give the buyers neutral or negative. Even positive seems awkward ... not much to say but thank you for placing an order. Quick payment is always fulfilled unless you have a bank transfer payment option.

Plastic-Paradise

I see your stance and I see your point but there is many more occurrences than just non paying buyers to worry about. I rarely leave anything other than a positive but I do feel I should have that option if the need should arise. Receiving payment in a timely manner is wonderful but there is more to orders and customers sometimes that cause a seller to also have an unpleasant transaction. It is nice to be able to warn others if need be.

theHellmouth

Seriously, what's there to complain if you got your order and you got your payment? Ok, the order could be irritating with many lots of few parts, but still you got payed for it? If you don't like that, set bulk quantities. What else could be a problem? Buyer could complain about parts not being received, being wrongly received, the entire order not being received, etc. Well that part is up to you, ok something could go wrong but still you as the seller should make sure the buyer is happy. Sometimes it's sufficient to communicate nicely about it. Other times you just have to reach in your pocket and refund some money. I try to understand, so maybe you could give some examples of situations that happened to you in the past where the buyer was really to blame?

Plastic-Paradise

I find it very interesting you are putting words in my mouth. I have never complained about lot sizes or limits and frankly I welcome any order above my small minimums. Also, I was requesting a response from admin on an earlier discussion not an argument. I respected your opinion without question. I have a good track record and I have great feedback. I run a speedy store and I have happy customers, who return. I am not exactly sure why you are so defensive with my question or concern when nothing was really directed at you. I asked a question and I await an answer.

And, to answer your question, chargebacks, scams, and postal fraud are at the top of my list as to why I want to be able to warn other sellers. If you know me at all you know I rarely leave a negative unless I the seller have an unhappy experience and many times I don't leave a FB at all.

alltrightbricks

I agree that being able to leave a non positive is important. I had a buyer on BL with about 10 positives, no neuts or negs place a $10-$15 order with me. He paid. I shipped. Then paypal informed me that the bank was reversing the payment. I contacted the buyer, they told me that they had received the order and everything was fine, and they would get right on getting things corrected with paypal. Long story short--I never got the money, buyer stole my product. I sent paypal all the info I had including the email from the buyer, but they still did nothing. I gave him a negative and moved on. Last time I checked (and this was a couple years ago) that was his last feedback received.
Ok, so end result not a really big deal I was out a few dollars. Turn this into a couple hundred dollars and then yes it is a big deal. I think the administration here is going to be on top of removing negative feedback given to sellers that were undeserving, but what about warning sellers that someone is a problem buyer. We may not have a choice as to who buys in our shops, but me personally, I can fork over a few dollars to cover myself on a high dollar transaction when I can see CLEARLY what sort of buyer I'm dealing with.
If the admin doesn't want to allow us to leave buyer negatives, then please post a newsletter to sellers that includes all fraudulent buyer activity and let the sellers decide whether to stop list these buyers or not.
This is just my personal experience, and why I feel that having the freedom to leave less than positive is justified.
Katie

theHellmouth

@Gary: my apologies if I came over too harsh, this was not intended. It's just that over my 1200+ orders I had on BrickLink I never ran into a buyer wanting to scam me. I've had my fair share of non-paying buyers though and I am relieved this will not be happening here. So if you had experiences like that I can understand your concern. I was just trying to see your point without having any negative experiences myself, so I found it weird. No harm meant!

Besides being able to warn other sellers at this point is indeed useful. Probably a more central communication or listing is indeed better than a single negative feedback. Chances are another will only see it when it is too late, no?

Lawrence

@Gary we won't be having non-positive feedback but rather structured complaints instead. So, if you have an issue with the buyer, you can report it and the information will be recorded against their account. If the customer becomes problematic, action will be taken. That is intentionally vague because I'm not currently aware of exactly what issues will occur.

An issue I am aware of though is chargebacks and the general concept of customers clawing back payment after the order has been shipped. I have just added a section on the order screen where you can see how many chargebacks the customer has initiated in the past year that the seller disputes. This will be populated based on reports and the information that PayPal sends to us automatically with every order. The seller can then decide if they need to add extra insurance/tracking or cancel the order if the risk is too high.

MinifigMan

@alltrightbricks: I totally agree. That is the case for negative feedback on a buyer.

In my opinion:
positive: clear communication, fast payment (if IBAN or other non-paypal)
neutral: some troubles in communication, having to send requests to pay
negative: asking for things that fall outside of the rules (marking package GIFT for customs), chargebacks whitout notice or after package received.

MinifigMan

I have just added a section on the order screen where you can see how many chargebacks the customer has initiated in the past year that the seller disputes. This will be populated based on reports and the information that PayPal sends to us automatically with every order. The seller can then decide if they need to add extra insurance/tracking or cancel the order if the risk is too high.

Great, this is a very good feature.

theHellmouth

"I have just added a section on the order screen where you can see how many chargebacks the customer has initiated in the past year that the seller disputes"

Very cool indeed, but for now it shows MY information on the order although the title of the block says customer, it's my feedback score

Lawrence

Ha Ha, fixed.