eBay Bans Sellers From Leaving Negative or Neutral Feedback For Buyers

[BellisimaJ.]

Bolding is mine.

STEVE GROSSBERG: eBay also mentioned at the conference several times that there is 7 million items listed to the site daily. Okay this is the US site. So if you take that 7 million listings a day times 6% of them ending in nonpaying bidders, it's 420,000 nonpaying bidders a day. If you look at the average listing fee, let's assume that it's $.70, you are talking $300,000 a day, multiply that out by a year, it's over $100 million in revenue for eBay.

AUCTIONBYTES: And your point is that eBay still gets those fees. Even though the buyer doesn't pay, the seller still pays those listing fees.

STEVE GROSSBERG: We are still paying those listing fees, absolutely, and the other thing is you're tying up your inventory for tremendous amounts of time, okay? But let's look at the hundred million dollars in revenue. eBay reported $4.7 billion in gross revenue last year, and that eBay as a company combined with PayPal and everything. This would take a hit of 2 1/2 percent of the revenue. There was no financial incentive for eBay to get rid of these nonpaying bidders. They need to get some more skin in the game and stop putting the burden on sellers to handle their issues.

eBay is not a very ethical company, IMO.

[sneakymagenta]

the other thing is you're tying up your inventory for tremendous amounts of time

[mandy]

Randy Smythe on the feedback changes:

Under the new rules, good sellers may see their precious 100% rating go away but really in the scheme of things is a 98.8% that bad. Small sellers will experience the greatest feedback volatility because their numbers are so small. 2 negs in 100 transactions will give them a 98% (still an A+ in my book) so the percentage will move around a lot in the early days of your business and not so much as you add more transactions.

Many sellers are concerned about the drop in Feedback rating affecting their visibility in search and their reputation on eBay, but I believe this won’t be a problem. As feedback ratings decrease across the platform, the rating becomes more useful and a 98.8% becomes, just what it is a very good rating. Unfortunately perfection will take a hit and the sellers with 100% may be a thing of the past...

full article: http://rksmythe.blogspot.com/2008/02/my-...nline.html

[bargainbloodhound]

we're not in the business of wholesale trade

Don't you mean the liquidation trade?  It's usually cheaper to buy on eBay than at wholesale. 

Unfortunately perfection will take a hit and the sellers with 100% may be a thing of the past...

A case could be made that sellers with 100% satisfied buyers never existed in the first place.  eBay's feedback percentage ratings have been a joke for years.

[mandy]

Scot Wingo:

“If you are selling 1000 units a day, you don’t have time to say I’m going to leave these five negatives today because they deserve it,” Mr. Wingo said. “The casual sellers take every sale much more personally.”...

full article: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/07...technology

[sneakymagenta]

Wingo is right.

[Kristijntje]

Update:

***A Message From Lorrie Norrington – Updates for Sellers***

When I took the reins from Bill Cobb I promised you I would communicate regularly through this channel, Town Halls, and in-person events. I said that I would come to you when there was product news, when we had policy updates to share, and just simply to update you on the progress we are making. You care about eBay, and we owe it to you to maintain a dialogue around the hard work we are all undertaking to make eBay a better marketplace. Today I am here to share significant product news and policy modifications that will improve the guarantees and protections available to eBay sellers.

Let me start with some really good news that we've already announced and that is now live on eBay.com.

Expanded Seller Protection from PayPal – No Confirmed Address Required
Available now, PowerSellers in the United States and Canada can enroll in PayPal's new expanded seller protection which provides protection against fraudulent payments on eligible eBay transactions. This means that if you are enrolled, you can sell and ship physical goods to any address your customer chooses – a confirmed address is not necessary – in any of the 190 countries PayPal serves. There is no annual limit on available coverage, but there are of course some reasonable restrictions, and I encourage you to read the Expanded Seller Protection page and enroll if you haven’t already.

Back in January we announced the Seller Dashboard and I'm delighted to say that we are on track for our scheduled launch in May. By the end of the day today the discount module of the Seller Dashboard will be available for all PowerSellers. Because final value fee discounts for PowerSellers with eligible DSRs will begin appearing on sellers' invoices next month and our PowerSellers are eager to forecast and plan around their discount eligibility, we felt it was critical to release the discount module of the Seller Dashboard as soon as possible. You will see the Seller Dashboard discount module linked from your My eBay page. There you will find your 30-day rolling average DSR score and your PowerSeller discount eligibility.

Feedback Protections
Also in January we committed to a plan that will restore the original intent of the Feedback system — to facilitate trust between buyers and sellers. Since announcing our plans, effective in May, it has become clear through conversations with many of you that eBay needs to do even more to protect sellers from dishonest buyers who use the Feedback system as a weapon. To make it perfectly clear, let me say that there is no place on eBay for anyone who abuses our community, flouts our marketplace policies and willfully harms other members.

As a result of our conversations with many of you, we are adding two Feedback policy changes to be rolled out in May to better protect sellers from this kind of behavior. First, while threatening to use negative Feedback to force an unfair deal is both extremely rare and grounds for permanent buyer suspension, we recognize it has happened in the past and will be tried in the future. If you experience this sort of behavior, please report this to eBay by using Contact Us from this page.

When we identify a pattern of abuse, or the evidence is clear from your report, we will remove the negative or neutral feedback — retroactively. But, we can't identify those patterns without your help and reporting. This is a call to action for every seller.

Second, we have listened to your thoughts on Unpaid Item (UPI) reports and our decision to remove negative or neutral Feedback from a buyer who fails to respond to a UPI. And what has become clear from our conversations is that we need to build in more flexibility for what happens when a buyer responds to a UPI report. What we have determined is that if the buyer does not specifically call out poor seller performance, item condition or transaction problems during the UPI process, eBay will remove the seller's negative or neutral feedback — retroactively.

Finally, let me close by saying that we're pushing hard on these and other changes because of how much eBay means to you (and to us) but we expect to be judged by our actions, not our words. It is my intention to earn your trust and respect by making eBay a more responsive organization that is unafraid to take some risks and move more aggressively while always striving to do right by you, our customers. I look forward to the continuing dialogue.

[Kristijntje]

A related article in the Washington Post:

Others aren't so worried. Another eBay observer, Scot Wingo, said only "casual sellers" face a real danger from not being able to issue negative feedback to uncooperative buyers -- assuming eBay lives up to its law-and-order campaign promises.

Wingo suggested cutting buyer ratings. "If you think about it, eBay is the only e-commerce site where buyers are even rated, much less can receive negatives," he wrote.

That's how retail in the real world works. As long as you can extract U.S. currency or a working credit card from your wallet, a retailer doesn't have to care who you are. As far as they're concerned, it's all just money heading into the till.

full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...62_pf.html

[bargainbloodhound]

Wingo suggested cutting buyer ratings. "If you think about it, eBay is the only e-commerce site where buyers are even rated, much less can receive negatives," he wrote.

Very true, which is why I don't think removing the ability to rate buyers is going to destroy the ability of eBay sellers to conduct business.

[accentnepal]

Well it happened.

A brand new, zero feedback, buyer left me a neutral and dinged me for "not as described" AND "shipping charges", because I charged him all of $2. Shipping and Handling.  (My competition charges $6, nevermind.)

My perfect record is toast, and I am in danger of slipping out of search because I sell so little that the percentages are bad.

All on a $18 item that I sold another one the same week, in person, to a DEALER, for nearly double the price.

Instead of strangling the twerp I am going to supposed "free shipping" on everything. Raising my prices to cover it, of course, but there is no star for "priced including shipping".   

All just a plot by eBay to charge FVF on shipping, no doubt.