eBay Feedback

CEpeep

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Oct 23, 2004
Messages
6,061
Am I the only one who thinks eBay feedback isn't worth squat for anything outside of eBay? People throw it around here like it somehow qualifies them as an expert trader or something. Maybe there's some other reasoning behind them posting it, but considering how easy it is to get 100+ feedback on eBay if you have friends, I question its value at all. (Unless you have some ungodly amount.) Perhaps someone could enighten me.
 
i think that too, i think only heatware really matters on these boards..
 
It's quite hard to get 100+ feedback from 'friends.'

Yes, I'll favor eBay feedbacks just like I will with Heat - not much difference.
 
CEpeep said:
Am I the only one who thinks eBay feedback isn't worth squat for anything outside of eBay? People throw it around here like it somehow qualifies them as an expert trader or something. Maybe there's some other reasoning behind them posting it, but considering how easy it is to get 100+ feedback on eBay if you have friends, I question its value at all. (Unless you have some ungodly amount.) Perhaps someone could enighten me.

If anything, I feel that eBay feedback should be valued higher than Heatware. On eBay, you actually need to complete a transaction before feedback can be left. With Heatware, you can just leave feedback for anybody and for any reason.

I only wish that eBay feedback history retained auction info past the 90 days, so people could see the value of all the items I've bought or sold though eBay.
 
RandysWay said:
It's quite hard to get 100+ feedback from 'friends.'

Yes, I'll favor eBay feedbacks just like I will with Heat - not much difference.

Agreed, as long as you are able to connect the ebay name with the forum name. I'll take ebay with as much weight as heat.

 
All things being equal, I also favor EBay feedback a bit higher. Whereas it would be free for a scammer to have friends leave a bunch of Heatware, it would be costly to do it on Ebay - listing fees and sales commission. My heatware is rather limited (18 positive dating back to 9/04), but my EBay is around 130, all positive and been trading since 1999. If that's not enough for someone to feel safe doing business with me, I'd rather not deal with them.

As others mentioned, make sure you can contact them through their EBay account to verify that they're really the owner.
 
terry said:
i think that too, i think only heatware really matters on these boards..



Heatware is worthless. - I can make as many pseudonyms as I want [and use an ip spoofer] and give myself 5000 heatware if I so desired.

Heatware has *NO* system for figuring out if there was even, an actual transaction completed.

Ebay, at least, won't let you leave feedback unless you were in a deal with someone. and if you bought 470 different items, and want to leave 470 feedbacks, it doesn't help, either,as the feedback has a field about "from unique users"
 
I favor ebay if I can connect it to the guy selling on a forum. As has been stated, it doesn't take much to fake heatware.
 
when i look at heatware i try to find names i reconize, and usually i look to see if they bought something.
 
One4yu2c said:
All things being equal, I also favor EBay feedback a bit higher. Whereas it would be free for a scammer to have friends leave a bunch of Heatware, it would be costly to do it on Ebay - listing fees and sales commission. My heatware is rather limited (18 positive dating back to 9/04), but my EBay is around 130, all positive and been trading since 1999. If that's not enough for someone to feel safe doing business with me, I'd rather not deal with them.

As others mentioned, make sure you can contact them through their EBay account to verify that they're really the owner.

Thats what I was thinking. Ebay feedback > Heat, but heat is still a necessity for forum trading. Its easier and way cheaper to get feedback from friends on Heat than ebay.
 
With heatware, you can always check the validity of a trader's transactions by viewing the history of the people that he has traded with. So, it isn't all that bad. Both can be very usefull in determining a person's integrity. It's all up to the trader to do the research before they get burned. I'm not saying everyone that's been trolled deserves it. I don't mean it that way, for some circumstances are out of a person's control. Such as the case with the Enjoy guy. I could've easily been ripped off by him as well.
 
i think if someone has alot of selling feedback on ebay, its worth more than heat, as ebayers are normally not as patient as people on the boards, they expect store like service, which is what i try to give on both ebay and the boards. as said, you have to sell something (or buy something) to get feedback on ebay, and i could easily as my buddy to make a heat account (or make one myself) and leave great feedback for absoulutly nothing.
 
That is why I will actually get in contact to some of the people on this person's heat eVal list and ask them some random questions about the seller. I will go through their list and randomly ask people about the seller or buyer for that matter. Heat is just as good as eBay feedback. You can get burned even using both...nothing is 100% out here.
 
Take this scenario:
Someone on Ebay has 1000+ All positive feedback. He starts selling items on the boards and does not have Heat. He takes money and runs. How are u going to leave feedback on Ebay saying he's a bad trader?

Ebay feedback is good.. but only for Ebay Auctions. Anything outside, really has no relevance to Ebay feedback. Granted, I'd trust someone more with good Ebay feedback than none at all.. but I would not value it higher than heat on the forums. One thing about heat is that it is moderated I believe. I know that if you get retalitory feedback left on you, you can get it off. Also, I'm sure if it was found that someone was autogenerating feedback for himself, it could be proven by just having the moderator check the IP's and check the linking to other feedback. Also.. it's not hard to check the people that leave heat for a person. I always do that to make sure they are legit and not just bogus accounts.

Also.. along the same lines, I would not buy anything from someone on Ebay with lots of Heat refs and no Ebay refs.
 
Yes, you're the only one! :p

aBSoLuT_0 said:
If anything, I feel that eBay feedback should be valued higher than Heatware. On eBay, you actually need to complete a transaction before feedback can be left. With Heatware, you can just leave feedback for anybody and for any reason.

I only wish that eBay feedback history retained auction info past the 90 days, so people could see the value of all the items I've bought or sold though eBay.
Exactly. :cool:

doggyworld, someone with 1000+ feedback on eBay has established exactly what someone with 1000+ heatware has: trust. So it really doesn't matter which you use.

With heat you can start up a free account and give umpteen evals to yourself. With eBay, you need a verified CC or non-free e-mail just to post one. You may not use eBay, but the feedback on there is definitely more valuable.
 
The likelyhood of an EBayer with "1000+ positives" suddenly turning into a forum scammer is very small (though not out of the realm of possibility). If they have a reputation that significant, there's a reason for it. Furthermore, they run the risk of having angry forum buyers bidding on his/her EBay auctions, not paying, and leaving retaliatory feedback in addition to the time he/she would have to spend on EBay's dispute process trying to recover lost commissions (and listing fees are non-refundable). PLUS, they would quickly find themselves in the tips/trolls section. Your hypothetical scenario, while possible, is just not very likely for an established trader.

That's not a bash against heatware (as I put the same trust in that system), but having significant EBay feedback is a decent indicator of someone's online trading habits and reliability as far as I am concerned, especially if they have a little bit of heat as well (as it shows they're new to forum trading but not online trading).
 
sleepeeg3 said:
Yes, you're the only one! :p

Exactly. :cool:

doggyworld, someone with 1000+ feedback on eBay has established exactly what someone with 1000+ heatware has: trust. So it really doesn't matter which you use.

With heat you can start up a free account and give umpteen evals to yourself. With eBay, you need a verified CC or non-free e-mail just to post one. You may not use eBay, but the feedback on there is definitely more valuable.

Yes.. but that trust for me is on Ebay. If anything happens outside of Ebay and you get screwed, do you honestly think Ebay will do anything about it? They will laugh at you and tell you, you should have used Ebay. :) I have no problem buying from someone on Ebay with good feedback. Let me ask the same question again.. how do you leave bad feedback on Ebay for an auction outside of Ebay (lets assume the scammer has stopped posting anymore goods on Ebay for obvious reasons)?

Also.. I agree you can give yourself a billion heat on fake sales. But you also have to remember to create heat for the fake users which give yourself heat. So assuming you do this with a bot, now you also have to make sure that each of the descriptions of the trades are at least fairly unique. I'm not saying that it can't be done.. but I think it's alot of work.. and will raise enough suspicion that they will be caught. For the small case of generating maybe up to 10-20 heat, it could probably be done.. but would still take alot of time. But then again, you can also do something similar on Ebay too by selling coupons and then waiting enough time til people can't see the auctions.

So my point is this.. and granted this is my own opinion.. but I believe it matters which feedback you use in the context of the place you use it. I wouldn't mind if someone had both and I'd take both into consideration.. but I value one over the other in terms of where I'm trading.

Ebay: wchen123
Heat: doggyworld
 
ebay is good, heatware is good. just two different sources.
I would just try and confirm that the ebay feedback/account is the same as the person your doing a transaction with.

my mom nad her hubby have over 10000+ feedback, and people have been known to pretend to be them before.

ive been using ebay off and on since 2000, and only got like 60 or so.
 
One4yu2c said:
The likelyhood of an EBayer with "1000+ positives" suddenly turning into a forum scammer is very small (though not out of the realm of possibility). If they have a reputation that significant, there's a reason for it. Furthermore, they run the risk of having angry forum buyers bidding on his/her EBay auctions, not paying, and leaving retaliatory feedback in addition to the time he/she would have to spend on EBay's dispute process trying to recover lost commissions (and listing fees are non-refundable). PLUS, they would quickly find themselves in the tips/trolls section. Your hypothetical scenario, while possible, is just not very likely for an established trader.

That's not a bash against heatware (as I put the same trust in that system), but having significant EBay feedback is a decent indicator of someone's online trading habits and reliability.

Yes.. I agree.. that was just a worst case scenario I wanted to bring up as an example. I have seen Ebayer's with 100+ positive feedback turn bad on Ebay though, so I'm sure it's not out of the question for someone to do that outside of Ebay.
 
doggyworld said:
and granted this is my own opinion..

And that sums it up right there. If someone is uncomfortable doing business with a member who has lots of EBay but little or no heat, then look elsewhere. I don't fall into that category, but to each his own.
 
pcpunk said:
Its easier and way cheaper to get feedback from friends on Heat than ebay.

Thats the problem I see with HEATWARE...... Real easy to get a good rep without EVER selling a thing.
 
I've got over 100 positive ratings on ebay with a 100%, which I have been acumulating for about 6 years. I came to this [H] and was treated fairly by most of the sellers & buyers, I now have heat of 33-0-0, some buying, some selling, a couple cross trades. My first transaction was actually a sale, in 06-17-2004, 2x512MB of PC3200 memory, not a small purchase, but I guess the buyer liked my honesty in various communications and checked out my ebay score.

My alias is (now) the same across the board, you can also google it and probably get my personal info. Not that I really care :)

I have found the best way to sell here is to give the buyer all of my information, so s/he feels secure in the transaction. Once the buyer and I negotiate the sale, I give my first & last name, address, and phone number.

Checking up on people..
Did you know you can check an eBay ID history, if they just started using eBay, be wary of them. If they've had an account for awhile, that's a lot better.
http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ReturnUserIdHistory&requested=vbrtrmn

If they've been selling things on eBay, you can "Ask seller a question", even on closed items! Good way to verify if the person is who they say they are!

With Heatware, check to see if the people who rated him/her have other ratings from people with high Heat scores. I've got one from RotKT, who has 288, that would be really hard to spoof!

Also, from Heatware, use the "Send Mail" feature, check to see if they are really the person in Heatware. Good for people who have different aliases!

Ask the seller/buyer for his/her personal info, if they are sketchy about giving it up, don't deal with them!

If the deal seems too good to be true, it probably is!
 
Laforge said:
Heatware is worthless. - I can make as many pseudonyms as I want [and use an ip spoofer] and give myself 5000 heatware if I so desired.

Heatware has *NO* system for figuring out if there was even, an actual transaction completed.

Ebay, at least, won't let you leave feedback unless you were in a deal with someone. and if you bought 470 different items, and want to leave 470 feedbacks, it doesn't help, either,as the feedback has a field about "from unique users"

QFT!

Don't want to do business with me because I have only 7 heatware? That's your problem. I have 173 with 100% feedback on eBay. Let's also include the fact that my first heatware was in 2000. Heatware is a joke.
 
I think it's smart to have both heatware and ebay. I've been auctioning things on ebay since 2000 (or a little later) with my bro and we have over 145+ positive feedback with no negatives. I've used ebay as reference for selling on other forums and people trust it. After my first transaction through a forum, i got heatware and built up a little to 9-0-0. Now i have 2 sources of feedback to show buyers/sellers so i think that builds the trust up a little more.

But if you were to ask which one is the best, i would say ebay only because people can't just go around making mulitple accounts and posting positve heat on an account by themselves. Not many take the time to read through all the transaction a person has down on heatware so bogus ones can get by pretty easily sometimes.

And for some1 to have 1000+ positive feedback on ebay to come and scam someone for one thing is pretty unlikely.
 
both system are fine, it more up to the buyer to check and verify the references. Both can be deeply link to other users. Heatware seems to be more of a community base where it is much easier to recognize our tech peers where ebay you have little no clue who the previous buyer are.

For that reason alone i prefer heatware over ebay, references are references, it up to you to know who and where it from. Heatware suit my perferences much more.
 
RQLe said:
both system are fine, it more up to the buyer to check and verify the references. Both can be deeply link to other users. Heatware seems to be more of a community base where it is much easier to recognize our tech peers where ebay you have little no clue who the previous buyer are.

For that reason alone i prefer heatware over ebay, references are references, it up to you to know who and where it from. Heatware suit my perferences much more.

i was going to post until i saw this, you said everything i was going to. Thx :D
 
i dunno - i get a sloppy feeling from Ebay.

I get a more refined feeling from heatware, its like a family tree - i check out someone's feedback, then i check out a another guy's feedback from the guy that i just checked out, and so on and so forth.

another thing - i look at ebay feedbacks and i get these annoying "great seller! A+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++". its like....wtf o_0
 
option141 said:
i dunno - i get a sloppy feeling from Ebay.

another thing - i look at ebay feedbacks and i get these annoying "great seller! A+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++". its like....wtf o_0


i see your point, there is a lot less info convey in ebay feedback, im guilty of the same cut and paste feed back, but the point is when you get burned to bitch and moan till either you feel better bout the burning or the bad trader has a worthy blemish on thier record to prevent others from suffering the same consequences....

i was an ebay first guy, and even still pretty weary only 16 transactions all buys, just started heatware, still havent sold anything, but you gotta start somewhere, and a reference is in the eye of the beholder....

just my thoughts,
-P
 
I consider them both when buying/selling I definetly value Heatware alot more yet if someone has 100+ feedback on Ebay with no negatives and has sold/bought stuff within the past month I definetly don't shut my eyes on it. I've had problems before with a user who had no heat but had Ebay and even with a user who had like 80-0-2 heat so I try to just make sure it's all positive...
 
Pt3000 said:
the point is when you get burned to bitch and moan till either you feel better bout the burning or the bad trader has a worthy blemish on thier record to prevent others from suffering the same consequences....

Which you can't do on Ebay feedback if u have a transaction outside of Ebay.. which is why I like to keep the two feedbacks seperate for diff types of transactions.
 
I think the overwhelming view is: Don't want to get burned? Do your homework!

If you don't have any rep, I don't trust you, sorry... hell I'm not even sorry, I don't know you. If you give me a good reason to trust you, I'll do business with you... that means you provide me with all of your personal info Name, Address & Telephone Number; otherwise, find some other sucker.

If you don't want to trust an eBay score or a heatware score, that's cool, you probably shouldn't be buying and selling online .. otherwise you should setup your own rating system web site, which verifies people some way.

Just my 2-cents .. well plus the long rant, above :)
 
I value heat more than eBay. What am I gonna do watch the guy's moves so when he goes to sell something I win it and leave him negative feedback?

Just spend a couple mins looking at the users on a person's heat account and you should be able to tell if they're legit or not.
 
Am I the only one who thinks eBay feedback isn't worth squat for anything outside of eBay?

I think u have ur answer dude.

Heat does have potential if they somehow legitamately followed more secure rules, otherwise all the seller/buyer has is their experience to reference (ie. knowing the trader by reputation).
 
Pretty much the same anwer has been repeated over and over again

Do your home, if you think somethings not right dont trade

Heat and/or ebay isnt goin to tell you straight out a dealis going to go one way or another, theres always risk involved

There both good for "surface" checking if some one "looks" ok to deal with, but you need to go the whole 9 to protect yourself

is one better then the other? No
They both have there pros and cons. Use your judgement and ask questions when lookin at both and you should beable to find your anwser weather the person is good to deal with or not
 
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