eBay Bans Sellers From Leaving Negative or Neutral Feedback For Buyers

[Kristijntje]

eBay is making sweeping changes to its Feedback program, including prohibiting sellers from leaving negative or neutral feedback ratings for buyers. The changes come a year after eBay introduced controversial Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs) in which buyers are able to leave anonymous ratings for sellers based on four criteria.

eBay will announce today that beginning in May, sellers will no longer be able to leave negative or neutral Feedback for buyers. eBay said the current system prevents buyers from leaving honest Feedback as they fear retaliation from the sellers if they leave a negative. "This makes it hard for buyers to distinguish between sellers while making bidding or buying decisions. In addition, when buyers receive negative Feedback, they reduce their activity in the marketplace, which in-turn harms all sellers."

full article: http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y08/m01/i29/s06

From eBay:

Evolving Feedback
The final set of changes I'd like to share with you concern Feedback. There's a lot of passion – in the Community and in the company – around the Feedback system, so I think it's important to remember our ultimate goal: We are evolving in many new areas so that eBay remains a vital, thriving marketplace that buyers will prefer over all the other choices they have on the Internet today.

To give you some background, the original intent of eBay's public feedback system was to provide an honest, accurate record of member experiences. Over the years, we've adjusted the system to add non-public means of providing feedback to try to improve its accuracy. For example, we instituted Unpaid Item Reports in 2006, and that has helped us to hold buyers accountable.

But overall, the current feedback system isn't where it should be. Today, the biggest issue with the system is that buyers are more afraid than ever to leave honest, accurate feedback because of the threat of retaliation. In fact, when buyers have a bad experience on eBay, the final straw for many of them is getting a negative feedback, especially of a retaliatory nature.

Now, we realize that feedback has been a two-way street, but our data shows a disturbing trend, which is that sellers leave retaliatory feedback eight times more frequently than buyers do ... and this figure is up dramatically from only a few years ago.

So we have to put a stop to this and put trust back into the system.

But I think – and I'm sure you'll agree – that the most compelling reason we need to change feedback is so that buyers will regain their confidence on eBay and they will bid and buy more often.

We explored a number of solutions, and talked to eBay's founder Pierre Omidyar, who created the Feedback system. He agrees that bold changes are required to fix Feedback. And that's exactly what we're going to do ... here's the biggest change, starting in May:

Sellers may only leave positive feedback for buyers (at the seller's option).

I know this is a huge change, but we're also putting into place protections that sellers have wanted for years. In addition to holding buyers accountable via non-public seller reporting tools, such as Unpaid Item reports, we are planning a number of other Seller Protections against inaccurate feedback:

    * We will remove, not just de-score, negative and neutral feedback when a buyer doesn't respond to the Unpaid Item process
    * We will remove all negative and neutral feedback and comments when a buyer (or seller) is suspended. We will also do this retroactively – which means any negatives and neutrals you've received from members we've ever suspended will be removed.
    * For sellers with an established track record, we'll prevent negative and neutral feedback within 3 days of listing end to promote communication.
    * We're going to reduce the number of days a member can leave feedback from 90 to 60 days.
    * We'll increase block bidder list capacity from 1,000 to 5,000 user IDs.
    * We'll increase our monitoring, and take action based on seller reports of buyers behaving very badly.
    * Feedback percentage will be based on the last 12 months, although the total count remains lifetime. This means that any negative or neutral feedback left for you more than 12 months ago will no longer affect your percent positive.

For more details, please see our information page.

Repeat Feedback Credit
The last change to Feedback that I think you'll love is that beginning in February, we're going to give all members credit for multiple purchases with the same buyer or seller when the listings end in different weeks. Sellers will now get the credit they deserve when their great service and selection results in repeat buyers.

I know that all of the changes we're making in pricing, seller standards and incentives, and feedback are big ones ... and that not everyone will like them. But the overall package is what you should focus on ... and the overall package is strong.

I think we've demonstrated that we're committed to making improvement to the overall customer experience – and that requires higher standards and bold changes.

That said, the vast majority of our changes work to strengthen our relationship – and they'll be great for the marketplace as a whole, and certainly great for many of you.

full announcement: http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200801290559182.html

[FiberGuy]

Holy Crap!

:o

[BellisimaJ.]

[quote author=FiberGuy link=topic=17359.msg67775#msg67775 date=1201625616]

Holy Crap!

:o
[/quote]


Wow.That sounds like a really bad idea.  :blinkie:

[amy]

They should eliminate buyer feedback completely.  A feedback rating that only includes positive comments is useless to trading partners.

[FiberGuy]

With most of the bidding done in the last few minutes anyhow, I suppose this doesn't really mean all that much because a seller doesn't have the time to review bidders reputation.

Ebay is just an advertising venue for us these days anyhow - we're not in the business of wholesale trade. 

[accentnepal]

He is right about one thing - when I had a poor experience as a buyer I would not even consider leaving those sellers a neg. Even though I have not bought a lot on ebay there were a couple that deserved it.

As a seller there are three kinds of bad buyers:
1)Non-payers - There is a system in place for these common critters.
2)Scammers - Never seen one as a seller, lots of "$15 million in unclaimed funds" and "ebay account suspended" types, but non-precious metal jewelry seems to not be a particularly bad neighborhood (sleepy, though)
3)Hysterical worriers - A real danger for negative feedback when the package has not arrived after two whole days. Use small words and short sentences.

The threat of retaliation for bad feedback just doesn't seem to be needed or effective.

His bit about keeping the crappy buyers at ebay rings hollow - hey, sellers get the agravation, ebay gets the fees.

[mandy]

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[sneakymagenta]

Party time in Nigeria and Romania

No more instant NARUs for buyers with feedback ratings of -4 either. 

[amy]

[quote author=sneakymagenta link=topic=17359.msg67799#msg67799 date=1201734963]
Party time in Nigeria and Romania

No more instant NARUs for buyers with feedback ratings of -4 either. 
[/quote]

A scammer's buyer experience is important (for fee generation) too! arcasm1:

[mandy]

The President of IMA on eBay's recent changes:

The President of the Internet Merchants Association, Steve Grossberg, spoke with AuctionBytes by phone over recently announced changes to the eBay site. Grossberg, an eBay PowerSeller, attended the Ecommerce Forum where eBay made its announcements. Grossberg talks about changes to fees and feedback policies, what they mean for eBay sellers, and the challenges ahead...

full interview: http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y08/m02/i04/s01