欧博Automatic Positive Feedback Encourages Fraud
On August 1st, I purchased a stamp from a seller on Hipstamp.
The listing was for Ireland Scott 75, catalogued at $57.70 MNH.
However, the stamp I received was in fact Scott 116 catalogued at only $2.75 MNH.
Not only that, but to make matters worse, the stamp I received has a corner that is so blunt that it is essentially worthless.
Timeline:
Aug 1st - purchase stamp and pay the same day
Aug 21st - message seller to find out when the stamp was posted as I had not yet received it
Aug 27th - seller apologises and promises to mail the stamp the next day
Sept 6th - stamp arrives, and I immediately notify the seller that this is not the stamp that was listed
Sept 8th - seller apologises and asks me to return the stamp for a refund
Sept 8th - I thank the seller for the offer, but given that it is only a damaged $2 stamp, it is hardly worth my while to package it up, make a special trip to the post office, and pay for shipping, however, if he does want it back, I will be happy to ship it if he pays $2.50 postage
Sept 13th - Not a word from the seller. I checked his feedback and noticed that a fairly high percentage of his positive feedback is "Positive Feedback Automatically Left After 45 days" It is now almost 45 days since I purchased the stamp, so I immediately left negative feedback and filed a PayPal claim.
I rarely use Hipstamp, so I was unaware that sellers automatically receive positive feedback after 45 days. If I hadn't happened to check when I did, he almost certainly would have received automatic positive feedback from me.
Scanning the last few pages of his feedback as a seller, I estimate that about one-third of his feedback is automatic positive feedback. I wonder how typical this is, or is he deliberately stalling shipping items and then delaying responses to messages so that he can offload cheap junk as something better while gaming the system to avoid negative feedback?
I don't know whether this particular seller did this deliberately or is just disorganised, but either way, Hipstamps' automatic positive feedback system is open to abuse.
Clive
On August