Topic: Negative feedback left for cancelled purchase

Hello everyone,

I've done some searching and it seems a common topic among sellers is a complaint about unfair negative feedback. Reasons for this include: Very small purchase where Paypal fees result in a net loss, spiky prices combined with predatory purchasing and sellers having issues on their end with finding cards or conditions.

Negative feedback should not be possible on the grounds of simply refunding an order. The cards may sell locally. They may get damaged. Their price may fluctuate wildly.

I know there is an option to email the "support team" (I imagine this is just Seb?) about improper feedback. In this case, I was left negative feedback with the comment "Order cancelled".

Since it is important to protect the buyer I understand that he may leave negative feedback on a cancel in the case of unreasonable or fraudulent practices.

With this in mind, I want to suggest to ability to report a buyer for fraudulent feedback. Bad feedback is as damaging as loss of business directly. If a buyer is leaving negative feedback solely for the purpose of attacking the seller without reasonable cause, he should be punished to discourage this from happening in the future. Buyers will definitely not want to sell to someone who is likely to leave negative feedback for reasons covered in the DB seller's guide.

Last edited by Abraxas514 (2016-02-09 22:54:04)

Re: Negative feedback left for cancelled purchase

To some extent you can protect yourself from this stuff by outlining conditions under which you reserve the right to refund in your profile (or under your shipping options.) Sebi has indicated that if this is done than refunds can be allowed without negative feedback. Although I imagine that there are limits, and you can't simply reserve yourself the unqualified right to cancel any order.

But I broadly agree with your point. Negative feedback over canceled orders is very punitive and the risk of it keeps me from selling much on Deckbox - the returns are too low for me to risk my perfect trade reputation over. It looks like you've opted to put your entire collection on sale, likely using Deckbox's "price all" feature. And as you've probably noticed, this will mean that people will attempt to arbitrage discrepancies between your pricing and TCGmid, especially when prices are very volatile (ie. Pro Tour spikes, etc.) Perhaps most of your sales are like this, and that becomes frustrating.

There is definitely a "learning curve" to not fucking up on the market, and unfortunately you might have to fulfill a shitty sale or two before you master it. Always pull your listings around the Pro Tour and other events that cause price spikes. Reserve the right to cancel orders that don't meet some specified minimum, and write those rules into your shipping options. If you really want to be tricky, make shipping cost $1000 and force people to open orders for discussion in order to get discounts - this allows you to review everything before a sale, although not many users know how to open an order for discussion (and they'll probably ignore your listings when they see the cost.)

Of course, even with all that stuff, people will find ways to make you frustrated with the market.

Last edited by 9700377 (2016-02-10 05:32:43)

Re: Negative feedback left for cancelled purchase

I have reverted it to a neutral in this case. (as per the discussion in private on the support ticket).

Last edited by sebi (2016-02-10 15:47:06)

Re: Negative feedback left for cancelled purchase

Thanks, this has been handled fairly.