Now it appears you cannot rate a seller who either cancels an order or never confirms one.

I find this a disturbing trend. While it is good for retailers who sell their items B&M and on Half.com, it is terrible for Half.com purchasers.

I discovered this recently as I placed 2 orders for the TNG Season 3 box set, 1 was cancelled, and 1 was never confirmed. I also placed an order last week for a center speaker and it has yet to be confirmed.

Since Half puts a hold on your account immediately upon placing an order, all your money is tied up untill 3-5 business days after your order is cancelled or the confirmation date has past. Without the opportunity to rate sellers who do this (you could before), Half.com is becoming a more and more unreliable place to order from. There is absolutely no risk to the seller to place their orders on Half and they no longer have to worry about repercussions if they don't follow the stated policies.

Something is up with Ebay, and I'm not sure why they're doing things like this. I suggest everyone who purchases through Half.com to send them an email urging them to reinstate the rating policies for sellers who cancel or don't confirm.

You have to look at this policy both ways - from the perspective of a buyer and a seller. If a seller lists an item and somehow the item is damaged or something happens to it with or without them knowing (And believe me, this does happen a lot) then it is better for them to cancel the sale than the confirm it. The first reason is if they cancel it, they can receive a neg feedback when one is not really neccessary because mistakes do happen. Second, this could lead many sells to simply ship out the item as it is if it's damaged or isn't in the same condition it was listed being in.

It does tick me off to though when a seller cancels the listed item for a dumb reason or they never confirm the item.

The problem is that alot of retail stores place the same item on Half as they do on their shelves. This totally invalidates the idea of half.com as a usefull place to do business because you never know if you're going to get the item you ordered.

Not only that, but while you're waiting for the order to be cancelled or the confirm period to pass, the next best deal is usually snapped up by somebody else.

The fact that in the last week 3 orders out of 4 I placed (all from different sellers) were either cancelled or ignored shows a disturbing trend.

Yeah, I totally agree. I've had many cancellations. I just had a couple last week, although one was for Playtime which the seller claimed he didn't have, but still listed it. He just realized he could sell it for a lot more money. I still think Half.com is a great place to shop, and I think they made a good business decision by not allowing feedback to be placed in these cases.

It's not a good decision when you're dealing with retail stores who sell thousands of items on half and ebay. If some guy who's selling 1000 items cancells 250 times, wouldn't you want to know about it before ordering from them? Can you see this company explaining 250 times why they couldn't ship? What's to stop companies from putting their whole catalog up on half and using their own website as well? (It's happening already).

It's good for the little guy who sells one or two things (like me).
Because the ebay rating system exists you can now explain why you had a problem with the order. If I put things up on half.com or ebay I expect to sell them. If you can't manage your inventory properly or are worried about getting one or two negatives then you shouldn't use them.

I'd rather have the policy reinstated because I purchase much more than I sell. What's the point of having a system like this if you're going to drive the buyers away? We might see a reinstating of the policy if enough people complain.

I wasn't aware of this policy change until now, and while it's good for us, I see both sides, and would probably prefer that it have remained as it was before.

We sell on Half, Amazon, our own website and now eBay. It is difficult keeping them from stepping on each others toes, but it happens.

When we list items for sale on eBay, we allocate the inventory for the auction when it's listed, so that that item is not available for sale. An order could come in from Half or Amazon between the time we listed it on eBay and the time we next updated the inventory on Half and/or Amazon, in which case that order would be cancelled. We try and avoid that by not listed items on eBay unless we have at least three of them in stock.

Then, sometimes, the eBay auction does have the last piece of a title in stock and when we go to pull it, it turns out to be missing or damaged or incorrect and we're forced to cancel the sale. But not because it was sold elsewhere, but because of inventory error. We take a lot of heat for that. ("Why list it if they didn't have it", for example.)

We end up cancelling a lot more items from Amazon than we do from Half (not sure why exactly) - but it's better for us to cancel on Half if we had a choice. Why? Because when we cancel on Half, rather than confirm, the user never gets charged and we don't have to do a refund...

Half has been going downhill since they started letting people sell things for OVER HALF-PRICE.

I mean, ****, it's called "HALF.COM" And you've got all of these dealers selling crap for retail price or more.

Hey Tony, thanks for responding. It's nice to see the retailer's point of view. But as I see things now, Half.com is going into the toilet because there is no responsibility for the seller to actually have the item they're selling. That's sad.

Josh, I never had a problem with allowing items to be sold for more than half. As the little guy I actually liked it because it gave me an opportunity to sell the occasional "high-demand" item I had to alot of people without having to deal with ebay. Getting paid up-front is nice. Now, with the new policy, it seems Ebay is pandering to really big retailers so they can do high-volume sales. There is practically no risk to seller using Half. No accountability means chaos.

I'm still waiting for an order I placed on Thurs to be confirmed. Since it finally went through on their screwed up order system on Sat, and Sun and Mon is a holiday, it won't be rejected untill Thurs and my funds will be locked up untill the end of next week some time. They're really starting to piss me off.

Half off may have been the original premise of the site, but what's wrong with selling things at the price people will pay? We see stupid prices on eBay all the time. But the simple fact is that some titles are collectible and worth more. For example, we have some Bob Seger albums that are out of print. We sell them for upwards of $25 each. Far from half off retail. ;p

Conversely, some titles drop in price so fast, WE won't even sell there. Many popular CD titles fall below a dollar once they get saturated in the market.

That's called supply and demand, dude.

Eric, here's something else. eBay now has Fixed Price listings. For those that don't follow eBay closely, this is different than store listings. It's kind of like a dutch buyitnow. Take that bit of info and add something I heard while at eBay a couple weeks ago ("Yes, we realize we have to move into catalog") and you've got the downward spiral of Half.com in focus...

I absolutely agree. At the very least, they should have a decent search engine that allows people to search by % off MSRP. I would certainly browse (and purchase) a lot more if I could look for all in-stock DVDs that are 60% off retail, for example.

And I too have had an obscene amount of cancelled orders lately. Of the past 8 orders, only 1 has actually shipped. 5 were cancelled or never confirmed. And 2 were confirmed and then (weeks later) determined to be "not available and unable to ship". That I think is an even more disturbing trend -- sellers who automatically confirm the sale and then "discover" weeks after your card has been charged that they don't have the item.

Tony, I noticed that price fixing thing. Another thing they've done (as I just placed an item on Ebay in a while) is they don't allow the average user to sell more than one item at a time anymore unless they pay a $5 "verification" fee.

Uh, em. Bastards.

What also disturbs me about this new "no-rating" Half.com policy is that sellers can use it as to gauge the interest in a particular item: Put it up for $60, sells immediately, cancel, put it up again for $65, someone else buys it, cancel, put it up again, raise the price, etc...

Ebay has really screwed the pooch. They obviously want sellers with lots of items on either site. That's how they make their money. High volume, low overhead (non-existant customer service), and practically no risk to the seller.

Someone needs to cover this in detail, like Time or Cnet. Ebay is big business and such a radical change in policy like this needs to be known by the general public.

Some selling features are limited to sellers with a minimum feedback. You can get past this restriction by becoming verified... So it's not compulsory.

Ebay is definitely becoming (or has been becoming) a seller-focused entity. All marketing and programs are geared to increasing membship, increasing bids and raising the ASP (average selling price). But I don't blame eBay, that's how they make money. What it means for me personally is that I can't buy as much as I used to, because the prices are too high on the things I want. I can't find the bargains I used to be able to. More people, more bids, higher prices...

I see Ebay and Half as one big store, the shared rating system makes it even more so.

They're driving the little guy out. Too bad. There really isn't anywhere else to go.

Well, they are changing their cancelled transactions feedback policy. I just got this today:

That was a good move by Half.com. The number of cancelled and unconfirmed orders was getting out of hand. Now half.com needs to find a way to get some sellers to ship on time.

Yep. I just got the email. Stop beating me to my own thread!

The problem of unconfirmed and cancelled orders must have gotten so bad they had no choice but to change the policy back. They probably got lots of complaints, no doubt.

When did eBay ever move so quickly? First time for everything...

I just had an order cancelled this weekend. Can't leave feedback now.