Tools for Researching eBay Buyer Feedback

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AuctionBytes Blog
News and insight focusing on
ecommerce and the online auction industry
by Ina Steiner, Editor of AuctionBytes.com

February 24, 2008

Tools for Researching eBay Buyer Feedback

By: Ina Steiner

Sun Feb 24 2008 21:22:01

AuctionBytes is publishing an article in the February 25th issue of AuctionBytes Newsflash about tools sellers can use to research eBay buyer feedback. Sellers who are concerned about eBay's new feedback policy that takes away the ability for sellers to leave negative or neutral feedback ratings for buyers are looking for ways to avoid problematic buyers and bidders. (eBay said it would roll out the feedback change in May.) If you've used any buyer feedback tools, please share your experience.

Update 2/25/08: Here's a link to the article.

Comments (19) | Permalink

Readers Comments

Tools for Researching eBay Buyer Feedback

by: ecl1lxa

Mon Feb 25 00:58:40 2008

One of my favorites is www.toolhaus.org

Tools for Researching eBay Buyer Feedback

by: Henrietta

Mon Feb 25 02:41:35 2008

Way COOL!
Sauce for the goose I think, anonymous feedback for buyers sounds pretty fair the way things are going.

I like www.toolhaus.org too. Very useful in the past.

Tools for Researching eBay Buyer Feedback

by: jsicolts

Mon Feb 25 06:08:23 2008

eBay is a mess. Fix it until it is truly broken - way to go sleezebay. Our system is we leave positive feedback as soon as the buyer pays for the item, since Feedback is nothing more that a popularity contest And any negative feedback we get, usually for Postal Service ups is lost after a few days.

Tools for Researching eBay Buyer Feedback

by: willbejohn4806

Mon Feb 25 08:56:42 2008

If you cancel out cmments on sellers and buyer's this will definately become a scammer's delight for a starter and then it will be too late to try and repair so leave a good thing alone or get BURNT.

Tools for Researching eBay Buyer Feedback

by: Carol

Mon Feb 25 09:10:47 2008

Thank you Ina for posting this information. I've been to 2 of the sites and they appear very interesting. Depends on A LOT of seller participation. Those sellers who chose or must continue to sell on ebay will need these tools. Thanks again.

Tools for Researching eBay Buyer Feedback

by: GYPSY GIRL

Mon Feb 25 10:20:50 2008

Thanks for posting this info. This is very helpful to all Honest Sellers. Time to fight fire with fire!

Tools for Researching eBay Buyer Feedback

by: Kal

Mon Feb 25 10:23:49 2008

These tools and sites just add extra work to a process which is already to involved. Unless a feedback system is integrated directly into eBay (as it is now) going to other sites is an absolute waste of time.

Tools for Researching eBay Buyer Feedback

by: Waldo

Mon Feb 25 12:03:54 2008

I finally "getting it" regarding feedback; excuse me for being late to the party.

Some sellers post on boards and blogs that they always give feedback to buyers as soon as they pay, saying that buyers have fulfilled their obligation at that point in time.

This is often done with a sanctimonious, condescending tone.

I just realized that many sellers never sell anything that they have any great investment in (time, effort, or cost). They can do a return/refund with an unreasonable or irresponsible bidder as a normal cost of doing business.

Many sellers never sell anything that requires that they generate a description of the item, including any faults, and that the buyers read and comprehend it. Fungible mass produced consumer goods/media products, for example.

Many sellers never sell an item that requires a substantial investment to package and ship (so returns are not problematic; it's inexpensive, and the buyer can repackage it).

Many sellers never sell something that could have parts swapped, so that the bidder can get hard-to-find parts for their own broken item (at no charge) by extorting a seller.

Those sellers are also the kind that eBay seems to want; selling DVDs doesn't entail much ambiguity, and the transaction can be fairly evaluated using DSRs.

Unfortunately, the stuff that made EBay something "special" is the stuff that takes conscientious, honest sellers and buyers to have successful transactions.

EBay wants to cater to the lowest common denominator, and reduce potential for problems.

Tools for Researching eBay Buyer Feedback

by: Al cole

Mon Feb 25 12:07:36 2008

I've used feedback analyzer program before to look at both buyers and sellers- easy way to sift out the negatives. available at http://www.feedbackanalyzer.com/ - he will try to sell you stuff, but I believe the download is actually free,

Tools for Researching eBay Buyer Feedback

by: tekgems

Mon Feb 25 17:40:42 2008

I'd like a service that looks at my recent purchases or bids and gives me an e-mail report of potential buyers I may have to be careful with. The e-mail report would tell me the text of the feedback left, the # of feedback left, and percentage of negative feedback left. That'd be enough to measure if the buyer is to be reviewed carefully. For auction sellers, you could cancel the bid.

Tools for Researching eBay Buyer Feedback

by: ebuyerfb

Mon Feb 25 19:09:43 2008

tekgems, I believe Squaretrade used to offer a similar service to what you are describing. I don't recall exactly what it did but you could set up filters for buyers and everyday you'd receive reports based on those filters. I know feedback and length of membership were two of the criteria.

Ina, thanks for mentioning my site in this report. I sent you an email last night but I'm not sure if you received it. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Tools for Researching eBay Buyer Feedback

by: Mark Bouchard

Mon Feb 25 19:57:24 2008

It is hard enough trying to keep a positive rating. Taking away sellers option to leave a true feedback on a buyer is lopsided, in my view. It totally empowers the deviants out there. trying to understand the logical reasoning for the change. Ebay needs to start looking at the plight of honest sellers and the difficulties.

Tools for Researching eBay Buyer Feedback

by: Mr Black

Mon Feb 25 22:59:09 2008

www.bidderblacklist.com

Tools for Researching eBay Buyer Feedback

by: Lynn

Tue Feb 26 13:28:54 2008

THANK YOU INA!!

What great information. It is a shame it has come to this but ebay wants to convert to an Amazon system with Amazon buyers.

Umm why not start another site instead of killing the people that built ebay from dust? Oh yea they have tried and it failed to compete with Amazon! I cannot imagine why they think it will work now.

I think all of the ebay execs were absent from history class when the sinking of the Titanic and the Fall of the Roman empire was taught.

They better get a clue soon or they are going down, glub glub...

I checked out the feedback sites and the one that seemed the best to me is Leaveauctionfeedback.com which is a portal site to Afterthegavel.com.
They seem to have the best features and checks and balances. I do not want to participate in a site that will allow any feedback for false transactions to remain and Afterthegavel.com/Leaveauctionfeedback.com have covered that by collecting seller ID, buyer ID & item # so they can verify that it matches up. That is great.
I am also a big fan of them keeping seller IDs private. I do not trust ebay as far as I can throw them. I do not want them knowing what I do off ebay.

Tools for Researching eBay Buyer Feedback

by: Mmmmm

Tue Feb 26 21:00:41 2008

The problem here is the hypocrisy & the underhanded way they are revamping policies & fee's.
Ebay is no different than any other retailer, whether on the internet or at the mall. Sellers can list anything they want (as long as it doesn't violate laws)to sell. Sellers can decide how much their efforts & costs are when they charge a handling fee to the shipping charges (no different than buying from a catalogue). Yet, because most people on Ebay are NOT established retail coorporations, buyers think they are getting ripped off & that a seller doesn't have a right to make a profit! When you go to Walmart, do you throw a fit screaming ripoff because the final price of your hairspray has shipping, operational & profit markups added in ? No ! If you don't like the price of that can of hairspray, you have the right to NOT SHOP there or just be quiet. It is no different on Ebay, if you don't like the terms (if you even bother to read them) then DON''T BID, noone is holding a gun to your head & what you buy on Ebay are not life's necessities. Yet the Feedback system allows one to rate whether they think the sellers shipping fee's were reasonable..AFTER THE BUYER ALREADY AGREED WHEN BUYING OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL !! Now, imagine that the Supreme Court decided to only impose the death penalty to men for committing murder, because 8 times as many men kill than women. That is what has happened to the feedback policy. Without taking into account ''why'' bidders receive more negative than sellers, they just said...we will take away the voice of 1/2 of a transactions party. Only 1 will be held accountable if they don't perform well. Only 1 will be able to speak...Sellers will have to just sit & take it ''silently'', bidders can say anything they want even lie & sellers can't do a thing about it. This is not fee enterprise...it is selective removal of a Sellers rights.
These ''misunderstood'' new fees ? They are just twisted sneaky way's to increase the bottom line for Ebay in the end. There really is NO true discounts in the listing fee's. I only see really a 35 cent reduction for the original photo. Any savings is eaten up & then some by the nearly doubled Final Value Fee's. I see no savings at all, unless your item doesn't sell at all, it is a true increase, they just juggled what they were charging around & tried to play it off as if they were doing something good.

Tools for Researching eBay Buyer Feedback

by: J. T.

Wed Feb 27 09:00:52 2008

While I appreciate that these sites provide a much needed service, it is sad that these sites have had to come into existance. And it is all due to the poor managment at eBay.

EBay has continuously refused to educate buyers about feedback. Sellers left retalitory feedback in defense of receiving unfair negatives. Instead of fixing the problem, eBay's management decides to attack the symptom. Instead of educating buyers about feedback, they restrict the sellers thus creating a vacuum for outside parties to help alleviate the problems eBay's mismanagment has caused.

Tools for Researching eBay Buyer Feedback

by: ebayer

Wed Mar 5 01:45:23 2008

One of the better tools out there is equidation.com. Take a look at their user researh function at www.equidation.com/user/. It is very cool. It has been around for years.

Tools for Researching eBay Buyer Feedback

by: Walter

Wed Mar 12 23:21:59 2008

I strongly believe this will be the end of feedback all together - slowly. It will be obsolete soon. How can a buyer judge a seller who has a record filled with plenty of nonsense negatives.

there is not much time to read the history of a seller for any buyer - they are not interested in that. a buyer will assume the usual that most negatives will be for nonsense reasons. they are not stupid and can still tell the difference as long as it is in the range for the acceptable. Instead of having a 99.9% rating you will have 90% . Bad sellers will probably have something like 50% rating. This is how a buyer will know.

. I am a seller and actually think its a good thing. it will finally weed out all these sellers who sell below cost where i cannot compete any longer with - but then they rip off buyers with shipping. I finally can compete again I hope under normal circumstances.

So sellers calm down. The losers and bad sellers will be affected. Yes, we will have plenty of more negatives but so will everyone else and the really bad guys will be gone or oblige by the new rules. finally! I complained to ebay for over 2 years that the only way I can make a living is by ripping off buyers with shipping which I refuse to do. Ebay finally agreed (with me?) and are changing the format.

I have nothing to hide so i am not afraid. Yes, i will become most likely a victim of a few bad buyers but hey - that's cost of doing business.

Fabulousway2dobusiness

Tools for Researching eBay Buyer Feedback

by: JT Byron

Sun Jun 8 14:44:49 2008

It is sad that another company has to do eBay's work for them. EBay claims they want to improve customer service, and yet they provide less and less service. Who would want to do business on a platform that fosters a hostile environment?

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