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RSteve

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I'd heard from others that Ebay will eliminate some feedback to pacify some of their corporate sellers when there's a lot of negative feedback on an item. I had no idea to what extreme that could occur.

A few weeks ago, on Ebay, I purchased a Snow Joe corded 21" 15 amp electric snow blower. I have had their smaller model for several years, but it's 15" and above 4-5" inches of snow it labors. Today, my older daughter came to my house after work, to give me some help unboxing and assembling the new blower. The instruction sheet and break-out diagram must have been written where the blower was made, in China, by a person who speaks English as a second language. What should have taken 15 minutes had stretched past an hour, when my daughter started searching for a YouTube video. She found one for a different model, but we were able to extrapolate enough information to assemble the blower in a few minutes.

I went to my Ebay purchase history to leave feedback on the blower, specifically on the terrible assembly instructions. It had been removed from my purchase history and I assume from others who had bought it and wrote negative feedback about the difficult assembly.
 
Interesting. I depend on those evaluations when selecting a vendor…more on Amazon. Anyway, I’ve had other things that came with only “Cin-glish” instructions. I think that is more likely if an item comes directly from China as opposed to via a USA distribution system. I’ve seen it maybe more often with nice fountain pens ordered directly from China or Japan. Differences in tariffs, etc. can add like $75 - $100 to a USA source item over one ordered directly from Japan. Significant.But whatever.

A related thing that bugs me is “fake reviews” which I understand are getting more prevalent.
 
I think you can blame corporate on how terrible instruction manuals have become. I feel they know someone else will take care of it for them, like youtubers. Or send you to a website so they don't have to spend the two bits on writing and printing the manual. I helped a guy with a new snow blower last week, and the manual was of no use. It didn't even tell you what kind of gas to use or, if necessary, the oil mix. If you've used these things your whole life, that isn't a big deal, but for a new user or someone not mechanically inclined, it creates a mess. Then, it all falls back on the store staff who are making $10/hour to deal with our outrage and frustrated questions. Pass the buck to the low workers.
 
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