eBay rolls back Best Offer changes

[Kristijntje]

eBay said Wednesday it was rolling back changes to its Best Offer feature. The changes had been part of the Safeguarding Member ID (SMI) project, but took users by surprise when they began appearing for the first time on Monday.

As AuctionBytes reported yesterday, buyers' IDs were partially hidden from sellers, who were no longer able to add comments when responding to a Best Offer...

full article: http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m03/i15/s02
related article: http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m03/i14/s03

As many sellers discovered, on Monday we made a number of changes to the Best Offer feature.  This came as a surprise to sellers who use this feature on their listings, however, and many were concerned.  As of Wednesday morning (today), these changes are in the process of being rolled back.  To learn what happened, read on...

No General Announcement to the Community was made, and the absence of any official word from us understandably compounded the confusion.  Affected sellers were left wondering what value the changes served: "It just mystifies me that the SELLER can't see the BIDDER.  I can't even SAY how mad that makes me. If I click that I accept their offer, I don't know who they are. On BIN they have to pay immediately, but if I accept the offer, the auction goes away as sold, even if they HAVEN'T paid."

The biggest concern for many was the fact that the truncated bidder User IDs left them blind when trying to evaluate an offer from a buyer...

full article: http://www.ebaychatter.com/the_chatter/2..._chan.html

[Boucher]

I haven't seen this yet since my last listing with BIN or Best Offer were in January but it smells like eBay is more worried about off-ebay transactions than it is with scammers.

Hide the damn buyer IDs until the offer is accepted and allow the seller to be able to fully evaluate the bidder at the time the offer is made. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

[BellisimaJ.]

it smells like eBay is more worried about off-ebay transactions than it is with scammers.

You are too right, Boucher. They are, as usual, much more concerned about their bottom line than anything else. They have been wanting to tighten up in that area for a long time.

Ebay sucks!