TOPIC:

That auction of the woman posing with the heli is just hilarious.

However, to be honest, this sort of thing was commonplace back in the 70s/80s. Pick up almost any old R/C Plane magazine from that era, and it will feature an "attractive" woman on the front cover, seductively holding an... er... R/C aeroplane.

Even Kyosho did it in one 1986 catalog, although a lot more classy, with this girl enjoying an evening breeze holding her Turbo Scorpion...(not a euphemism)...

And to further illustrate my point, here is an hilariously sexist ad from a 1986 issue of RC Car Action magazine...

Debbie does Farmington.
And full throttle in the first pic would be my idea.

Spotted this in an ebay ad yesterday:


Do you think it is acceptable to "guilt" people into leaving 5 stars?
Surely not leaving the star rating at all when less than 5 stars is deserved defeats the object of the system and would seem to be against the spirit?
I am not really familiar with how the star rating system works - maybe I am missing something?
Thoughts?

You should report the seller for fraud - that's completely unfunny

No, I don't think it's ok to guilt people into leaving 5 star feedback or none at all - but I would say eBay are either misusing the DSR results in penalising sellers by jacking up fees/demoting listings, or should change what each star means. For instance, for the DSR question "How quickly did the seller dispatch the item?", the ratings are:
* Very slowly
** Slowly
*** Neither slowly nor quickly
**** Quickly
***** Very Quickly

Reading that, 3 stars is a passing grade? If 5 stars is a pass, then those descriptions need changing.

I can't find the listing again. I found the image through Google on this eBay tips site.
To be fair, I don't think the seller made the cartoon, but it did leave a bad taste. I think it would be more likely to make me give less stars for DSR rather than just blindly clicking 5 stars for everything.
However it does lead me to the conclusion that eBay are taking yet another opportunity to gouge sellers for every penny they can under the guise of proving better service to buyers

I don't agree with the guilt trip thing, but at the same time (Like Jonny said) the star ratings are misleading if you're a buyer.

At the same time (& I've said this before) the general numplings don't really comprehend the meanings of the stars. For instance, people thinking "dispatch time" means "how quickly did you get it", when in fact it means "how long did the seller take to get off their backside & post it" & has nothing to do with what Royal Mail did with it after that, which is beyond the seller's control.
"Postage costs" star rating is just hilarious to me, it goes without saying that people are always going to mark that as "More than I wanted to pay".
The newly greyed-out "communication" star, with the explanation "You can't rate this cos we didn't see any comms between you & the seller" - well, yeah, that's why I want to mark him down on it, I had no idea what was going on or where my stuff had got to....

Yes, sellers get stung for anything less than 5 stars in the ratings, but how many Ebuyers actually know that, & how many would change the score they left if they could, upon learning this?

In my opinion, there should also be a star rating for the Ebay experience as well. I can safely say that out of the few horrendous dealings I've had with the most odd of the odd, the Ebay police have always made the situation worse