SquareTrade - eBay rating services

Has anybody ever used SquareTrade to challenge negative feedback logged against their eBay account by another eBay user and which they felt was unwarranted?

I used it thinking it could force a seller to give me a refund or replace the muck he sold me with what he had promised to sell me.

They decided in my favour but all they offered was an opportunity to withdraw negative feedback - not what I had hoped for.

It is possible that my request to them was expressed incorrectly .

I have read a few reviews of the service on the net, mainly poor responses. Then again if the outcome was good most people don't feel the need to write it an a forum. The best squaretrade can generally seem to do is to have feedback challenged so they might be useful in your case. Do you want to share what happened?

Have a read through some of these [broken link removed]

TarfHead said:

I used it thinking it could force a seller to give me a refund or replace the muck he sold me with what he had promised to sell me.

They decided in my favour but all they offered was an opportunity to withdraw negative feedback - not what I had hoped for.

It is possible that my request to them was expressed incorrectly .

Click to expand...

If you paid by PayPal and it's not too late in the day then you can try their dispute resolution service. As I posted elsewhere I used this to get a refund when an item I bought never turned up and the seller dragged their heels over processing an insurance based refund. PayPal ruled in my favour and I got my €110 back (less a bit due to €/GBP£ exchange rate fluctuations in the intervening period). Anyway, I (legitimately I thought) logged negative feedback against the seller because they failed to process the insurance based refund in the 46 days that they said that they would, never sent me the form that they said I'd need to sign, never answered my specific questions on the matter and failed to provide sufficient proof of despatch to the PayPal dispute intermediary. In retaliation they logged negative feedback against me. I responded to both but feel that while my negative feedback against them is fully warranted since they failed to honour their side of the bargain, their' negative feedbacl against me (on the basis that I got a refund and should be happy with that - ignoring the fact that the refund came from from PayPal and not the seller even if PayPal then chase them for it!) was not. I would like to challenge this negative feedback if possible but eBay don't seem to have a process for doing this and seem to defer to third parties such as SquareTrade. Or maybe I should just create a new eBay account!

To be honest I am a buyer though on ebay so the neg rating wouldn't bother me too much, but I would use it to warn other ebayers but only as an absolute last resort.
If you really want to get rid of the remark and if you are not too sour on the seller you could offer a mutual withdrawl request (I think this is the reason though that most sellers on ebay have 98% positive feedback ratings though) at the following link:
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?MFWRequest

They already requested a mutual withdrawal of negative feedback but I'm not prepared to remove mine. Thanks all the same.

You and me both Clubman. The negative feedback suppliers feedback about me was basically that I should have emailed him first rather than trading negative feedback. (I don't think my reputation will be in tatters with that one!)I had however done this - twice, and got two standard responses that didn't even come close to addressing the problem that I hadn't received the goods I paid for. I only set the dispute in motion when time was running out on my rights in Payopal so I think he was absolutely wrong to give me the neg. feedback. I did reply but I don't think it will make any difference. I'm not sure negative feedback on a buyer is as bad as it is on a seller. I notice that my "DVD" supplier has had a load of negative feedback in the past month. Maybe Christmas sales were too much for him!

Sounds just like the seller in my case. To be fair I don't suspect that they are con artists and some of the negative feedback comments are from buyers who make the mistake of buying a wrong or incompatible item. In my case I guess that the item just went missing in transit or was inadvertently (not deliberately) not dispatched. However they dealt badly with my complaint and failed to issue a refund within the timeframe that they promised me etc. etc. so I felt that the negative feedback was justified. And when you read their replies to negative feedback it reinforces the impression that customer care is not their strong point!

I had a similar experience to yours recently. The item I ordered was never delivered. In fact, no attempt was ever made to deliver it. We mutually agreed not to proceed with the transaction after weeks but then the seller dragged her heels with the refund. It was only after I threatened to go to the German police (the seller was in Germany) that I finally received the refund. The time for a claim via PayPal or E-bay had expired as it was more than 60 days since the auction. Although I feel I should provide negative feedback now, I feel she will just give me negative feedback in return. So, I'm just not bothering. I'm not impressed really with either PayPal or E-Bay although I still use them. I will now only buy from sellers who have over 99% positive feedback.

Just to be clear I find both eBay and PayPal very good in spite of this specific bad experience. My criticisms are confined to the seller and their behaviour in this case. I've never had any problems with eBay or PayPal themselves.

There is something in what you say Hotlips, 99% plus rating is the way to go. Probably hard to stick to when a bargain pops up on a say 97% trader. I also try to stick to those who have had a few hundred transactions.