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Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

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31–40 of 118 posts

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#31
post #5

So if the buyer just left a bad rating, but no words, could she still be sued? One one hand voting seems like an extension of free speech, but on the other it feels that online voting shouldn't be counted as slander / libel.

They would win but after going to court and spending money. The main problem is that anyone can file almost any type of lawsuit

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#32
post #8

This seems like a very unfair situation for the company. Think about what would happen if this were the other way around. For example, buyer returns an article, sends it through the post, and for some reason it ends up at Med Express door with postage due. They leave a negative feedback on eBay about the user. The Internet would then also be up in arms about the company, 'abusing' its position to harm an underdog use…

Ebay does not allow feedback left on buyers.

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#33
post #5

So if the buyer just left a bad rating, but no words, could she still be sued? One one hand voting seems like an extension of free speech, but on the other it feels that online voting shouldn't be counted as slander / libel.

They would win but after going to court and spending money. The main problem is that anyone can file almost any type of lawsuit

And (in most jurisdictions) the tort of barratry[1] is no longer recognized.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barratry_(common_law)

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#35
I work for a popular brand selling accessories on eBay and Amazon. One of my duties is replying to customer care inquiries. We are a small start-up, our team is small, therefore happens quite often to spend hours every day replying to customers having a number of problems (postage problem, usage problem, etc..).

I do totally understand the seller, they have done everything they could to make the buyer happy. The buyer, instead of giving a chance to the seller to make things right just left a bad feedback. I guess anybody can see how unfair this is.

Feedbacks and reviews are supposed to give a hint to potential buyers about the service or product they will get. The truth is that more than often they are a "weapon" for frustrated buyers to revenge and damange the seller, without being anyhow responsible for it. This is unfortunate becouse bad reviews and bad feedbacks damage sellers not only with their reputation but also kill sales. Having a bad review on Amazon means to simply not sell that very particular product, doesn't really matter if the bad experience was due to inexpertise of the buyer or from a delivery problem (all things that are completely out of the sellers control).

When you are a young company, it's hyper-frustrating to be damaged and see your sales killed or importantly reduced by a customer that was unhappy because of something you couldn't control in any possible way. While in such a situation the company must anyway step-up and take action to mitigate the problem (and they did as they offered a refund) the buyer must be responsible for actually damaging their business. It requires experience to understand that sometimes customers are just trolls spoilt by life and to just let it go. If you have a great company providing excellent products and services you'll make it up with future orders :)

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#37
post #34

I'm surprised eBay's term of service don't have something that would prevent suing over feedback.

A ToS can never prevent you from being sued. At best they can help you get the case thrown out.

Well, if the seller relies exclusively on eBay for sales(as appears to be the case here) then the threat of having their account terminated over ToS violation would be a huge deterrent against doing so. It still won't prevent you from being sued but it would definitely reduce the chances of it happening to near zero.

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#38
post #15
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And after you blog about your negative experience of having lunch taken away by accident, the bully sues you for slander. In my book everybody acted within acceptable reason until they sued him for leaving a true review on ebay.

Let's put things in perspective. The post was short under 2 bucks and the seller was more than happy to cover it. So at what point does one think to themselves, hey let's go ahead and leave a negative feedback because there was a kink with the transaction? Hell, if every transaction had to work without a hitch, the majority of us wouldn't even be able to ship a product not to mention release an MVP...

I personally think the negative feedback was silly to leave (because it was trivial, not false). However, suing the person who left feedback has far reaching implications. What else could we start suing customers for using their freedom of speech to talk about? Sue them if they talk about long delivery times? Sue them if they talk about damaged products in shipping? Sue them if they talk about bad products?

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#39
eBay has one of the tightest set of rules of any marketplace sit on what constitutes something that they will remove. The guidelines pretty much state that legal action is your only option.

Someone can for example leave a feedback stating 'item fake, seller a fraud' without the slightest piece of evidence (item may simply be from a different batch the customer is used to or defective) and there is nothing you can do, no process.

Also when you want things from eBay such as a higher selling limit they raise individual negative feedbacks in an accusing way despite them being 0.1% or less of total feedback.

I don't think this seller would have been effected by the feedback but I can certainly understand their frustration. The negative press from the case will do far worse for the seller. What buyer will feel safe buying from them?

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#40
post #29

I think this is a problem with eBay. For some reason, sellers desperately need and want your good feedback, and a single bad feedback, even for something as tiny as a $1.44 postage stamp, seems to have a very bad impact on the seller. In real life, one bad review about something like this on someone with a good track record doesn't hurt the slightest bit. Why does it hurt so much in the eBay review system, and can't…

I've just started using ebay. I look at the feedback because I realise (from years of reading Amazon reviews) that people sometimes give bad feedback for something outside the seller's control, even if the seller tried to correct the error. So this bad feedback wouldn't have bothered me. But I guess some / many people don't check the details. When you have two sellers listing the same item with similar 'buy it now' p…

It actually expands far, far beyond that. eBay is extraordinarily merchant hostile and just a few back feedback over the course of a thousand auctions can trigger automated blocks that prevent you from listing more than a handful of auctions at a time[1]. For a major eBay seller this is basically a death sentence.

Additionally your detailed seller rating or DSR determine how much of a discount you get on the extremely steep eBay feed[2]. Again for major sellers, especially people selling ultra low margin items such as phone accessories the 20% discount on ebay's final value fee will mean the difference between being able to competitively price their product and simply going out of business.

[1]http://www.aspkin.com/forums/ebay-suspensions/29924-ebay-acc...

[2]http://pages.ebay.com/services/buyandsell/powerseller/benefi...

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