Has an eBay seller ever shortchanged you, the item wasn’t nearly as good as described or had some defect? When the seller wouldn’t make things right, you wanted to leave that person a negative, but wouldn’t, because you knew they’d retaliate. That was the flaw in the old eBay feedback system. Dishonest sellers could avoid negative marks by threatening to strike a negative mark against the short changed buyer. Now sellers are only allowed to leave positive feedback, or no feedback at all. This way sellers are held to a higher standard, no longer being able to avoid strikes by threatening retaliation.

The online auction giant, eBay.com announced “Starting May 19, 2008 sellers won’t be able to leave negative or neutral Feedback for buyers. They can either leave positive Feedback or not leave any Feedback at all.” This is a move that made many sellers upset, while causing the majority of users, buyers, to cheer.

The eBay feedback system works simply by allowing buyers to rate a seller on a particular completed transaction with a Positive, Neutral, or Negative mark. In addition, the buyer can enter a brief description of his or her thoughts on the transaction. All buyers and sellers have an overall eBay rating based on the accumulated marks. It isn’t uncommon for a buyer to have a 100% rating, meaning that the person has never received a negative or neutral mark.

Feedback policy changes being implemented this year by eBay have resulted in a power shift from the eBay seller to the eBay buyer. Due to the decline in eBay shoppers in general as a result of what some perceived to be a cloud of mistrust of the sellers, eBay executives decided to make this very significant feedback policy change.

The feedback system is life or death to the eBay seller. Having an unfavorable feedback score indicates that a seller has probably been less than honest. Buyers were previously discouraged from dispensing negative ratings even after being ripped off, because they did not want to receive a negative strike back. Now buyers can be more forthcoming on rating eBay sellers.

However, sellers too have to look at a buyers rating. Some eBay buyers are too picky or have standards higher than reasonable. Other sellers take an excessively long amount of time in sending a payment. Now that sellers are no longer able to contribute to a buyer’s feedback score, the eBay seller assumes more risk.

It is difficult to find the perfect balance between empowering the buyer and seller. However, buyers make up the majority of eBay users, and without them, eBay simply goes away. So eBay’s recent move might be a wise business decision to stay competitive in the online auction marketplace.

See eBay’s FAQ: Changes to the eBay Feedback system in 2008: [link]

Many sellers are throwing tantrums on the eBay discussion boards: [link]

This entry was posted on Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at 1:05 pm and is filed under Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.