False positive feedbacks
Recently Hipstamp has decided that, if a buyer doesn't leave positive feedback, a machine-generated positive feedback will appear after 45 days. As a buyer I'd prefer seeing what other buyers have to say rather than a machine. I've communicated to Hipstamp that I'd like this dishonest practice to stop. If you feel the same way, please tell Hipstamp to stop this practice. Regards, Peter Knee (Veterans Stamps)
Comments
So before this some 70% of my buyers could not be bothered to leave me any feedback despite no issues and me providing them with my best possible service at all times.
I'm for it.
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/stampsfirst-day-covers-and-curios
Prohibited Buyer and General Activities. ".... Post content which is false, misleading, inaccurate... so until such time as one can see a feedback number split by customer feedback and computer generated feedback ( Good idea Robert) and irrespective of the fact Hipstamp can change other terms and condition without due regard for its sellers and buyers - this is and will be a matter that needs addressing. My feedback has gone up rather a lot. ....am I happy with that? No.. because it misrepresents my customers feedback - I would go as far as to say it misrepresents my credibility - and unless someone reads all the feedback they will not appreciate my true customer views ... which, if we are going to have a feedback system should be what it is about.
Because of my F/B score they may not regard me as an experienced seller (which I am) and think twice about placing a high value order with me?
Probably there is a stage - 1000's of feedback - when this is no longer such an issue.I would not mind if this feedback was "marked" as computer generated as it would still show the sellers level of activity on the site.
Hi Peter,
Thank you for your email.
I see that you have recently written to us regarding this matter and I believe a colleague of mine has explained why this automatic feedback feature is being implemented. That being said, we would like to advise that at this time we are unable to remove any automatic positive feedback left in your account as these are automatically generated.
We truly appreciate you sharing your thoughts on this, however, there is nothing further to do at the moment, and your complaint has been lodged with the Product Team.
Your understanding and patience are greatly appreciated.
Best Regards,
Joanne Jumadiao
Support | Hip eCommerce
On Mon, Nov 1 at 12:13 PM , Peter Knee wrote:
From: Peter Knee
Subject: false positive feedback
Message Body:
Since I've received machine generated positive feedbacks, my auction activity has lost about 75% of normal activity and bids. These machine generated positives are dishonest. I would like the practice stopped and the false positives
removed from my feedback. I am not the only dealer who feels this way. It would be a relatively simple fix on your part and would keep me involved in Hipstamp.
Regards,
Peter Knee
Following this exchange I responded:
Hi Joanne,
Thank you for responding. As I am suffering negative effects from your decision, I will remove myself from Hipstamp if this cannot be resolved. I will also communicate my actions to other dealers.
Regards,
Peter Knee
If any of you feel the same way, please communicate with e-Commerce. I believe that, with other requests to remove false positives, they may do so.
While two positives might not be too misleading, I'm holding two orders for a buyer in Australia waiting for mail service to be restored. This could possibly result in 331 unearned positive feedbacks before the stamps are even mailed.
As it now stands, a new seller could possibly abuse the system, not mail any stamps and still end up with net positive feedback. That totally defeats the purpose of the feedback system.
One might be quick to say, they will be disclosed as computer generated, therefore no harm; however does everyone look at the detail of a seller with a rating of several hundred? The old system was much more reliable and trustworthy. This new one could be manipulated; therefore it becomes worthless. I guess my vote is now no. Whoops, wrong thread.
I have customers who for some reasons don't want to spend the time to fill their feedback or simply cannot find how and where to fill it even after I have sent them a note asking if everything was OK and if order received in due time. Actually some have responded that everything was fine and others don't respond but keep buying. One made 75 orders for 110 items and another 29 orders for 803 items. I think after 45 days or if you prefer 60 days an automatic Positive easily recognized as such is welcome.
I won't repeat what I have said before but I will add this table - before anyone jumps down my throat as I know so many of you are want to do I accept this is not statistically valid to 2 standard deviations - but for 7 well known stores it shows what has been happening.
In summary 4 of 7 stores have seen their overall positive feedback rating increase because of auto feedback. This is false data as it does not represent customer sentiment.
On average and by feedback count - not average of averages- the stores have seen a 91% increase in feedback. If that is not misleading / misrepresenting the real customer view to other potential customers I don't know what is.
Finally - 2 points - 1) I was proud of our customer feedback - the comments we got, the recognition of the service we provided. I cannot say that any more because we have about 14,000 positive feedbacks that are not from customers. We can no longer say ..... please read our customer feedback to learn about us.
and 2) we just had one customer who apologised for taking a while to get around to studying the stamps in the order we sent -- all good reason for that -- and they were sorry they could not leave the nice feedback they wanted to, to show appreciation.
Now is this an accurate feedback when Hipstamp removes buyers feedback for something like this? (I know I had this happen on Hippostcard.) One of the threads on there was one of the sellers that lists on both Hipstamp and Hippostcard was complaining about a buyer that left negative feedback about their shipping cost of $3 to ship a single postcard. I had the same buyer who left me a neutral for shipping it in a CD mailer at $2. (I did not ask Hip to remove it. If a buyer wants to do that it's his right and it's his opinion. Other buyers could determine for themselves if the buyer was being reasonable or not.) This other seller went and asked for feedback removal and Hip decided to remove ALL that buyers neutral and
negative comments from all of the sellers whether they asked for it or not. Doesn't that skew the feedback in the favor of
the seller and actually removes the buyers actual sentiments?
Once the buyers comments have been removed in a case like that, hasn't the only tool left for a seller to know if they are dealing with a difficult buyer has been removed? How that is that accurate in the first place?
One other thing on Hipstamp you have far too many sellers that have near perfect feedback for the amount of items they have sold. Outside of Hipstamp you will NEVER see a seller that has sold over 300,000 items and yet does not have a single negative. That is not something that happens outside of Hipstamp. And on top of that there are MULTIPLE sellers that have sold well 100,000 items and don't have a single negative. That means all those sellers are near perfect and also they ended up with the most reasonable buyers that you can ever imagine that were willing to work with them to correct any problems, and on top of that they never had any buyers that left feedback before contacting them, never had an unreasonable buyer that was difficult to work with or a buyer that just plain goofed and left the wrong feedback and wasn't removed. Even one with that type of feedback is tough enough to believe but when you have multiple sellers with the same type of feedback with that amount of items being sold is not reality.
And on the last point is that some of the sellers feedback has already been manipulated to begin with so it's not accurate in the first place. Go back and read about the buyers feedback. It was about the buyer LEFT for the seller. It had NOTHING
to do with the seller leaving feedback for the buyer. You have kept bringing up that this system of how Hipstamp is leaving
the feedback no longer represents the buyers sentiments on how it went, when my point is that it hasn't really done so in
long time when Hipstamp has removed the buyers feedback in the first place on some fairly minor issues.
Add in the soft positives left by some buyers how credible is the feedback in the first place depending on what you are expecting from it? There are already flaws within the system to question it depending on what you are looking at it for.
Most my order's have been consistent with multiple purchases perhaps a automated feedback reminder instead of automated feedback 1st but at last resort instead!
My negative feedback relates to buying mishaps bidding on to many at once and getting lucky n winning to many at once cut back buying due to holidays and selling now instead got plenty of inventory to offload!
I find the vast majority (not ALL, mind you) of the negative comments to be useless, as so many buyers have hair-trigger fingers, and make the most specious complaints, and you don't get the full story anyway.
One time, a customer left a posiitive-leaning comment (for an issue over which I had no control, but which got resolved amicably), but still left me a negative. I asked him, "Why the negative?" He said, I idn't know a negative meant so much to you.
Say what?
Usually domestic orders are delivered well within 10 days and international ones in 30 days.
If there is no issue with the order then the buyer could be regarded as lazy or forgetful for not bothering leaving feedback. If there is some issue with the order than you can bet your bottom dollar there will be some interaction between the buyer and seller within this time period which will result in some degree of feedback being left - be that positive, neutral or negative..
If zero feedback is left (and after this period there appear to be no issues/problems and the buyer has not bothered or just forgotten to leave F/B) then I don't see any problem with Hipstamp stepping in and leaving feedback as long as it is marked as "automatically generated"...........................What's all the fuss about?????
With all due respect Tania, I think we can agree to disagree on this topic (with is the aforementioned "dead horse"). The fuss, as you call it, is that the policy is simply unnecessary, unrequested, misrepresentative of "true feedback", and generally unwanted. It is not an issue at all of the 45 day policy. Nobody needed it, no one asked for it, the auto positive feedback is in no way real, and, based on my informal poll thread and other communications is either unwanted or folks are indifferent to it (which means they don't care one way or the other).
There have been forces behind the scenes working to, at minimum, get an explanation from HipECommerce folks on their thought process and justification for going forward with this policy unilaterally. To no avail of course so it may end up being the "dead horse" in the end after all. It was even proposed to them that each store have the capability of opting out of the auto feedback and was told that wasn't going to happen either.
So....THAT is what the "fuss" is all about and may explain why the horse, no matter how much it gets beaten, is still dead.
Good luck to you and your store and have a great evening and I really hope I used my commas properly!
Greg