Apparently, according to the popup that I just encountered before leaving feedback for my latest eBay purchase, sellers can now no longer leave negative feedback for buyers. What a great idea!

That's not sarcasm -- I'm being dead serious. Ever since one of my first eBay experiences years ago in which I left neutral feedback for a seller and the seller returned the favor even though I paid for the auction immediately -- as I always do -- I've felt held hostage by sellers with respect to the eBay feedback system. (In fairness, I left neutral feedback for something that really wasn't the seller's fault and probably should have contacted the seller first, so I learned something there. But if I were a seller and a customer had a problem I would respond to the customer via e-mail and see about getting the issue worked out -- and the feedback amended with a satisfactory comment from the customer -- rather than simply issuing revenge feedback.) Sellers would even emphasize their feedback leverage in the shipping notification e-mails: "Once your order arrives in satisfactory condition, please leave feedback for me. I will do the same for you." The unspoken implication? And if you don't leave positive feedback for me, I'll say something nasty and tarnish your record in kind.

There are plenty of sellers I've left positive feedback who probably should have received neutral ratings at best. For example, I once ordered from a seller who shoved the flimsy cardboard-boxed item into a small padded envelope. As a result, though the toy itself was fine (what, did you think I was ordering jewelry? 😉 ), the box itself was pretty crushed -- which would have pissed me off to no end if I'd intended to keep the item mint in box. I didn't, so I didn't really feel like complaining, but I'd still have given this seller a neutral rating for the poor packing job if it hadn't been for the hostage feedback thing. As it went, I left positive feedback and marked the shipping charges, in the separate ratings the seller can't see, "very unreasonable."

And then there was the seller I from whom I ordered a lot of loose Batman, TMNT, and other assorted figures. They were noted as being in played-with condition, so I expected that, but I did not expect them to be sticky. That was fucking gross, and I totally would not have bought them if I had known that I would spend hours scrubbing them in the sink and scraping gunk off of them with my fingernails (and even then I wasn't entirely successful, so I still keep most of these figures separate from my others). I desperately wanted to leave this seller negative feedback, and here I didn't feel like it was my responsibility to contact the seller about the problem since the seller should have cleaned the figures first or at least mentioned of their stickiness (yuck) in the auction description. I mean, what could the seller have done to make this right -- send me more dirty sticky toys? Yet, fearing revenge feedback, I decided to leave nothing at all.

Apparently, however, those days are over! Sellers of sticky toys, your days of having 100% feedback ratings are numbered! But also -- hopefully -- this will encourage sellers to be more proactive about pleasing customers. Instead of writing, "Once your order arrives in satisfactory condition, please leave feedback for me. I will do the same for you," in e-mails (which I admit I pasted from the shipping notification of my latest purchase; true to form, the seller left me positive feedback not ten minutes after I gave him/her a positive rating), sellers could explicitly encourage unsatisfied customers to e-mail the seller before leaving neutral or negative feedback. After all, this doesn't always go without saying -- and based on past experiences, buyers may be less likely to trust a seller to care once the payment has been received or wary about the possibility of a satisfactory outcome.

For example, I once ordered a computer peripheral from Newegg.com that didn't work. When I contacted customer service, they instructed me to ship it back for a replacement. I did so, and they did ship me a working replacement, but it cost me nearly $10 to send the thing back -- and since the main reason I had ordered from Newegg in the first place was that the product was $5 cheaper there than other online sites, it was ultimately more expensive for me to buy the thing from Newegg. Not their fault, but it still soured the experience for me. I haven't shopped Newegg since.

Contrast that with my most recent Amazon Marketplace purchase, where one of the figures I bought broke right out of the package. Given the discount price of the items, I might otherwise have just shrugged it off, glued the broken piece on, and just had a figure with one non-working joint -- which I likely would have done if the seller had asked me to ship it back for a replacement, since the shipping cost here would have been worth more to me than the missing joint. (The shipping would also have been roughly 1/3 of the cost of a small dremel tool that I could probably use to fix the figure myself, not to mention fix other toys and make various figure modifications and even sand Bacardi's nails.) But since I really did and do want this figure in proper working order, I decided to e-mail the seller to see about getting a replacement -- and lo and behold, he responded in less than an hour and apparently shipped me a replacement the very next day without asking me to send the broken figure back. Assuming that it actually arrives (and isn't damaged in some really obvious way that's clearly visible through the windowed box), this guy will have made a repeat customer of me. Heck, I'm already scouring his online store looking for additional figures I can buy with my stimulus money -- figures I don't even want that badly and likely wouldn't buy otherwise -- just so I can give him more of my business as a token of my appreciation. (It's too bad he doesn't have DC Universe Classics Wave 3 available for preorder!) And of course I'll be sure to plug and link to the retailer both here and on Scary-Crayon.

Anyway, I'll stop this here before I start going on about my past experiences in retail or describing in detail the time I bought two meals from a Chinese food shop in a mall food court because of how impressed I was with their apparent emphasis on presenting potential customers with fresh and piping hot free samples, but yeah -- I do appreciate good business practices and attempts to improve the customer's experience. So thanks a bunch, eBay and as yet unnamed Amazon Marketplace seller. I look forward to doing business with you again!