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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

#71

Post by downandout »

The case is clearly without merit. They almost certainly sued her hoping that she doesn't have the resources to respond to it, which would result in a default judgment against her. If she is able to get an attorney, she will wind up being awarded her legal expenses and potentially other damages since the case was pretty clearly filed in bad faith.

The choice to include eBay as a defendant in the suit, however, is clearly not well thought out. Med Express has filed a precedent-setting, must-win case against a company that effectively has unlimited resources. eBay will eviscerate this company in court and almost certainly ensure that they never do business through the site again. Since no attorney in their right mind would have advised such a move, this sounds like a misguided individual that managed to borrow enough money for the filing fee rather than a serious attempt at litigation.

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#72

Post by devcpp »

sdfjkl wrote: post #49

I stopped using eBay when they canceled my auction because I had included a link to the PDF manual (on the manufacturer's site) of the phone I was selling. This was around 2006 and I assumed their idiotic policies would quickly see them replaced by a better platform, but for some reason this has never happened.

The power of ebay resides in being able to find any product that comes to mind on auction at virtually any given time. Therefore, no one I know bothers to check the competition (if it even exists) before they bid. The same known problem occurs with Facebook regarding friends. I don't see any solution, this ease of use is more important to most customers than ToS.

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#73

Post by btilly »

MDCore wrote: post #52
claudius wrote: post #45

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?

You seem to be unacquainted with the realities of capitalism.

In a retail business, your customers want to be served by you and are willing to pay for that privilege. They don't particularly care what it takes for you to provide them with the service, or what the consequences to you are if they express displeasure over the value not received for the money spent. You are not a charity that deserves to exist on principle. They have no commitment to you. In a real sense they fire you every time they choose to go to your competitor (be that Walmart, Amazon, or wherever) and feel absolutely no remorse over it.

People move from a contracting relationship to being employed explicitly because they want more security. That's the deal. Firing employees is asymmetric because every time you do it, all of your other employees get concerned that the same may happen to them. Also an employee represents a fairly large sunk cost to you in your search to find one, and training - reasonable employers don't throw that away lightly.

These are at opposite ends of a spectrum. Generally the closer and more complex the relationship between two commercial entities, the more important maintaining that relationship becomes, and the more that you care about maintaining the business relationship. Someone who bought something from you once on eBay doesn't have a relationship to care about, and really doesn't care. An employer/employee relationship is very close and complex, so you care a lot. Any kind of frequent commercial relationship (be it going to a restaurant you go to regularly, dealings with a supplier, etc) will likely be somewhere between those extremes.

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#74

Post by rallison »

ScottWhigham wrote: post #65
Aardwolf wrote: post #27

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…

What you see as a problem, I see as a positive. This is clearly an edge case - it's not the norm by far. The norm is that sellers make darn sure that their product is "as advertised" so that they've set the expectations correctly. This results in higher feedback for the seller. Sure, you have some slime ball sellers there who say, "Give me 5 stars!" but that, again, is not the norm.

And, in the case of this seller, it appears this was not an isolated incident. In their reply to the one star review, they state:

Sorry- no idea there was postage due. This has happened alot from USPS lately.

http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&...

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#75

Post by axusgrad »

Karunamon wrote: post #66
ScottWhigham wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The seller made sure that there would be no winners in this situation when they sent the item with insufficient postage. If that doesn't happen, the rest of this likely does not happen. "Negging someone on eBay for a buck in shipping is a pretty crappy thing to do" That's just not true - that may be your opinion but that's the opinion of a very small number of people. The majority - an overwhelming majority - believe…

>That's just not true Yes it is. I can forgive someone for being ignorant of the way the eBay feedback system works, but when you push that button, you are not just "notifying other perspective buyers of potential problems". It hasn't been that way for years. Not since eBay removed the ability to leave negative feedback for buyers, anyways. If I were the seller in this case, rather than going to court, and negative f…

The buyer is not driving them out of business, Ebay is. Why does Ebay need to react so harshly? They should care more about the hardship they inflict on their sellers, and not blindly measure each piece of negative feedback equally.

Blaming the seller is a bit like blaming someone who calls the cops on a loud party, for bad behavior by the cops.

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#76

Post by dustingetz »

devcpp wrote: post #72
sdfjkl wrote: post #49

I stopped using eBay when they canceled my auction because I had included a link to the PDF manual (on the manufacturer's site) of the phone I was selling. This was around 2006 and I assumed their idiotic policies would quickly see them replaced by a better platform, but for some reason this has never happened.

The power of ebay resides in being able to find any product that comes to mind on auction at virtually any given time. Therefore, no one I know bothers to check the competition (if it even exists) before they bid. The same known problem occurs with Facebook regarding friends. I don't see any solution, this ease of use is more important to most customers than ToS.

this is called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly and is well studied

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#77

Post by Vivtek »

downandout wrote: post #71

The case is clearly without merit. They almost certainly sued her hoping that she doesn't have the resources to respond to it, which would result in a default judgment against her. If she is able to get an attorney, she will wind up being awarded her legal expenses and potentially other damages since the case was pretty clearly filed in bad faith. The choice to include eBay as a defendant in the suit, however, is cle…

From the article, it would appear there is in fact an attorney in the loop - who doesn't appear to know that this is a mistake.

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#78

Post by will_brown »

downandout wrote: post #71

The case is clearly without merit. They almost certainly sued her hoping that she doesn't have the resources to respond to it, which would result in a default judgment against her. If she is able to get an attorney, she will wind up being awarded her legal expenses and potentially other damages since the case was pretty clearly filed in bad faith. The choice to include eBay as a defendant in the suit, however, is cle…

Agreed, unless eBay's terms of service includes a grace period for sellers to cure these kinds of breaches of the sale terms. Otherwise it does not bode well that the plaintiff's attorney admitted the review was truthful(as truth is a defense to defamation/libel claims). I tend to agree Defendant should not only win but recover her attorney's fees and costs for Plaintiff's "failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted".

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#79

Post by illuminate »

cykod wrote: post #68
Karunamon wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's just not true Yes it is. I can forgive someone for being ignorant of the way the eBay feedback system works, but when you push that button, you are not just "notifying other perspective buyers of potential problems". It hasn't been that way for years. Not since eBay removed the ability to leave negative feedback for buyers, anyways. If I were the seller in this case, rather than going to court, and negative f…

If instead of showing up at my door I got a note that said you need to come down to the post office during business hours and pick up your package and bring an extra $1.44, I'd actually be kinda put out. This was a mistake by the shipper for mis-weighing the package (as they note in the feedback "This has happened alot from USPS lately." - maybe they need to get themselves a new scale) it should get negative feedback…

Right. This was an intentional attempt to cheat the system that the seller fails at, repeatedly. They attempted to screw the USPS and the customer got the bad end of their incompetence.

Re: Buyer sued for posting factual negative review on eBay

#80

Post by hluska »

In the last twelve months, Med_Express_Sales has received two pieces of negative feedback. The negative feedback in question read:

"Order arrived with postage due with no communication from seller beforehand."

To which Med_Express replied:

"Sorry- no idea there was postage due. This has happened alot from USPS lately."

In August 2012, another user posted the following negative review:

"Items were listed as new and they were used, they worked good but used"

In this case, Med_Express replied:

"They were new, but you can return them. We'll even pay return shipping!"

Looking at this wholly from a customer service perspective, I think that the two replies are dramatically different. In the first case, their reply passed responsibility over to USPS and made no mention of any compensation. In the second case, the reply specifically disputed the buyer's allegation, but also promised to make things right.

I think that most buyers are sophisticated enough to weigh the negative feedback with the seller's response. And, in this case, I think that Med_Express_Sales damaged their own brand with a less than satisfactory response.

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