If the system disallows leaving legitimate feedback (i.e. negative feedback for poor buyers), it’s a joke. I’m looking at filtered and incomplete results due to a broken system which defeats the purpose.
I’m not looking for an arguement but I feel like it’s pretty clear we’re looking at this issue from different sides. I’m almost always a buyer when I’m on eBay, only having sold two items in the last 4 or so years. From a buyer’s perspective, the system works just fine as it doen’t let dishonest sellers discourage honest responses from buyers. It may or may not be a “joke” from a seller’s perspective; I haven’t been in that position enough to know.
You’re right, but you have to see that this is pretty much what the old system was from the buyer’s perspective. Legitimate feedback regarding sellers wasn’t “disallowed” but it was discouraged by the threat of retaliatory feedback. I’m not saying the new system’s perfect or that the old one was broken, just that both have flaws for users on different sides.
Mangetout: I don’t know if you can really point out one side or the other as being “customers” that cleanly. After all, the system doesn’t work without both buyers and sellers on board, so it’s certainly in eBay’s interest to incentivize both to use the site, not just he sellers.
Well, the thing is, most sellers saw that then they could withhold feedback, and thus the buyer would not want to give out poor FB, as the seller would then give out a “retaliatory NEG”. This grew to be such a huge problem that the right of sellers to hand out Negative feedback was taken away.
Feedback for sellers is not in any way shape or form a “joke”. It’s a pretty solid rating, and something that a buyer needs to be aware of and take into consideration.
Now sure, the fact that a buyer has “100% positive feedback” is meaningless. But feedback for a buyer is still slightly important- if you have a buyer with a FB score of 3 bidding on a high value item, as opposed to one with a score of 1000, as a seller you’d really prefer the high FB buyer. True, the “100% positive feedback” doesn’t mean much, but the number is significant.
For a seller, FB is critical- you want good feedback and a lot of it. A FB score of under 100 will make many buyers wary and a rating on under 99% will also do so.
Oddly, some old-school sellers now withhold feedback from buyers until the buyer has left FB first. They do this either out of the old idea that a retaliatory NEG could be left or out of a being disgruntled from the change many years ago. This is a mistake. Since a seller can no longer give poor FB to a buyer, the idea is to give fast positive FB to the buyer asap so that the buyer will feel thanked and feel a obligation to return the favor- and also be a return customer, too. Ebay allows a seller to have settings which give automatic positive Fb upon receipt of payment, and that’s the best way to go.
Those sellers who say they can’t give out FB until the buyer give FB first are lying. They have just set their preferences to give auto FB upon receipt of FB instead receipt of payment. Their choice, not something forced upon them.
Pretty much, the only legit reason to give a buyer Negative feedback is a Non-paying Bidder. But in reality, sellers don’t need to give that as FB, they just file that vs a buyer, and if a buyer gets hit for just a few of these they are kicked out.
But yes, let us suppose you have a buyer who has a decent rating but did fail to pay, and you were allowed to give that buyer a NEG. What good what that do? Sellers can’t look at a buyers rating before they are allowed to bid. So, poor FB for a buyer doesn’t warn the seller off like poor feedback for a seller warns savvy buyers off from poor sellers.
That is more or less just a matter of ease of collection and hiding the fees from the masses. Ebay could just as easily have auctions be totally fee-free and you just pay a buyers premium on everything you buy. From my perspective the buyers are definitely the real customers - otherwise why haven’t more sellers moved to another platform, why did amazon auctions fail, etc ? Because buyers drive sellers, much more than sellers drive buyers (especially at the not even close to a bargain stage Ebay is at right now).
A couple of people have mentioned this. As a buyer, I knew nothing about this. Can someone please explain what the consequences of receiving fewer than five stars are? I recently bought something from a seller who I thought charged a little (but not much) too much postage but otherwise was fine. I left four stars under the shipping and handling rating. Did I do something terrible to the seller?
5 stars basically means “did what he was supposed to”. Anything below 5 stars is points off for dissatisfaction about what the seller did.
I guess if you think he charged too much for postage, knocking a point off seems reasonable.
The issue is it’s a scale which knocks points off for doing wrong, but doesn’t add points for going above and beyond (you can’t rate 6 or 7, for example). But to the average buyer, you imagine that 3 is normal and 4 and 5 are for great service. But from eBay’s point of view, 5 is normal, there is no above normal, and below 5 is substandard service.
eBay sellers don’t get a rating for great service. They just get a 5 for “as expected”, and less for “not as expected”. And the system actually punishes them by charging them more for ratings under 5.
It’s sucky.
I think Alley Dweller was asking specifically what form this punishment takes. I’m curious as well as considering 5 the only acceptible rating on a 5 point scale seems rather draconian, especially if it isn’t clearly explained to all involved.
http://reviews.ebay.com/What-Buyers-Should-Know-About-Feedback-DSRs-Stars_W0QQugidZ10000000009447308
It looks like for small time sellers, it makes no difference except that you might get booted, and you show up farther down in the search if it gets too low. For large (“power”) sellers it appears that the fees are discounted if it is high enough. I have no beef with them doing that but basing it on 5 stars is stupid - ebay was one of the few sites that didn’t screw it up with only positive/neutral/negative feedback choices, so why they decided to go with 5 stars instead of bad/neutral/good or even just bad/good doesn’t make much sense to me.
No, but as a buyer, I’m interested in knowing the seller’s entire history. If they were a jag-off while buying items, that would influence whether I want to transact with them from either direction (especially for people with low feedback numbers).
Search rankings and fees, I believe. I 4 star review can reduce a seller’s overall profits in a way that doesn’t exist in any other industry.
I don’t know if it’s still true (as I don’t sell on eBay at all any more), but in the past, a reduced DSR rating would mean demotion of your listings in search results (regardless of the sort order chosen by the person searching), and I believe in some cases, it also meant that eBay/PayPal would not release payments until proof of delivery was provided.
Yeah - I concede that it’s an ecosystem that requires both buyers and sellers, but the apparent contempt eBay holds for its sellers still amazes me. I’m all for incentives, but their approach is all stick and no carrot.
I used to sell quite a bit on eBay at the time when the changes to feedback etc were introduced (and in truth, none of these changes were responsible for me stopping - it was the gradual shift away from flea market and toward retail blandness that did that), and I understand why they changed feedback to prevent retaliatory negs…
…But I believe it was an almost textbook example of a bad management decision - blunt implementation of a discommodious blanket policy to rectify the improper actions of a small, easily-identifiable minority.
In regards to feedback, I’ll admit that I was more likely to leave feedback once upon a time when I was selling/buying from SallyKitty (21) cleaning out her closet than today’s norm of MMG-DVD-EMPORIUM (3966) with whom I feel no personal rapport.
I’m almost strictly a seller; part of my job at work. I leave feedback as soon as we get paid to let the bidder know his part of the job is done.
With the current system its almost impossible to leave negative feedback against a buyer. I can’t even leave negatives for people who have failed to pay and then gotten rude in PMs over it. So a totally clean buyer slate doesn’t mean a thing about him. A better may be “feedback left for others”. If someone gets snotty in feedback they go right to my blocked bidder list.
Well, the other thing is that sellers didn’t leave NEG feedback for NPB, as they were afraid of a Retaliatory NEG. So they just filed for their fees and moved on. In fact, back in the day on the boards, that was the standard advice “Well, if your buyer hasn’t yet given you FB, then don’t NEG him, it’s not worth it”. So sellers weren’t leaving honest FB either.
In any case, as I said, sellers can’t effectively check the FB of a buyer before that buyer bids.
You do make a point, Kopek, that seeing what FB a user has left is a excellent guide- both for buyers and sellers
In my limited experience, I had no problem leaving neutral or negative feedback as deserved as a buyer or seller. Most often, the other party would try to negotiate a solution at that point to have the feedback removed rather than simply leaving retaliatory feedback.
I get that the change doesn’t phase you but it blew the system’s credibility for myself.
I’m on a seller’s blocked bidder list and I hope she goes bankrupt. I ordered a sweater set from a favorite ebay seller. Previously, I had ordered many items from her, paid promptly and left the highest level feedback, so I felt secure when I ordered this sweater set. I received only the cardigan.
I sent email after email inquiring as to the availability and shipment of the rest of my order or a refund.
After a month with zero response from the seller, I left negative feedback. That caught her attention, and she sent me the nastiest, most diatribe-filled email, telling me that her daughter had been sick, a friend had been handling her sales, how dare I, etc.
With that, she blocked me. As if I’d have dealings with her ever again.
I did finally get a refund, approximately 3 months later. Ebay did nothing to help resolve the issue, other than bland “work it out between the two of you” emails. I seldom use ebay any more.
And that may be the closest we ever came to agreeing on anything! WOOT!!! 
You did well and I wish you were a bidder with us but you would be surprised how many do. One bidder flamed me in feedback and opened a case against me with eBay and then bitched because I had blocked him. Dude, if I bother you that much and my merchandise is crap, just move on. Odds are I didn’t drastically change in the last week.