It seems to me that Canon's ebay outlet shop, operated by Digital River, is trying to suppress negative feedback. I bought a camera from the outlet back in August and subsequently had to send it back because it turned out to be faulty. They offered me a repair service, but I had to pay for the postage to the repair centre and wait some untold amount of time to finally get my camera back so I figured it wasn't worth it.

I have just received this email from SquareTrade Customer Support:

**AUTOMATIC NOTIFICATION: CLICK BELOW TO RESPOND**

eBay Item Number: 7541980690
SquareTrade Case ID: *******
Merchandise Description: Canon Outlet: Digital IXUS 40

Hello,

This is our 4th notice to you about a case filed by canon_uk1 concerning transaction #7541980690. eBay may have already withdrawn the feedback comment you left for the dispute transaction.

If it has not already been withdrawn, the only way you can prevent this from happening is by responding to the problem--responding does not obligate you in any way to resolve the problem. You just need to respond by clicking here and completing your response:

-snip-

Fourth notice?! What? I hope that's not a tactic to make sure they can say they have taken "reasonable steps to contact me" or something.

Probably should have blogged this sooner, but I was patiently waiting for my refund which appeared some weeks later yet was backdated on the statement, which may make it difficult to prove. Then I noticed that the refund had come in two separate payments that didn't add up to the original debit - the balance was still short by £5.09. I reminded them about this and had to wait another week or more for it to appear (again backdated) in my account before finally feeling safe to leave what I still consider to be quite reasonable, even understated negative feedback as follows:

Item arrived faulty. How disappointing :( Friendly service though.

They were always courteous on the phone and in emails. I don't blame the operators! But what possible grounds will they have for asking to withdraw that? It remains to be seen what they will claim, but it makes me wonder how many other negative feedbacks may have disappeared from large ebay shops with a dedicated staff and corporate muscle behind them.

On the reassurances about refurbished products page linked to from the listing it states "Refurbished products are 100% OK." Within what margin I wonder? That attractive looking 98.5% postive feedback score means 154 people have left negative feedback in the past twelve months and a further 277 have left neutral feedback. Now I begin to wonder how many may have been withdrawn.

This isn't the first time I've had problems with a seller who had huge feedback, only that time I had made all the mistakes and there was no recourse except publicity and selling the faulty item, since even the total price was below the threshold for making a claim.