ebay ? - retaliation neg feedback!

[donnajon]

I ordered my DS a Darth Maul costume on ebay. The seller had 99.3% positive feedback with over 1300 sales so I felt safe. Well, days after using the Buy It Now (and it was advertised as in stock and ready to ship) I was notified that they were out of stock. Now there were no more Darth Maul costumes in DS's size. I left negative feedback and noticed that they had 9 negative feedbacks in the past month- all indication that they had advertised as in stock but now out of stock. I have never left negative feedback before and I had 100% positive feedback. These goobers left me negative feedback (neutral, I could understand but negative, I paid immediately!) saying if I had problems I should have contacted them before leaving neg. feedback! I don't have time to contact them. I had to find another costume for DS ASAP. I don't have time for it to maybe come, maybe not! Anyway, I'm not that worried about one negative messing me up. My question is, is there any way to report to ebay that they are advertising that they had things in stock but they don't. Then leaving negative feedback for negative feedback. I just do the basics on ebay and don't use it that often. I've probably bought 150 things over the years - moreso in the past. But I am not sure how I would contact ebay. Another person the same thing happened to e-mailed me asking me the same question.
Thanks,
Donna

 

[Andrea]

I dont really know what can be done, but i had this happen to me 2 different times and i paid in full and they never got me my items i really hate ebay. i try not to buy much on there

 

[OceanAnnie]

I've found some helpful advice at the "Answer Center" on e-bay. Go to the Community folder at the top of your e-bay home page. The fourth selection down is the Answer Center. I typed in "out of stock" and a number of people have asked about it before. Their questions and answers are all there.

Good luck!

ETA- I saw where you can report them as a "Non-performing seller" for not completing the transaction. It's in that section referenced above.

 

[mickeysgal]

I'd try contacting ebay over this to get your negative feedback removed and to report this seller. You responded to an auction that listed an item as being available. You paid for the item. They were the ones that had an out of stock issue. You are not obligated to wait for it to come in. You upheld your terms of the ebay agreement and shouldn't have to absorb a negative feedback. Its certainly worth a try.

 

[Not so Dumbo]

I also had that happen from a seller that sells WDW merchandise. He mailed me a different ornament than what I had bought and paid for. When I contacted him about it he said it was out of stock and he sent me a more expensive one. It wasn't because I already had the one he sent me and I know how much I paid for it. So I filed a claim with ebay and explained everything to them. They made him refund me minus the shipping and handling and I had to pay to ship it back too. He is still selling so I guess maybe just a slap on the wrist. Oh, yeah, I got retaliation neg. feedback also. Now I won't buy from someone unless I check out their feedback.

 

[Toby'sFriend]

go read here about seller non-performance

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/seller-non-performance.html

 

[hrh_disney_queen]

I'd try contacting ebay over this to get your negative feedback removed and to report this seller. You responded to an auction that listed an item as being available. You paid for the item. They were the ones that had an out of stock issue. You are not obligated to wait for it to come in. You upheld your terms of the ebay agreement and shouldn't have to absorb a negative feedback. Its certainly worth a try.

I agree, this is probably going to bother you until you have things set right, so why not try? I had a problem with a listing of my own that ebay sent a message to me about removing it. (said something about referring to authenticy issues...) anyway, what I was selling was absolutely genuine, I bought the item myself (does any actually conterfeit 9 West anyway? ) After a couple of automated "refer to this area of the site for an answer" responses, I received one from an actual person who helped me with my issure. And I asked her another question, and got another personal response. Perserverance is the key!! Good luck, this would burn me up, too.

Do you get to respond to the negative feedback? You could write a pretty good retort to their neg. feedback.

 

[jfulcer]

Ok, I'm not trying to be mean here - just pragmatic...

You can most likely report them for not stocking the item, but my guess would be that the feedback will stay. Ebay very rarely removes feedback.

In reality I would tend to think they are going to do very little - if you complain, the seller will most likely come up with some plausible explanation as to why the costume was out of stock, even though they listed it.

Your dilemna now is exactly why I tell my wife to think long and hard about negative feedback because they get to rebut and most likely are going to point the blame on you. He's most likely not going to care about the negative feedback - he's got so many that it will quickly fade off his first feedback page, for you it will most likely be there for a while.

Take it as a good learning lesson. The time that you took to post here about the seller would most likely have been better suited to talking to the seller about your dis-satisfaction. You don't know what he could have done in this situation. Communication would have been a good thing here...

 

[donnajon]

Well, I contacted e-bay. We'll see what they say. I'm not worried about one negative feedback. I really don't use e-bay that much to care. And if I had been the only one this happened to, I would just say it was a fluke. Things happen. But upon looking closer at the feedback, they have had 10 instances in the past week with the same thing happening. The shouldn't be advertising in stock and ready to ship when it is not. When I used the Buy it Now, there were several Darth Maul costumes he liked in his size. Now there are none. So, in addition to not getting it from them, I can't get it from someone else. Luckily, DS is fine with being a clone trooper instead of Darth Maul. Of course, it cost more! Anyway, don't order a costume from CostumeCraze unless you want to chance that it is out of stock even if they say it is in stock.
And I did retaliate my neg, feedback and said it was for giving them negative feedback. The only problem is e-bay only gives you 80 characters to explain yourself. Hard to do with an issue. I'm not going to refuse to give negative feedback for fear that I might get negative feedback back. I wonder how many people ordered costumes that they didn't get but didn't want to leave negative feedback for fear of retaliation. I might have known better than to buy from them if others had done so.
Thanks all.

 

[Jinkies]

ARRrrrrrggh I've had the same happen!

 

[Imzadi]

Ok, I'm not trying to be mean here - just pragmatic...

You can most likely report them for not stocking the item, but my guess would be that the feedback will stay. Ebay very rarely removes feedback.

...

I agree. This is an eBay peeve of mine. In this case, the Feedback system & what it was intended for WAS working properly BEFORE you bid. You didn't take time to do your homework & read the NEG feeback before bidding and now you are complaining.

You wrote:

I left negative feedback and noticed that they had 9 negative feedbacks in the past month- all indication that they had advertised as in stock but now out of stock.

You didn't say that all the feedback was left today after you bid. It was left over the past month. Even if only 6 people posted their Neg feedbacks when you bid, that was 6 very clear warnings that even when Sellers have high Pos feedback counts, when things go wrong and there are concrete REPEATS of the same Neg feedback, things really go wrong for that Seller! You don't want to be no. 7 or in you case, you turned out to be no. 10.

While eBay's Feedback System is definitely flawed in a lot of ways. It was working properly in this case. Nine people did warn you. This part of the system only works when the Buyer reads the Neg feedback before bidding.

 

[donnajon]

I actually did do my homework! When I Bid on the item, they had over 1350 positive feedbacks with only 4 negatives at that time and it was actually the only negative feedback ever for them) - and I went back 4 pages before I found one (and it was a neutral). I felt that it was a safe bet to buy from them. After bidding, they have now gone up to 11 negative feedbacks - three of which are on the same page warning about buying and then out of stock. But there is an entire page of postivie feedback before you get to that. Most of that was not there when I bid. This is a new thing with them. I don't know if they have someone new in charge but they are recently really messing things up. And I understand things happen. I just don't feel it was justified to give me retaliation feedback because they didn't do as advertised. If they hadn't have given me negative feedback, I would have just forgotten about it. Yes, they offered to ship the item when it was back in stock but I don't exactly have time for that. It is a halloween costume. And before you blame me for waiting so long to get the costume, I usually buy these in August but my DH had surgery and I was working twice as much as usuall covering the entire month of September for a coworker who was off. I just think ebay should be aware that they are advertising a lot of things in stock when they are not. I really doubt they will do anything.

 

[N.Bailey]

I'm glad to see that you contacted eBay. I doubt they'll do anything about the feedback though. In the meantime, go into your own feedback and leave a follow up letting all who read your feedback know that you paid for the item immediately and the seller just gave you retaliatory feedback after they didn't live up to their responsibilities of sending what you paid for.

I'd also keep an eye on the seller's feedback and if they respond to what you posted, respond to that as well. Let others know in their feedback that they're selling merchandise they may or may not be able to deliver.

 

[bicker]

Gosh, this sure sounds like a great way of doing business.

 

[Tazicket]

Just playing Devil's Advocate here....it may be that the store also has a physical store that people can go in to and purchase costumes. With this being a really busy time of year for them, is it possible that people purchased the items from the physical store before the store received notification from ebay?

 

[Obi-Wan Pinobi]

www.toolhaus.org

Bookmark that site. It's a site that will search an eBay user's feedback for negatives and neutrals. It especially comes in handy with a seller with many pages of feedback

I did a search on this seller and they have quite a few negs and neuts for "BIN item out of stock" complaints. It also looks like they're more likely to respond to negs with negs and not respond to neutrals at all.

Just playing Devil's Advocate here....it may be that the store also has a physical store that people can go in to and purchase costumes. With this being a really busy time of year for them, is it possible that people purchased the items from the physical store before the store received notification from ebay?

That thought occurred to me also. I've always been under the impression that a seller on eBay has to have the item in their possession before selling, and if they also have a brick-and-mortar store they have to have the eBay stock set aside. Presells are one thing, but if someone is saying "in stock and ready to ship", but then after someone bids and it's out of stock and obviously not ready to ship that's another. If I were a buyer, I'd be contacting eBay about that or searching the rules about it. Even if it's not an eBay rule, it should be common sense.

 

[Tazicket]

That thought occurred to me also. I've always been under the impression that a seller on eBay has to have the item in their possession before selling, and if they also have a brick-and-mortar store they have to have the eBay stock set aside. Presells are one thing, but if someone is saying "in stock and ready to ship", but then after someone bids and it's out of stock and obviously not ready to ship that's another. If I were a buyer, I'd be contacting eBay about that or searching the rules about it. Even if it's not an eBay rule, it should be common sense.

Very true.

 

[Obi-Wan Pinobi]

I was doing a bit of searching on eBay at their rules, and I found this.

Seller Non-Performance states that the seller may not fail to deliver an item for which payment was accepted and significantly misrepresent an item by not meeting the terms and item description outlined in the listing. Something that is described as "ready to ship" becoming "out of stock" is, IMO, significantly misrepresented.

I would report the seller for seller non-performance. If you and enough other disgruntled buyers do so, they'll either shape up or eBay will ship them out.

FWIW, donnajon, I loved your feedback for the seller -- factual and concise without getting personal and insulting. Definitely makes you look a lot better to anyone viewing it. I do think you should have waited until today to call them (they have a toll free number listed in the auction and on their web page, which is linked in their eBay ME page) and tried to resolve it before leaving feedback, but that doesn't excuse them. Like I said, if they're going to list something on eBay as "in stock and ready to ship", then it should be set aside from the rest of their inventory to avoid any problems like this.