The feedback rules vary on ebay
As a seller I cannot leave bad feedback* - I can either leave positive feedback or generate a report against the buyer.
As a buyer I can leave good or bad feedback
* However it is possible for a seller to tick that it’s good feedback and ‘stealthily’ leave bad text ‘
This happened to me with one seller.
I bought 3 items from 2 sellers that I wanted for a specific event, the two from one seller were in seperate packages due to timing.
Hedging my bets on delivery times I had them all to a collection point in a garage on my way to work. Ideally I wanted to finish work on the last day just before heading off for the event and would have stayed at a hotel, but with the option of leaving early the next day if I needed to.
The one package from one seller just went around circles with tracking showing the address as not existing (the garage was on a corner, and the courier was looking for the address as a house number at the end of one street. It was eventually returned to the sender, I had a refund and he claimed back against the courier for being useless. This one ended up all happy
The other seller didn’t put down the delivery references, and also left a typo in one of the tracking references. He gave me the correct reference after I queried it
The garage kept rejecting delivery as there was no reference and they couldn’t go into the system.
He send me photos of the packages with handwritten labels and without the pickup codes
The post Office Depot recognised the parcels that I was after, but they were also going around in circles, passing back and forth . My convenient pickup became a daily early morning visit to the garage and depot trying to catch the postman (The woman in the depot said i might get lucky If the postman was in a good mood, but the correct procedures wouldn’t permit handing over to me)
I’m doubtful that the sender had put a return address on them so they were running around in circles and possibly ended up in disposals
I claimed for both packages
He hadn’t corrected the typo on the one tracking reference, so that was almost immediately refunded due to invalid tracking
The other took longer with eBay following the tracking stating that I would be refunded when it arrived back at the sender - which kept showing as underliverable (hence i think they didn’t put in a return address), and the seller kept taking as long as possible then replying to dispute stages
Eventually due to timing out I was refunded
The moral of the story for sellers is to ideally use automated elements where possible and to print labels
I buy postage online which puts the right tracking in automatically, and (not in all cases) saves me about 10p on some postage prices, and gives me a label with all the references and return details
If you aren’t going to print labels then make sure you write legible labels and include all the details - especially reference numbers. If you aren’t going to bother with long reference codes then don’t offer delivery to pickup points
After all the running around (and also having to linger around until the last minute to try and collect instead of having a leisurely drive)
After a while I discovered that the seller left me ‘positive’ feedback with negative words advising not to sell to me as I can’t be bothered to collect parcels
