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Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

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Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#51

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 buye…

All that being said, how can anyone think suing a customer over a single review is going to be a net PR win?

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#52
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> something outside the seller's control It depends. For me, the seller is fully responsible for shipping, and any added postage, while well outside the seller’s control, is attributed to the seller. I also do not want the seller to correct an error, I want the seller not to make an error. If you fail at that, I will leave bad feedback, and if it causes you to go out of business, I couldn’t care less. Do your job bet…

> If you fail at that, I will leave bad feedback, and if it causes you to go out of business, I couldn’t care less. Do your job better next time.

Wow. One small mistake and they should go out of business. Are you treated that way in your job?

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#53
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...

Let's put things in perspective. The seller is suing the buyer for defamation for reporting accurately that not enough postage was paid.

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#54
post #16
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

You have probably focused on the true problem. It looks like any negative element to the rather simplistic feedback model represents an issue for the seller. Why is that? - an issue ultimately fixed should be viewed as neutral - unless it is repeated too often.

And how often can the mistake be repeated before I can blog about it without being sued? Two times? Three times?

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#55
This is the sort of frivolous lawsuit that makes a complete mockery of legitimate torts. There needs to be some way to make courts award damages to the defendant in ridiculous cases without making it difficult for small parties to sue large ones over legitimate grievances.

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#56
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> something outside the seller's control It depends. For me, the seller is fully responsible for shipping, and any added postage, while well outside the seller’s control, is attributed to the seller. I also do not want the seller to correct an error, I want the seller not to make an error. If you fail at that, I will leave bad feedback, and if it causes you to go out of business, I couldn’t care less. Do your job bet…

> If you fail at that, I will leave bad feedback, and if it causes you to go out of business, I couldn’t care less. Do your job better next time. Wow. One small mistake and they should go out of business. Are you treated that way in your job?

How you dare forget this ; and break the build? You are fired.

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#57
post #16
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

You have probably focused on the true problem. It looks like any negative element to the rather simplistic feedback model represents an issue for the seller. Why is that? - an issue ultimately fixed should be viewed as neutral - unless it is repeated too often.

which is why in my opinion the buyer should have probably left neutral feedback with an explanation of what happened. This way other buyers can read the neutral feedback and see if there is a trend with a seller. That is really what neutral feedback is for, it's a way to say hey everything did not go smoothly but I don't think the seller did it with malice, you as another future buyer should know about this, and if it seems to be a trend then you should leave negative feedback.

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#58
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> something outside the seller's control It depends. For me, the seller is fully responsible for shipping, and any added postage, while well outside the seller’s control, is attributed to the seller. I also do not want the seller to correct an error, I want the seller not to make an error. If you fail at that, I will leave bad feedback, and if it causes you to go out of business, I couldn’t care less. Do your job bet…

> If you fail at that, I will leave bad feedback, and if it causes you to go out of business, I couldn’t care less. Do your job better next time. Wow. One small mistake and they should go out of business. Are you treated that way in your job?

Of course. If he was he'd be here on HN crying about how the evil corporation doesn't care about its employees.

Pure hypocrisy.

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#59
post #9

People need to look up from their computers / phones once in awhile and tone down the passive aggressive nature that pseudo anonymity has instilled in the lot of us. How hard is it to work things out without escalation?

Agreed this is becoming a huge problem in today's society. People interact with one another in a completely different manner than they do in the offline world. It is like when you remove the human interaction, the humanness of the other party is somehow diminished and that is a scary reality. Because when we as humans loose our association of another person being human, the worst of our nature rears it's ugly head.
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