Changes to eBay's Feedback System...

[red-beard]

Good! That means I get my 100% rating back!

[stomachmonkey]

Buyers will only be able to receive positive Feedback.

How is that helpful?

Feedback more than 12-months old won't count towards your Feedback percentage.

But do you retain the number of feedback that you have received older than 12 months?

[kstar]

Sounds reasonable.

[RickM]

Well, seems that EBAY will do what they need to boost earnings. Positive feedback translates to higher share value.

[kstar]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

Buyers will only be able to receive positive Feedback.

How is that helpful?

Feedback more than 12-months old won't count towards your Feedback percentage.

But do you retain the number of feedback that you have received older than 12 months?

1) IMO, this may be designed to keep buyers who pay timely from getting retaliatory negatives?

2) Yes, my reading is that you keep all of your feedback.

FWIW.

Best,

Kurt

[flashgordon13]

Why not get rid of the feedback completely? How is it helpful to only have positive feedback? This sounds like another ploy to boost sales figures as RickM stated. I don't buy on ebay because of too many shady deals and this only casts more doubt in my eyes.

[Scott R]

This is bad for everyone but the scammers.

[kstar]

Sellers can still get negative feedback, FWIW.

If a buyer leaves a negative and doesn't pay (doesn't respond to UI request) the buyer's negative feedback to seller goes away.

Buyer either pays, and nothing happens, or doesn't pay and ends up in violation of eBay policies, yes? This seems better, IMO, then the non-paying buyer maybe only getting a negative feedback.

edit: This policy change may increase the number of UI filings by sellers.

I don't see huge problems, but maybe I am reacting too quickly.

Best,

Kurt

[dtw]

Not sure what a buyer can do wrong other than not pay. There are other means of dealing with NPBs; the feedback system is inefficient for it. The retaliatory feedback tactic keeps a LOT of buyers from posting correct, negative feedback on sellers. This should go a long way toward alleviating that.

As a long-time eBayer with hundreds of successful transactions - both buying and selling - I don't have any problem with these changes.

Now, I am looking forward to the day when my lone negative feedback, due to the prick who left me retaliatory feedback (he has since been tossed), falls off and my record is once again restored to perfect.

[legion]

After a frequent eBay user/friend of mine explained this to me, it is actually all good news.

[stealthn]

Doesn't say anything about the sellers? Wouldn't the sellers make up the majority of negative ebay experience? I don't know I only buy..

[HardDrive]

Originally Posted by stealthn

Doesn't say anything about the sellers? Wouldn't the sellers make up the majority of negative ebay experience? I don't know I only buy..

No. Bad sellers wash out pretty quickly, because no one will buy from them. Once you dip below 90%, you pretty much wash out. I really don't even look at sellers that are below 98%.

But abrasive morons can stick around as buyers forever.

[stealthn]

Counterpoint - Victory, hold you by the snargglies for positive feedback

[Carrman]

I've had great luck on eBay for several years now. But, I currently had my first non-paying bidder. I sent her 5 or 6 e-mails, after a week or so, she sent me one e-mail saying she would pay immediately, she didn't. I sent another 5 or 6 emails, never heard from her again. After almost a month after the close of the auction, I relisted it and sold it to someone else.

I'm tempted to give her a negative feedback, but if I do that, can she give ME a negative?? If so, it doesn't seem worth the risk, and I should just let it go, no?

Also, if I give her negative feedback on the 59th day, and the 60th day passes, will she be unable to give me a negative? Or does she get 60 days from my feedback?

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Meh. It's a little improvement and a little regression, IMHO.

- If I sell to someone and the buyer flat-out flakes or pays with a bad check or whatever, I can't report it? WTF?

- I have to use EBay's (*****ty) dispute forum for every dispute? This is the same one that high-dollar sellers get to "pay off" to scrub all their negatives, right? Yea. Very impartial.

I think this has more to do about padding Ebay's bottom line than it has to do with any great sense of altruism or fairness on their part. They want people to come on and see a bunch of sellers with 100% feedback so they can collect more transaction fees. That's what this is really about. Ebay loses when someone decides not to bid (or "bid up") an item because they think the seller's feedback score is too low.

I like the idea of switching from 90 days to 60 days for negatives though.

I think the rolling 12-month clock for % is bogus. See above.

"Buyers will be held more accountable"? Huh? How exactly? It sounds good, but what does this mean exactly? Is Ebay going to actually start doing something now?

[johndglynn]

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

"Buyers will be held more accountable"? Huh? How exactly? It sounds good, but what does this mean exactly? Is Ebay going to actually start doing something now?

I mucho doubt it.

This thing with no neg for waste of space buyers is a bad plan. I never leave neg for buyers, but neg left by lower-rated people than me is useful to see, so I can judge who to blow out of my sales on the basis of poor trading history.

Doesn't come up that often but is useful when it does.

[ChrisBennet]

Someone on the board mentioned a while ago that sellers can pay EBay to "clean up" their feedback. I think it was in the context of why Victory (car dealer) can have such a good feedback score.
-Chris

[gprsh924]

Good, soon enough my feedback will go from the 80% it is currently at back up to 100% (relatively new to ebay). The one negative feedback I got was from this summer. I was selling some extra Jimmy Buffet Concert tickets that I had. The auction ended late on a friday night, I went to NYC for the weekend, and the tickets didn't get out until Monday. The concert was on the upcoming Saturday so I told my mom (I was still out of town) to ship them express mail for me, but she did standard mail anyways. Luckily the tickets still made it there on friday (this was within the same state) plenty of time before the concert.

I stupidly left feedback first, leaving positive feedback and praising the buyer for being patient with the shipping. I know I cut it close, but at the end of the day, she got the tickets in plenty of time. I looked at my computer the next day to see negative feedback and this description of me "Worst Ebayer ever!! Took over a week to receive the tickets. Bad bad bad!!"

I tried to talk to her to get her to remove the bad feedback and appeal to logic. Because she was a woman, I should've known better. She continued to complain that it had taken so long to receive the tickets and continued to b*tch me out. Oh well.

[89911]

[QUOTE=Carrman;3735953]
I'm tempted to give her a negative feedback, but if I do that, can she give ME a negative?? If so, it doesn't seem worth the risk, and I should just let it go, no?

/QUOTE]

You just summed up what is wrong with the present system. You are withholding honest feedback just because you are fearful of hurting your own. It definitely has its flaws. Having 100% feedback after a few hundred or thousand auctions if like owning a store where everyone that shops there is happy and there are no returns. Show me someone that has 100% feedback after many auctions and I'll show you someone that has many times withheld giving honest feedback just to keep their ratings. Maybe the new system will prevent this.

[red-beard]

Yep, my one negative was retaliation for honest feedback. The seller duplicated the auction and then didn't have the item. And he wouldn't contact me for a refund. He had the gall to say I paid late, when I used paypal to pay within 2 or 3 minutes of the Auction ending.

It used to be that if a person was no longer registered, the feed back went to neutral. Well, that was for positive feedback. Negative stays.