I'm chewing on everyone's responses (thanks), but I have to disagree. No
feedback gives absolutely no information to others. It might be of some
consequence when a seller has 5 feedbacks and is building reputation, but
none when they have thousands. Faint praise has no effect once it has
slipped off the front page - who has time to analyse thousands of feedbacks
for subtle detail? Or irony? :-) It communicates nothing at all for the many
people who only have time to look at the overall numbers.
You can't do complete research into every seller (i.e. look at all feedbacks
and look at all the items still viewable) and you have to tailor the effort
to the cost of the item. What I do for a high-value item, which is probably
more thorough that most, is:
- look at the overall numbers
- look at the first page and look into any feedbacks that look odd
- scan down to any neutrals and negatives to see what kind of
problems have happened and how the seller responded
- if it looks as if the item description would be relevant to a problem
then look at it
- if they have feedback from someone I know, talk to them
The lower the value, the less I do of this.
Bottom line: If you want meaningful information about a seller then everyone
has to provide it.
Andrew
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 07:21:05 +1100
> From: andrew fildes <afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: [lens] [OM] Olympus America and feedback
>
>> Does (the guy) doing the Olympus auctions really expect NEVER to get any
>> negative feedback ?
>> ----------------------------------------------------
>> John Hermanson www.zuiko.com
>
> Probably not, but he reserves the right not to sell to people he doesn't like.
> That said, the best neutral feedback is no feedback.
> AndrewF
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