egoBay

Regular readers of this column will be aware that I am a big fan of eBay. There's nothing quite like it for buying obscure junk, and for selling it again. And so it is that with my grand tidy-up effort still ongoing, part of what makes me feel as if I'm doing something is getting rid of things by selling them to other people.

 

An essential part of eBay is feedback - it's how buyers and sellers know who is trustworthy and a good egg, and who is an out-and-out shyster. Whenever you buy or sell, it's the done thing to leave 'feedback' for the person who you buyed from or selled to. And they do the same for you. Most of the time, this 'feedback' is a mutual kissfest, since it is only ever possible to leave "positive", "neutral" or "negative" feedback, and few people really want to leave anything other than positive feedback in case the person becomes upset and leaves a neutral or negative for them in return.

 

So it is with my feedback that I have maintained a clean sheet of over 850 happy buyers/sellers, and not one negative to my name. I think this is rather good, and it is of course very pleasing to my ego.

 

Problem is, just recently eBay has introduced a new feature called 'detailed seller ratings'. Unlike the mutual ego stroking that is ordinary feedback, seller ratings allows people who BUY items from you to rank you - anonymously - in four areas. Was the item as described? Did the seller communicate well with you? Did they dispatch the item quickly? Were their postage and packaging charges reasonable?

 

I like to think that I do pretty well on these counts - life is too short to create bad karma by describing items wrongly, sending them late, and charging too much for them. I like to think that I play a pretty straight bat.

 

And so it is that after 29 buyers have ranked me - anonymously, may I once again stress - it appears that these no-good bums and losers have given me the screwgee with some scores that are less than I would like them to be. Witness:

 

Item As Described: 4.8 out of 5

Communication: 4.8 out of 5

Dispatch Time: 4.6 out of 5

Postage and Packaging charges: 4.7 out of 5

 

I'm not sure I can put up with that! It seems that I am 0.2 degrees short of excellent on two counts, 0.3 on one and an embarrassing 0.4 on another. This is really a rather bruising dent to my ego. I like to please other people, I like to be the 5 out of 5. It seems that, once the figures are combined and analysed, I'm actually only a 4.725 out of 5. This makes me sad. I am missing, incomplete, something just short of the mark.

 

"But Ant, your glass is 94.5% full", people might say. Yes, but what about the 5.5% that's empty? It seems I have work to do.