Online feedback forms bring a new feeling to buying and selling

The phone beeps. I’m excited anyway because there’s a notification. There was a time that notification meant a card in the post from the ESB saying the power would be off. Now notifications are little tabs of uppers, or rather Updates, that gets some of us through the day.

I’m extra excited because this notification is from a second-hand ‘stuff’ website. We’ve just sold something and I was waiting for feedback from the buyer.

“‘lemonysnicket’ left feedback for you” says the update. Joy of joys — the feedback is POSITIVE.

So far I’ve a clean record. 50 positive testimonials from strangers who we’ve helped load stuff into a van or met at a neutral location (a Lidl car park with no one else around. If we’d been dealing heroin or handing over the microfilm with the blueprints on it, we couldn’t have looked more dodgy). It’s a new kind of community. Our lives intersect as our needs intersect. It’s a community of self-interest where everyone wins.

Mostly everyone wins. Occasionally there is a breakdown of trust. When that happens acceleration from zero to recrimination is instantaneous. “TOTAL TIMEWASTER WAITED IN LIDL CAR PARK. NO SHOW. AVOID!!!”

Nobody likes their reputation impugned and the reply is often hurt. “Why u say these things? I tried to text that I have to bring my mother to dentist and then no reply from you do not say such things if u do not check ur phone”

In one case a woman’s excuse was fairly watertight or rather breaking-the-watertight: “Sorry I could not collect the play-mat as I was having my baby and forgot to text”

On another occasion, there was an almost existential discussion on the nature of the product itself. “He say it a cot but it not a cot then I say something and seller get smart with me.”

The seller replied wearily: “how do you deal with someone who argues that a cot is not a cot?”

Obviously, because I like to feed off human conflict like a psychic vampire sucking everyone’s prana, I like to read the negative feedback. But I also want to see what goes wrong and how I can avoid it. Sometimes it’s just one of those things. Sometimes the person is a serial offender. In a fairly good-natured marketplace, anyone with more than a few negative comments is to be avoided.

I don’t know what I’d do if I got a bad report from someone. I’m not good with conflict. We rage against strangers all the time in cars but it’s ephemeral. There might be a hand-gesture or a horn-beep but they are soon gone, their Donegal Reg BMW receding into the distance ahead. There is no lasting record of the row.

With online reputation it’s there forever. And it’s a row between equals. Our interaction has been personal. It’s the same with Airbnb — the site were you arrange to stay in a stranger’s house. You‘ve been in your pyjamas in their house for goodness sake. This IS personal.

If you do get negative feedback on one of these sites, it’s always useful to see what else the person has been giving out about. I use this principle on TripAdvisor a lot.

For non-internet people, TripAdvisor allows you to turn all the muttering you did in the restaurant into an actual complaint afterwards.

You could of course complain at the time, but that’s not the Irish way. We could be whipped on the back with a cat o’ nine tails by a waiter but we won’t complain at the time. TripAdvisor allows you to ruminate for a while — often literally — and then give your two-cents worth. But if a restaurant has mostly good reviews and one bad one sticks out like a sore thumb, have a look at the person’s other reviews. You may find they like NO restaurant and on one occasion thought everyone was laughing at them and that they were placed deliberately at a table near the toilets. It’s not you, it’s ‘them’.

I hope you like this column. Feedback would be welcome. Some of it.