Comments on: Inflating Your Ebay Rating

By: Finance Findings For Thursday, June 21, 2007 | Bad Credit Loans

Finance Findings For Thursday, June 21, 2007 | Bad Credit Loans — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 08:56:08 +0000

[...] Inflating Your Ebay Rating [Lazy Man and Money] [...]

By: Lazy Man

Lazy Man — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 16:22:29 +0000

I think penalized is the wrong word there. I just don’t think they should count as much. It seems to me that the shipping is one of the bigger issues with Ebay. Let’s say that someone has 2000 positive reviews from an eBook (or something similar). Would you make a $5000 purchase from them? What about if the same person has 2000 positive reviews of $5000 items? The first one doesn’t have the shot, the second one gives me some confidence.

By: mbhunter

mbhunter — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 07:37:51 +0000

If the 2,000 folks were happy with their e-books and the way that the seller treated them, why shouldn’t the seller’s feedback rating reflect that? Just because the seller doesn’t have to ship the item, should he be penalized for that?

By: At The Bottom

At The Bottom — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 13:52:48 +0000

I guess I look at the ranking a different way. Said person sold 2000 copies of his e-book, delivered the e-book, and the buyer was happy. The seller should get a positive rating for that. He did everything he promised in the eBay listing.

I can see your point about inflating the rating, but I would look at it more as shipped items vs. non-shipped items. If I buy a coupon code for a dell computer, it’s the same thing. The seller just emails me the code, it works, I am happy, I leave positive feedback. But the seller really didn’t have to do much. If it was a shipped item, the seller has a lot more work to do, and you have to rely on the mail service to actually deliver the item.

By: Jongasm

Jongasm — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 04:05:57 +0000

I had someone on eBay try to screw me out of a phone, and in addition to this, he left me my only negative feedback out of 50 transactions! eBay will do nothing. :-\

By: J2R

J2R — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 07:16:58 +0000

@SavingDiva
doh.. forgot about the fees… I generally don’t sell stuff on ebay. I’m more of a Craigslist kind of guy

By: Lazy Man

Lazy Man — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:37:57 +0000

hejustlaughs: I didn’t mean to imply that you were doing it for anything negative and I’m sorry if I did. I just thought it was a very interesting loopholes. I love loopholes personally. When you are Lazy like me, they really make things easier :-).

By: SavingDiva

SavingDiva — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:20:14 +0000

I’ve never thought about this before. I have over 100 positive comments, so I don’t really worry about selling things on eBay.

J2R, the fake transaction for a car would probably kick up quite a few dollars in final value fees (even if you started the bidding at $.01).

By: hejustlaughs

hejustlaughs — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:17:31 +0000

I only inflated my rating because I saw that other sellers selling similar products were garnering more bids for their items. The only difference between them and me was the feedback count.

Inflating your feedback is only meant to impress the uneducated ebay bidders who only look at your rating count to determine if you’re a worthy seller.

I’m still the honest and fast seller I was when I was at 40 positive feedbacks. Nothing material has changed and I still maintain 100% positive feedback going forward, however there are dishonest sellers out there that inflate their feedbacks to the thousands and then then cheat buyers out of their money.

By: Ebay Tips

Ebay Tips — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:00:45 +0000

Interesting thought.
I normally randomly go through the ratings a while into them. It would be nice if they added a little more information to the rating system though. That would make it easier to check out a seller.

By: J2R

J2R — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:58:03 +0000

Never thought of this…

I agree this is a hole in their grading system.
However, simply listing the average transaction value might not be the solution.

If I’m shady enough to think about selling 1000 eBooks for a penny, I could easily setup a fake transaction for a car which a friend of mine could “buy” and report a successful transaction.

Can’t think of a good solution for their ranking system, so I’ll just keep bitching at other’s suggestions and not contribute with anything :)

By: Lazy Man

Lazy Man — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:06:50 +0000

broknowrchlatr: Someone could sell 1000 eBooks and then selling a page full of regular items. If you just look at that page, it looks pretty solid.

If it’s a popular e-book, I think 1000 could buy it, not by wasting their time, but because they are interested. If it’s what it’s advertised, it should garner all positive ratings.

By: Smith

Smith — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 15:57:36 +0000

I don’t think you are inflating the problem – ebays policies are seriously weighted in favor of the seller, and this is one way that sellers can quickly increase their ratings. There have been a number of articles on MSN reflecting the use of fraud and hijacked accounts on ebay – I think that inflated ratings are just the tip of the iceberg. Besides the two links below, I had seen an article (i thought it was on the redtape chronicles) highlighting the use of scripts to identify fraudulent accounts (it didn’t say how many false positives it got). But it also highlighted the fact that ebay does little to nothing to keep frauds who get bumped off from just opening a new ebay account.

http://redtape.msnbc.com/2007/03/how_far_has_vla.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3078736/

By: broknowrchlatr

broknowrchlatr — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 15:55:42 +0000

I had never thought about this before.

When I buy stuff on ebay, I always review the first page of comments from people. I also look at the item tehy purchased. So, I’m covered fromt his type of thing and I really haven’t every seen soemone with any EBooks sold.

The thing is, you only get a point for unique buyers. So to inflate it by 1000 points, you have to have 1000 unique people waste their time buying it and adding a comment. Plus, I really only buy from people that have 99% positive and have a score in the tens of thousands.

By: Swanny

Swanny — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 15:44:37 +0000

[Editor's note: The following URL points to articles more than 2 years old. It could be self-promotion, but I'm giving the benefit of the doubt and publishing it anyway.]

I found some additional articles on ebay marketing that you might find useful.
http://www.marketplacesnapshot.com/archives/ebay_research/