[meteorite-list] Seven New Galaxy Class Meteorites on eBay

From: Sterling K. Webb <kelly_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:27:52 2004
Message-ID: <3FC06B4D.4A6C6D94_at_bhil.com>

Hi,

    The real topic here is feedback on eBay and its effect (or lack of it) on
bad sellers.
    Negative feedback, even massive amounts of it, will not necessarily stop a
seller of less than perfect honesty. Last spring, I made the mistake of
impulsively buying an item I stumbled on to just before auction close -- no time
to check feedback -- but the seller had a positive feedback rating in the
thousands; why worry?
    Ah, well, he also had negative feedbacks by the thousands, too. He had over
26% negative feedbacks (about 1600!), all with the same complaint as mine turned
out to be: took the money, never mailed the item. I wrote him lots of emails; I
filed complaints with eBay; I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau
in his state. Nothing.
    eBay was useless against this guy. I send them statistical summaries of his
feedbacks, showing that this was a long-term pattern of behavior. I wanted them
to get him off the site, shut him down, or at least suspend him for a while.
They were not interested in moving against anybody who was generating that much
income in eBay fees, clearly.
    About four months into trying to get my money back (or product delivered), I
sent a fat email with documentation to the State's Attorney of his home state
with an inquiry as to whether this was their jurisdiction or should I send this
to the U.S. Justice Department's Internet Fraud office. The next day, I got a
refund from the guy. Took 127 days. This seller (name withheld to protect the
guilty) is still selling on eBay today. He has over 400 items up right now.
    Now that eBay shows the percentage of positive feedbacks, you might think
someone like this would be in trouble with potential buyers. No, eBay calculates
that percentage you see for each seller on the basis of ONLY the most recent
negative feedbacks against the total positives for the entire history of the
seller, yielding a meaninglessly high percentage. So, this seller shows a 96%+
rating right now, even though for the past 1 month, his positive percentage is
89%, for the last 6 months, 87%, and for the last 12 months, only 74%.
    This means that the positive feedback percentage you see on eBay item
listings is, if not statistically fraudulent, at the very least misleading. A
99.9% rating could mean a seller who has always been great, or it could mean a
seller who has momentarily stopped cheating his customers. That eBay provides
this statistical fraud as a cover for dishonest sellers is a little
discouraging, although it may be encouraging them to clean up their act.
    And the last moral of this story is: I never posted negative feedback on
this thief, because I could see that he invariably posted negative feedback
right back on anybody who posted it on him! I wanted to hang onto my 100% a lot
more than he cared about one more negative feedback added to his thousands. It
made me wonder how many others did not post negative feedback on him, for this
or whatever other reason.
    At any rate, there seems to be nothing to suggest that any amount of
negative feedback would prevent any bad seller from continuing for as long as
he/she wanted to. Certainly, eBay won't. After all, they just provide the
venue... and the fraudulent statistics.


Sterling K. Webb
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adam Hupe wrote:

> I think people were too embarrassed to leave negative
> feedback which allowed him to continue for some time.
>
> Adam
Received on Sun 23 Nov 2003 03:09:50 AM PST