Why can't eBay sellers leave negative feedback?

Recent feedback on a competitor of mine I was researching on eBay UK (which seems to have now raised me 20 national and international competitors in 3 years)..No lie:
Negative- 'As described'

FML What were they expecting?

As a sellerIm sick of buyers casing me stress,often leaving me in tears due to lies ,costing me time and money,i actually ended up overdrawn after one signed for parcel was signed for with a clear printed name of the person that bought it.as i sold it to use the money i spent it almost instantly.after weeks they claimed it hadnt arrived despite being signed for 2 days after postage and despite proving this to ebay i had to refund the full amount AND they kept the expensive item,as id spent the money i didnt have i was then in debt leaving me paying debt fees to my bank.ive had many similar issues and its got worse since negative feedback was removed for buyers.i even got suspended for a week for saying the buyer had scammed me,ebay saying it was defemation of character and un proven etc.
on the other hand i bought a movie on play.com and it was different to the photo,same movie,just a different front cover and not the one id spent ages looking for.after refusal to refund i contacted play.com with a generic response of resolve it with the seller,after they threatened to report me for harrasment i in all fairness did get a bit aggressive in my messages but id been polite for the 2+ weeks until then.this resulted in not only mine but my entire familys play.com accounts being shut down,with all our reward points and gift vouchers taken off me and my entire family which totalled in the hundreds as we were all regular customers.play.com denied the seller was wrong and says pictures may vary which just isnt right,they even had the nerve to say if id told them right away they could have helped,despite being told they couldnt help originally.
Ive now tried my best to stop as many friends and none immediate family using them as after 10+ years of being a number 1 customer,1 swear word at a seller. They refused to deal with and im left hundreds out of pocket,worst part was i went on amazon during all this and got the correct version for almost half the price,just adding insult to injury.

If I were running eBay I would automatically class any buyer who has evidentially refused to communicate with a seller, prior to leaving neutral or negative feedback for them and/or starting a dispute in the Resolution Centre as the person at fault and not agree a refund. I would also remove any feedback they had left for the seller. Well intentioned buyers, who received items that are really not delivered or are really misdescribed do their best to iron out problems with the seller first and give any misunderstandings over descriptions or delivery problems a suitable time frame to be remedied with no harm to each side. Scammers look for holes in the process and exploit them and try to hide behind a wall of silence. For these people their accounts should be blocked.

Have you noticed that now the seller's address is given to the buyer? If I buy something, then obviously I need to supply my address for it to be posted to me. I'm not sure I want to give my address when I'm just clearing out a bit of clutter. I'm not a business but I seem to have all the responsibility of one. Have stopped selling on eBay now for these reasons. It was barely worth it anyway, after all the fees and signed for parcels that the buyer claimed were 'lost in the post'. Hmmmm.

The bigger problem is buyers not leaving honest feedback at any time. I see companies selling counterfeit items, with upwards of 20,000 feedback. All because EBay doesn't care whether the items are legal or not, because they get a profit from every sale. When people buy these counterfeit items, they still leave positive feedback... which makes you think that the buyers are as bad as the crooks selling fake goods on there.

I sell and buy occasionally on EBay, and to be quite honest, the whole feedback system is worthless. If a buyer won't pay, threaten them with going to the small claims court. Costs you about £35, they'll get charged with the costs, and they'll get a county court judgement against them too. Then again, if you're not putting buyer restrictions on your items, then you've only got yourself to blame.

Boblet........I cannot help noticing that in your posts you very frequently reference the human posterior which you render as "@rses". I wonder what sigmund freud would have hypothesised as to your fixation with "@rses"?

P07 I sell a lot of collectables on ebay since moving home required me to downsize. I am inclined to agree with you about the early days, smart @rses that I know took great pleasure in bragging about how easy it was to sell mutton dressed as lamb.

I'll tell you why sellers can't leave negative feedback against buyers--it is because for so long sellers abused the process to rip off ebay buyers. I have never sold anything on ebay and I don't intend to. But I have been buying on ebay pretty much since it was founded. Before the new policy, if you, as a buyer, complained about a purchase the seller invariably would start hammering your reputation in order to get you to go away. This happened to me on numerous occasions even for something as simple as asking if I could return the item to get the color of the item that I ordered instead of the incorrect one they sent me. These practices had gone on for years and finally ebay did something about it--it may not be the perfect solution but just imagine how widespread the problem was to get ebay to move on something an change its policy. If you are concerned about getting ripped off selling something on ebay don't sell or follow the rules closely. Like I said ebay's solution to the problem may not have been perfect, but it was the rampart abuses by the sellers that brought this policy change on themselves so they have nothing to complain about.

That is why things seem so stilted to the buyers.

Great post TB I will in future take a note of those who let me down & pulish their names like you have

I have been a seller and buyer on ebay for a few years and recently i have quite few bad buyers basic lying about the products there received. one buyer claimed the boots i sold were not black but purple, and wanted a refund and did not want to send back the boots, i refused. and threaten me with opening up a dispute, basically i am fed up with these buyers trying to get something for nothing. ebay need to do something about these type of buyers. I am thinking of stop selling on ebay as i am fed up with their fees and now their want a refund back up payment method, so their can take money to pay these cheating buyers

YOU CAN PUT A MESSAGE on the negative feedback you received, you can also inform others of a bad buyer by giving positive feedback with details of how you were wronged, I check good feedback because many sellers do leave negative messages in the positive feedback,,,, EBay has got too greedy,

Once I buy off ebay I have to pay upfront so really the seller should leave positive feedback once payment is received.What tends to happen is the seller states they only leave feedback after the buyer leaves theirs.I note that there is a marked increase in the number of sellers who dont bother to keep their word.Often you see something for sale stating object for sale in good nic followed by a 10,000 word discourse on my selling policies.As a buyer you should always have a look at the sellers feedback before bidding on an item.Ebay provides a lot of useful research tools for users under the help tab and if more people read them first there would be a lot less problems.

The same issue still exists. I am a casual seller, 10 yrs on ebay and 100% positive.
This year for some reason I have been targetted by brain dead idiots who bid on anything I list to ridiculous amounts and then don't reply to any communications. They always do it with a new ID or what appears to be hijacked or deliberately created accounts where they buy or sell a couple of things then leave it dormant.

Its a total waste of my time and even safeguards like blocking bidders with no credit card registered, blocking non paypal account holders etc does not work either.

Frankly if I can't leave bad feedback when I have a bad experience as a seller then I don't want to use Ebay any more - simple as that.

It'll be a tough decision but the system of trust is now one sided and as such has destroyed the trust I had in the system. Trust in any relationship cannot be one sided.

I'll keep my account open in case they have the sense to change this policy but wont be feeding their coffers any longer.

I must admit I find it amazing that sellers can't get unfair or defamatory feedback removed. I've just received my first negative remark just for pulling the auction before the bidding ended - for good reason. E-bay emailed me and claimed I had breached trademark laws on a couple of items. This was rubbish. So I pulled my listings and contacted one seller who'd just won a bid before I had a chance to pull that item one too. I felt that if I allowed this sale to go ahead, she got and he shoes and decided she didn't like them, they didn't fit her or damaged them herself, then complained to e-bay that they weren't as described or made some other plausible excuse up E-bay would believe her, after their trademark breach mail to me, (not on this item, but others in the same listing) and I'd have to refund her in full and have unsaleable shoes back. I contacted her and explained all this to her, and gave her first refusal on a re-listing and I sent her the money back she'd paid me for the shoes via PayPal.. She doesn't even bother replying to two e-mails, and then feedbacks to me (somehow backdating the feedback two weeks to 1st September and it wasn't even there yesterday) claiming I never paid her when I did. E-bay now won't remove that remark at all. All I can do is comment underneath it. Now I've threatened her with legal action if she has cashed the Postal Order before claiming I hadn't paid her. Should be easy enough to find out. I can't believe e-bay doesn't incorporate this as breach of feedback policy. It's outrageous.

I stopped selling or buying on ebay, far too many fraudsters out there and ebay does nothing to protect us. My youngest daughter saved her pocket money for a ds game which we found on ebay. The game was cheaper than the shop but only by a £2.00 so nothing to alert us to the fact it was too cheap to be true. The game arrived and when she tried to play it, it would not play. I compared the games to other ds games and noticed they were slightly different, upon close up inspection, I noticed the sleeve and booklet were not of the same quality paper as an original game. Ebay didn't want to know, their attitude is to get in contact with the seller which I did, luckily for us he gave me a full refund but only after threatening him with legal action for fraud etc. There was nothing in his feedback to say he was selling fake goods - well there is now!