Ensuring better quality

[m_premnath]

Ebay is a great place to buy. More often than not, the buyer gets good product, fairly safe transaction, at really good prices, and at the convenience of home. No traffic, no hassles.

However, there surely is the case when buyer is saddled with a low quality product - a product that just does not function, or is not as advertised, not upto the mark. More often than not, the seller offers to exchange / replace, but this means shipping the product back at the sellers cost, which often is simply not worth it.

I have a suggestion for ebay - while leaving feedback for the seller, let there be a PRODUCT rating mechanism too. A poor rating for the product, SHOULD NOT impact seller ratings - the seller just sells, he cannot be held responsible for the engineering or the quality of the product. Negative feedback for the product automatically alerts the seller not to deal with it, and automatically, over a period of time, will stabilise with quality products. And buyers will have the option to rate correctly, the seller as well as the product separately, without one impacting the other.

Best wishes & Happy ebaying,

[lets_fight_for_right]

Hi, That's an excellent suggestion from a Buyer like you but ebay won't lent an ear to it. It's not that easy for a Seller to survive on ebay.

[m_premnath]

Thank you. You might have more experience and see it differently, but my view is Ebay is NOT a bunch of dictators who would impose anything on anyone. Ebay is a practical and convenient way of e-commerce and works purely market driven. The day one community - buyers or sellers - is unhappy, the signals would be for ebay would wind up. And that simply will not happen, because of the sheer convenient platform it is built on. At this community, buyers and sellers like us can provide suggestions to make this experience richer, and more equitable. As long as these principles are there, I see no reason why ebay would not listen. Of course change takes time - in almost all cases, such changes mean building fresh code into the application, which is expensive, and takes time. In these times of recession, possibly such changes will take longer still. But we as the user community - the very basis on which eBay survives - should not give up - we should continue in our genuine efforts to make this platform richer, more equitable.

Some clarifications as well - in my original post above, the sentence "More often than not, the seller offers to exchange / replace, but this means shipping the product back at the sellers cost, which often is simply not worth it" should actually read "More often than not, the seller offers to exchange / replace, but this means shipping the product back at the buyers cost, which often is simply not worth it". Sorry, a significant typographical error.

Also to add (perhaps the obvious) - product ratings should be visible to buyers.

Regards

[ancient.coin.store]

One more suggestion from my side
Ebay should give the buyer a chance to leave feedback for seller only after the product is shipped to him.Their are many cases in which buyer unnecessarily bid the item and after winning it gives negative feedback for silly reasons.Feed back system is for giving suggestion to buyer like product quality ,shipping service ,communication, .But how can a seller gets the option of leaving feedback immediately after he wins the item.EBay must think something for the same and take some action in this loop hole.