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Forum "censorship" #80046 09/01/99 12:33 AM
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JTimothyA Offline OP
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From the Resource for complaints against problem sellers thread in the Secondary Market forum:
Quote:
I was really perturbed that the post had been closed. I found it interesting. I guess censorship is everywhere.


I think the comment about censorship really misses the mark. From what I read, the author of the initial message in the "Warning about ebay seller" thread modified his own message - this is something any message author is free to do. Otherwise, all the messages posted in that thread are intact. The thread was locked but no one has been prevented from posting messages in other threads or reading the messages in any thread.

The guidelines for use of the Secondary Market forum are laid out in the thread 'A New Forum'. Here's a quick link - I suggest folks take a look: Secondary Market Guidelines In my opinion, participation here is a privilege which all may enjoy as long as they are willing to accept the (very minimal) guidelines.

I think E-mail between individuals is a much more appropriate venue for discussing the demerits of buyers and sellers or other gossip about people. While I believe the intentions of the thread and its first message were meant to be helpful and informative, I don't really want to see these forums come to view buyer/seller feedback (or other ad hominem remarks) as acceptable - regardless of their purpose.

My personal opinion is that it doesn't matter if someone feels they have an obligation to comment negatively about a buyer or seller, its not appropriate to this public community.

1. Different vendors have different practices.

2. Readers are not privy to the 'full story' of any two individual's transactions. Those commented upon may not be here to represent themselves or present a different point of view. We have little to go on regarding the relative veracity of various remarks - best just not to make them.

3. There are existing mechanisms in place (on ebay at least) for people to provide feedback.

4. This forum quite frankly should not be expected to absorb the liability for remarks - either well intentioned or off-handed - about the success or failure of business dealings between you and someone else.

5. Caveat Emptor

6. Do your homework - there are plenty of messages on this board about precautions to adopt when transacting for lighthouse models, whether on-line or otherwise.

We can rant and rave all we want about GLOWS, the Statue of Liberty, what's hot and what's not, etc. etc. - but please, let's not rant and rave about other people.

Rgds,
__
/im
[This message has been edited by JTimothyA (edited 08-31-99).]

Re: Forum "censorship" #80047 09/01/99 03:28 AM
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JTimothyA,

Ninety-seven percent of the time you and Michael and I are on opposing ends of things. But this time I have to agree with you whole-heartedly and I think you stated your case quite well.

Since reading the thread I have been really quite concerned. You see I am a seller and buyer on eBay. I got seriously scammed and have turned in a formal Fraud Report with eBay on a seller (along with a number of other's who were scammed). We have also filed complaints with the Post Office and the National Fraud group (can't remember their actual name). The unfortunate thing is that this seller is still scamming under a different name and they have locked their feedback so that it can't be viewed. This seller had to add insult to injury by leaving us our first ever negative.

I have not been able to get any response out of eBay on our Fraud charges. Time will tell as to whether anything will be done by eBay. The 30-days for the processing of the formal Fraud complaint will be up on 9/11. But the feedback process is still a decent resource.

This fortunately is the only negative experience I have had on eBay until the week that my father passed away.

When we went from Pennsylvania to Ohio to take care of my father's funeral and affairs, we made arrangements with our ISP to send emails to and receive emails from our customers remotely from my brothers computer. Unfortunately, the system has not evidentally been fine tuned and we did not get a few emails and many of our's did not get out to our customers. We did not realize this until we returned home 7 days later. We also set up our telephone to answer it remotely. It is a new phone and we didn't do it right, so it didn't work for us and we were in such a hurry to get to Ohio, we forgot to give our neighbors the keys to get in and fix it for us.

Well, we got home and two of our customers had gone beseark. We had two phone messages and numerous emails calling us everything but legit. We called them immediately and got nothing more than a response of "Well things happen." from one and "you should have made better arrangements" from the other. One left negative feedback for us, but checked the positive box. So we decided just to leave it alone.

So, let me try to draw my bottom line. My concern is . . . . Yes, there are sellers out there that are not to be trusted. But these two folks that are so upset with us could ruin our good reputation (one that we have worked very, very hard to maintain) if they were to post their thoughts on a forum such as this. And I don't think it matters that we have bent over backwards to rememdy things. They feel they are right. They saw our lack of response as our refusing to sell to them. It does not matter to them that we thought we had covered all our contingencies.

Let the feedback system on eBay work for you. It is amazing to me how many people I see that are still bidding on the auctions of our scammer with a closed feedback and showing 7 negatives.

My brother learned his lesson the hard way. He bid on an auction where the seller had 78 negatives and he got burnt, but he did not take the time to check the feedback rating. He does now. And it seems to me if a person has to lock you out from their feedback, that at least puts up a red flag for me and you can still see how many positives, neutrals and negatives they have. Caveat Emptor is right. Use the system and if you get burned, try your best to resolve it within a reasonable time, then DO post a negative if it is unresolved. Ebay is the place to do this, not on the Forum.

I genuinely believe that all of you who posted under this thread mean well, but please be very careful. Believe me, I'd like to stop the scammer that burned me, but please do it in the appropriate place, where they can respond and hopefully clean up their act or be stopped.

What if I was selling Fontanini to these two people who got so upset with me and they posted something about me on the Fontanini Forum. I might never know and my business that I have worked so hard to maintain, could be seriously damaged.

Karen



[This message has been edited by Michael and Karen Power (edited 09-01-99).]

Re: Forum "censorship" #80048 09/01/99 03:04 PM
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orv Offline
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I guess it does pay to think before you speak or act. (Something I've been working on all my life) My first reaction was to disagree with Tim's statements. After considering the logic and reading Karen and Michael's post I see the wisdom of it. It is very important to remember the world is full of scammers and ebay is a perfect vehicle for them.


ORV
Re: Forum "censorship" #80049 09/01/99 04:37 PM
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Joanne Offline
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I have no problem in respecting the guidelines of this forum. I was upset by the tone in which the thread was closed. I took it personally as if my opinions didn't matter and that what I am interested in doesn't count. I thought it could have been put in a nicer way and I feel as if I was being scolded. Frankly, I was so hurt that I thought of just dropping the forum, but I get such enjoyment from it, that I'd be cutting my nose to spite my face.

So now I'm going to heed my own advice - if you don't like the thread don't read it. So, I've posted my last note on this topic and I'm on to bigger and better things.

Joanne

[This message has been edited by Joanne (edited 09-01-99).]

[This message has been edited by Joanne (edited 09-01-99).]

Re: Forum "censorship" #80050 09/01/99 07:34 PM
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Good for you Joanne. I never got the sense that it was directed at you or anyone else specifically. I thought it just addressed good practices for the fora.

Re: Forum "censorship" #80051 09/02/99 08:53 AM
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Bob M Offline
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I was once told that posting a negative feedback on eBay will more than likely bring a negative feedback in return. Those "non-positive verbal gymnastics" will exist for a long time and reflect negatively on both people involved.

Fortunately, I've only dealt with nice reliable people. As "Dirty Harry" stated, "Do you feel lucky?"

Bob


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