SquallStrife wrote:

IMO, you're not rating the product or the transaction itself, you're rating how well the seller (or buyer) handled you as a part […]
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IMO, you're not rating the product or the transaction itself, you're rating how well the seller (or buyer) handled you as a party to the trade.

Was the seller patient? Polite? Apologetic? A good communicator? Punctual? Overall, did they work WITH you to resolve any issues that came up? Positive.

Was the seller indifferent? Dismissive? Slow to respond? Careless? Overall, did they address your issue but weren't really interested in making you happy? Neutral.

Was the seller aggressive? Unresponsive? Blaming you? Overall, did they refuse to deal with you, or wholesale try to pass blame for the issue back on you? Negative.

Getting a broken item, then the person being apologetic and actively trying to remedy the situation for you and in your favour, even at their own loss, IMO is cause for positive feedback. No question. That kind of behaviour should be encouraged. Because let's face it: things break in the post, people sell things they don't really have the knowledge to test, whatever. Shit happens in this world. What counts is the seller's attitude.

Totally agree. I had a similar case some weeks ago. Item was sold as working, but was DOA with obvious damage (which on later inspection also was present in the auction photos). Seller refunded the whole amount, including shipping. He was apologetic and had a good explanation. I gave positive feedback.

Some time ago I bought a supposedly working lot of mobo+Phenom II 1075t+cooler, a Radeon HD4890 and three HDs, among other things. Well, when it arrived the packaging was shit, the mobo needs a BIOS update to use the processor (wich was a 1055t!), the cooler has bended fins and the bracket was for a 775 mobo, not AM3, the Radeon was broken beyond repair and only one of the HDs works... 😠 .
Obviously, I tried to contact the seller, who was slow, apatic and unresponsive, every time he only answers when I threaten him with a reclamation , he insisted in that all pieces work together and refuse to offer any solution... In the end I keep the lot without reclamation (the price was good and I don't want to have to send it back and pay two times for shipment to end up with nothing) but I let a negative vote 😢

Simple formula. Bad service, bad feedback.

shiva2004 wrote:

I don't want to have to send it back and pay two times for shipment to end up with nothing) but I let a negative vote 😢

It makes me sad that people don't know their rights. You don't have pay for shipping it back, seller will pay. You just state as fact, that you received not what you paid for. eBay will side with you and get you a return shipping from the seller.

Dreamer_of_the_past wrote:

shiva2004 wrote:

I don't want to have to send it back and pay two times for shipment to end up with nothing) but I let a negative vote 😢

It makes me sad that people don't know their rights. You don't have pay for shipping it back, seller will pay. You just state as fact, that you received not what you paid for. eBay will side with you and get you a return shipping from the seller.

It's only ever happened a few times in my life, but every time I've been in this situation the seller does not want the product back. Typically I send a photo or some other proof that the product is defective.

FaSMaN wrote:

I have a pretty difficult one, a few years ago I bought a Voodoo 5500 from a seller in Isreal , it took very long to get to me, I stay in South Africa and the card arrived dead, posted about it in my build thread at the time, as the card itself was clearly missing some components (ceramic caps and two aluminum caps) which I replaced a bit later, sadly the card now did post, but was very unstable , I contacted the seller and they instantly refunded me, I left a positive feedback and said: "The card arrived to me damaged, I contacted the seller and got a full refund, was told I can keep the broken card"

Its been a few years and I have spent some time working on the card , reflowing all of the smd caps and it is now stable, I dont know how I should feel about that 😒 I cant contact the seller anymore trough ebay to offer them something for the card...

So I am not sure where I sit with this, its cool that I got a working card for essentially some hours of labour and some caps I got .... but thats about it.

You didn't mention what was the description like in the initial listing.

Anyway, that feedback was appropriate and he had refunded instantly.

What happened after that is entirely on your shoulders. You've got your money back, but you decided to repair it yourself. This will absolve the seller from any of your actions. What you feel should be based upon your actions taken, and shouldn't involve the seller anymore.

Aaaaaannd.... you've got a Voodoo 5 card for the price of the repair now.

I've always given positive feedback when a seller corrects mistakes. I do write about the error though. At the end of the comment, I make it clear that the seller took care to make it right. Only if I have to goto eBay support, do I leave negative ratings.

BTW, great job getting it going. Now I have to do the same with my dead ebay purchased V5 PCI as well. Also missing a cap. Hope I have the same luck as you.

To the OP: that's a positive outcome no? Faulty product but full refund? You lose nothing.

State the facts. DOA however full and timely refund.

I agree with most here. Customer service which is what feedback is really rating isn't even an issue till you have a problem. Even new items form a professional store needs returning sometimes so 2nd hand ebay stuff is no different.
Sellers that refund with 1 question or less get full marks and a comment like "Problem with xxx, resolved quickly and easily"
Sellers who ask more then 1 question will loose marks, I'm no happy with the item, I've answered a question you may want confirmed, I'm still not happy so why are we wasting time?

I usually take the attitude that if issues are resolved to my satisfaction, i post positive feedback. Only time I ever left a negative was for a card where the fan was rusted solid but it was described as tested-working. Yeah right, and nothey weren't any kind of dealer. Around that time most of my ebay purchases of pc parts were defective in some way, some i got refunds for, others i didn't get round to opening until 4 or 5 weeks had passed and in those cases i took the hit. I've stopped buying secondhand computer parts as far as possible since.

rgart wrote:

To the OP: that's a positive outcome no? Faulty product but full refund? You lose nothing.

Correct, financially I lose nothing. But I do lose time. It takes time to search ebay and find what you want. It takes time to verify by reading through the listing that the product is advertised as fully functional. It takes time to look through any pictures of the product to verify they look in good shape. And time to wait for the product to arrive. When the product does arrive and it does not match those parameters, even if you get a full refund without hassle, there is still an intangible loss that you can't get back. Now you have start another search for the same product and go through the process again.

Sometimes a quick refund after one of these experiences feels a little like hush money to keep the sellers reputation intact. I realize there's not much else that can be done after the fact, and the seller has no real option but to refund quickly, but if you're going to advertise as product as working, at least go through the effort of verifying it works before shipping it out.

I believe that even if you get a refund, if the item was sold as "working" and it has an obvious defect (such as the completely not functioning fan mentioned above) the seller doesn't deserve a positive feedback, no matter how easily he refunded. As I see it, he just tried to get away with selling an obviously flawed item.

Don't get me wrong, I've never left a negative feedback to anyone until now and I'm only talking about obvious problems.

For sure positive feedback because you got the full refund. Even if they were "attempting" to sell a broken product with full knowledge of it's non-working condition and hoping the buyer didn't press the issue, you got the full refund. You have to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I'd definitely put a comment though. Something like "Non-working product received but prompt refund given"

Then if a pattern emerges from subsequent buyers, people will know what to do.

konc wrote:

I believe that even if you get a refund, if the item was sold as "working" and it has an obvious defect (such as the completely not functioning fan mentioned above) the seller doesn't deserve a positive feedback, no matter how easily he refunded. As I see it, he just tried to get away with selling an obviously flawed item.

Don't get me wrong, I've never left a negative feedback to anyone until now and I'm only talking about obvious problems.

I really don't think so. We cannot know the exact conditions of what happened in their process. Things happen, the real issue is how it will be resolved. I once purchased a socket 7 board with a CPU on it marketed as working, from a mid size seller. When the board arrive, I've seen that there was not even a single jumper cap on the board, so the question automatically raised was "how on earth it could be tested?" I couldn't make it work, and contacted the seller. He said that they were overhauling a quite big inventory, and said that one of their technicians might have mixed up a working copy of the board with a dead one. He said he is sorry for that, and give me a full refund (including shipment both ways, from US to Turkey and back - a higher amount than the board price). It is very possible that their shipping person have no idea about what he/she is packaging (i.e. the mistake was obvious to a trained eye, but not to the warehouse guy). I'm working in plants and factories for my whole life and believe me, things happen.

So I gave them 5 stars, with a note saying "the product was DOA but they gave me full refund and they were very kind" and will do it again if something like that ever happens. As one of the other posters said "You have to give them the benefit of the doubt" and I fully agree.

I am sorry, but I feel like many people have no idea on how to rate it right. I kept saying that this is what neutral feedback is for and it doesn't reduce your rating, other than lets other buyers know that someone had an issue with that particular seller. In other words, it just highlights a problem someone previously had. For this exact reason

Iris030380 wrote:

then if a pattern emerges from subsequent buyers, people will know what to do.

So if it repeats, next buyers may leave negative feedback.

There is also the option of not leaving feedback at all... When in doubt, this is what I do. It does not hurt the seller, so in a way it gives them the benefit of the doubt. However, it may be a little unfair to buyers.

This is what I did on my very first eBay purchase, when the product was misadvertised. I received it, immediately contacted the seller and said that this is not what he advertised , and not what I need (it was a similar product, but a small difference which was important to me). The seller apologized and said that, unfortunately, they don't have the actual product I needed, and if I send back the item, he will give me a full refund + return shipping cost, which he did.

Another time I bought a piece of cheap crap that never worked (but could probably be fixed), and the seller offered a partial refund (about 80%) or a full refund if I send the item back. I took the partial refund, and just forgot about it (the differences was like a $1, so it wasn't worth my time to bother with it). I didn't want to leave any bad feedback, since they did offer a full refund if I send it back (which seems legitimate), but I didn't want to leave anything positive, because I suspected that they just knowingly sell this broken crap.

I never left negative feedback in my life so far, but I left neutral feedback once, on an item that was advertised as "new open box", but was very visibly used (fully functional, though).

Maybe I should have left neutral feedback in the above cases as well, instead of none at all. I seem to recall that the neutral feedback option wasn't there when I first started using eBay.

clueless1 wrote:

The product you get is DOA, with obvious physical damage (missing SMT components), was advertised as a "Used" and "Working Unit", and when you contact the seller about the problem they quickly refund you and let you keep the product. Does the fact that they refund and don't ask for the part back warrant a positive rating? Or do you give a neutral or negative rating because the product was not delivered as advertised?

Wait, wait, the seller quickly refund you and let you keep the product? I'd definitely rate her/him positive. After all, you lose nothing, and you got the item for free despite it's damaged. You can use it or cannibalize it for future projects, you know.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

clueless1 wrote:

The product you get is DOA, with obvious physical damage (missing SMT components), was advertised as a "Used" and "Working Unit", and when you contact the seller about the problem they quickly refund you and let you keep the product. Does the fact that they refund and don't ask for the part back warrant a positive rating? Or do you give a neutral or negative rating because the product was not delivered as advertised?

Wait, wait, the seller quickly refund you and let you keep the product? I'd definitely rate her/him positive. After all, you lose nothing, and you got the item for free despite it's damaged. You can use it or cannibalize it for future projects, you know.

Read my elaboration a few posts up:
How do you Rate Ebay Sellers when...