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Negative feedback option for sellers
Why can't sellers leave negative feedback? I have many cases that really need to be flagged. Usually non-paying buyers, but right now a buyer is scamming me with a PayPal claim and I really think such things need to be shared. If I would have a buyer with such feedback I would know not to sort their order until they pay or to take extra precautions.
It seems strange to me that anybody can just sign up as a buyer and leave whatever feedback they like the same day, that will stick with a seller forever, while sellers who work for years and have alot of experience are forced to leave positive feedback.
It seems strange to me that anybody can just sign up as a buyer and leave whatever feedback they like the same day, that will stick with a seller forever, while sellers who work for years and have alot of experience are forced to leave positive feedback.
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> For nonpaying customers, or for chargebacks, the best thing to do would be to file an issue report from the more actions drop-down on the order. This information is then shared on the order details page. We can then keep a track or investigate if necessary. This prevents the needs for stores to manually check the feedback of every customer.
Thanks, I always do this, I think it's an obligation. But somehow those stats on non-payments and orders not received do not feel satisfactory at all. To other sellers: Do you guys ever check this at all? I often forget to do so. I strongly support changing the way it is, but if it won't change, it would already be helpful if this info was displayed much more prominently (and actual penalties when a pattern unfolds). I don't see any drawback to a person's feedback profile starting with a clearly visible statement on how many orders they cancelled and how many orders they reported as not received. In fact, if you want to keep things positive, that is actually a great way to do it, because there is nothing negative about a factual statement of these stats.
Besides these numbers leading to penalties, maybe it's an idea to allow sellers to make certain shipping methods conditional on it. I would for example not do untracked box shipping to buyers with 2 or more issues.
> @Hoddie said:
> My views on this have changed over time but I can't agree Teup. Bad sellers will use the ability to leave negative feedback as a way of preventing - justified - negative feedback on their own profile. It happens all the time on BL, and if the price for preventing that here is that some bad buyers fall through the cracks, so be it. This has to be the best of the available options. At least Lawrence/BO take efforts to track them internally, something I'm sure BL relies on public forum posts to do, which now may be against data protection rules.
Actually I think that on BL it makes both parties much more likely to find a solution and that solution will be the best outcome for both. If you both have the same power, you have a common interest and are more likely to put some effort into figuring things out. If the other party will not listen or does not take action, you can shake them up reminding them about the feedback situation. In my selling career I had more than a dozen of such cases. While I love BO more than BL, the actual buyers on BL have always been very communicative and solution oriented with very few exceptions. I have always been able to avert receiving negative feedback. But on BO I have a negative feedback for sending the wrong parts even though I sent the right parts right after the message and spent alot of money to correct my mistake, but the buyer is immune to feedback, so why would they care? I do not feel like I have a common interest with such buyers at all (Also, on BL you are immune to negative feedback from buyers who don't pay. I hope that's also true on BO, because I think it really should be that way.)
Yes, what you say, that happens, and I heard about it. But I can just say I personally haven't experienced it, so I can only say that I for one would vote for allowing negative feedback for sellers. For me it's not a reason to disallow it anyway, in the same way you wouldn't disallow the selling of kitchen knives when they've been used to kill people. Besides, feedback is alot more meaningful for sellers. Feedback for buyers just informs sellers if there are any problematic situations to anticipate, which is not a bad thing even if the feedback was unjustified.
If you've ever had a dog, you will know that whether they're on a leash or not when meeting other dogs, there's only 1 thing you should never do: keeping the one dog on a leash when the other is not :) I really believe equal circumstances avoids conflict and promotes the best relations.
(A follow-up on my first statement: The buyer in question is not a scammer after all, just didn't understand English. Situation will be solved adequately)
Your current situation has or is being resolved. Would that outcome have been likely had you left negative feedback in haste?
> I've seen 1,000s of examples on BL of bad sellers leaving negative feedback, abusing the NPB process, the NSS process, etc. etc. It happens all the time, you only need read their forum to see it for yourself.
>
> Your current situation has or is being resolved. Would that outcome have been likely had you left negative feedback in haste?
I really just depended on the buyer's mercy here, and they could be anyone, and they would get away with anything with absolute zero consequences. I could resend them the order, they could start a paypal claim, and I would lose 2x the order AND the money and there is absolutely no consequence except an extremely subtle "1" that does not even show in their feedback profile but only somewhere at the bottom of the order summary.
I think that for example the buyer would have been more serious about communication if I had that option. This buyer uses google translate to translate everything I write. If you can suffer some consequences (mild btw, because what's buyer feedback anyway), you may be more serious and buy from sellers who speak your language or learn English. In this case, I would want to leave neutral feedback for problematic communication.
Unfortunately I keep running into BrickOwl buyers that seem to be quite "yolo" and not care about unpaid orders giving feedback on something when I ask them. For example, when I'm missing a part and I place an order for them in another store and let it ship to them and tell them I would like to hear if everything is OK, 3 out of 4 times I did that I just didn't hear anything back. Of course I would leave them positive feedback, but I mean, there's this attitude thing with some buyers that I just don't like, and that I certainly don't recognise from BL. The combination of that and the fact buyers will get away with anything is a pretty unfortunate one.
Maybe there are different solutions to the problems you describe, because this looks like solving one problem with another.
And giving someone a negative because they didn't let you know their order didn't turn up, I'm guessing I've misunderstood you here.
Unless you are going to trawl through feedback lists and proactively block people from your store, I don't see that leaving a negative would help.
To be honest with the low rate of feedback return on BO, I'm seriously considering stopping bothering with it completely.
> Unless you are going to trawl through feedback lists and proactively block people from your store, I don't see that leaving a negative would help.
Actually for me it does. When a buyer hasn't paid yet or claims they've sent their payment, I will wait with sorting if they would have negative feedback, I will sort and wait for the payment if there is no negative feedback, and I will go ahead and send out the order before payment if the feedback is positive. Also, if they would request a quote, you can base your decision on whether to include insurance on their feedback history.
On BL I check it often, but I agree that on BO it's just not really an important thing it seems.
I just wish the info on non payments and order not received reports was much more prominently visible (and 3 strikes -> you're out)
The buyer turns out to be a scammer and I sent him a reshipment and also face a PayPal claim. We figured out about this buyer because another seller read this topic and was smart enough to contact me and we discovered a buyer with many accounts who had done this several times already.
If there had been feedback, his track record would have been in plain sight. I first of all would have taken precautions, secondly I would never have sent another copy of the order, thirdly I would not have spent these hours communicating, checking, calling with PostNL to investigate what could have happened to the shipment, etc.
Now I lost alot of time, Lego, and money that I just would not have lost if there was a negative feedback option. The admin has taken fast and good action, and I'm happy about that. I just think it's a shame that it takes this much luck (someone contacting me because of me mentioning the buyer in a topic) to figure it out since buyers cannot have negative feedback. If they could have negative feedback, this scammer would have been stopped much earlier. I'm even more convinced buyers should be able to get negative feedback than I already was... abuse effects can be dealt with through other measures, they are no reason why I should lose €100 because we're afraid of abuse that I've got nothing to do with.
Let's leave it for consideration for now, if more sellers voice this point, maybe it will promote some changes.
> If there had been feedback, his track record would have been in plain sight.
That's simply not true. A scammer with negative feedback simply moves on to a new account.
As a business, you have to protect yourself against scammers. Either take out global insurance, per-item insurance as you think necessary, or otherwise build your business model to cover the 1 in a 100 orders where something goes wrong.
A feedback system where you can leave a negative does not protect against scammers. End of.