A Block Sellers List – 1/5 Buyer Features eBay Is Missing in 2016
Howdy,
In this mini-series we’ll be learning what the top 5 features that buyers are missing on eBay are.
As you might already know I’m used to dealing with the other side of the table, the seller’s side of the table for multi-channel businesses. However, over the past 2 months or so I’ve really got back into hobby electronics and eBay being eBay, it’s a great choice to grab a whole variety of goodies.
The more I’ve refreshed myself with the buying side of eBay (+170 transactions in less than 2 months), the more I’ve realised there are several key features missing from eBay.
In this mini-series we’ll be looking into what they are and of course, any comments or suggestions are welcomed in the comments section at the bottom of this page.
Missing Buyer Feature #1
Today we’ll be looking at missing feature #1 and this is the most controversial of them all.
I know that this suggestion won’t go down well with the seller’s side of the table, but on the buyer’s side, it makes complete sense.
Why?
Because of it’s nature and it needs to be put into context with a couple of examples, first to appreciate why it would be useful to buyers.
A Block Seller List
That’s right I want to block you (if you don’t perform).
Just as sellers have a block bidders list where we can elect to block specific buyers from purchasing their products, I’d like to see a block sellers list as well.
Unfortunately, I’ve had a couple of bad experiences with at least 3 different eBay sellers and there is no ability to block their listings from my searches on eBay.
Example #1 – Out of stock & poor customer support
One seller took 2 days to tell me that they didn’t have the product in stock, then took an additional day to make a refund for the order.
I don’t want to make the mistake of ordering from them again. Stock control is obviously an issue for them and the time it took to respond to my messages was far too long.
Example #2 – Long delivery & turned up faulty
I knew I ordering from China was going to take a while, normally it only takes 12-14 days for most things to reach me here in the UK. One order took over a month and the servo control board turned out to be faulty.
Do I want to wait another month next time and risk it being faulty from the same seller? Probably not.
Example #3 – Never actually shipped the order
And in another example, I had to chase an order of ball bearings to find out when it was going to arrive after waiting a couple of days for delivery, turned out even though I had paid they’d not actually shipped it. Most annoying.
Do I want to order from them again if they won’t ship my order? Nope.
Blocking Sellers
The 3 businesses above, I do not want anything to do with them again, hence the requirement of a block sellers list.
Below is a comment I left for a seller on eBay.
Personally I feel really uncomfortable with leaving bad feedback for a seller because I know what impact neutral & negative ratings have on my own buying decisions on eBay.
So my reasoning behind the suggestion of a block sellers list is two fold.
Firstly so I can avoid that business in the future and secondly because I don’t want to be put in the position of even having to consider leaving bad feedback for a business owner.
Right now I have to manually filter them out when searching for products which slows me down (even more!) when product hunting on eBay.
Slowing a customer down = Bad
The thing is that “overall” an eBay business may be meeting eBay’s requirements to continue to sell and hey even scoring top rated seller status on listings, but once the trust has gone from a specific buyer, just like me & you would do, they don’t want to order from them ever again.
By implementing a block sellers list, this would help speed up the product selection process for a buyer, again an important factor if you consider how many tabs we end up with open when looking at a specific product across a couple of different sellers.
Anything that expedites the product research to purchase process has to be a good thing right?!
So what’s your thoughts on the idea of buyers having a block sellers list?
- Would you have anything to be concerned about if you’re over-delivering every time anyway?
- Would you use it for your buying account on eBay?
Let me know what you think in the comments box below.
As always, to your continued success,
Matt
Part 2 Available!
You can read part 2 of this mini-series where we explore what impact “Default Search Options” would have for buyers on eBay here.
Good one, I agree with the above.
Yes Mark.T – saved search is so overlooked. When used it is a very powerful tool. But I did struggle with it on the ebay app – not sure if that has been fixed.
– you buy an item and automatically the seller gets put on your saved sellers list. Next time you are searching there is an option, which if applicable, says “see results from sellers your dealt with before” ?
and/or a more prominent option when you start a search it says “browse what your saved sellers are offering” and only shows items from previously sellers.
Or do we just need to remember that this is a marketplace at the end of the day and therefore like any market, you take the good with the bad?
Matt – you should be a consultant to ebay two days per month. Would you like that?
I would like to be able to block any seller with no vat number. That way I can cut through all the Chinese sellers holding stock in the UK and evading VAT.
Howdy Julius,
That would be a good filter to add, after all from my [and your] perspective as a buyer you would then know you’re dealing with a more established company (and thus more likely to receive the order more quickly).
Matt
Thats correct. On a personal level I just want to know my money is not going to facilitate fraud.
I appreciate that what you suggest is a system wide method for avoiding certain sellers but I have a less convenient method for getting to the same result.
When searching, you can, under More Refinements, specify sellers by eBay ID that you want to exclude. In addition to a number of highly tuned searched saved as bookmarks, I keep one search which is empty except for these same excluded sellers.
Mark
Howdy Mark,
You’re absolutely right, there is the ability to include or exclude sellers from the left hand filters on a search results page.
But… as you mention, it’s a manual process either each time or via a set of pre-saved links. A block seller list for all search results like we have as a seller on eBay for blocking buyers would be a lot more easier for the likes of me, you & joe public to manage.
Matt