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EBay to Turn on Feedback System Changes

By Juan Carlos Perez

May 07, 2008 — IDG News Service —

EBay will roll out a host of changes to its feedback mechanism this month globally, including the controversial elimination of sellers' ability to leave negative feedback for buyers.

EBay announced the feedback changes along with modifications to other areas like its fee structure in January, prompting many sellers to complain and even organize a strike.

However, eBay has stuck to its guns and proceeded to implement the changes, seeking opinions from buyers and sellers while refining and modifying some details.

For eBay, the overarching goal for the changes is to improve the buying experience within the marketplace and lead sellers to improve in areas like shipping, fulfillment and communication.

One key area eBay identified as in need of improvement was its feedback process, intended to let buyers and sellers rate their interactions with each other.

With this review system in place, users could rate and find out the quality of buyers and sellers, propping up those who played by the rules and warning against inept or malicious participants.

Unfortunately, according to eBay, the feedback system in recent years became an increasingly common retaliatory tool used mostly by sellers to punish and intimidate buyers.

This in turn yielded artificially inflated positive ratings for many sellers, while discouraging buyers from leaving candid and honest feedback and from making future purchases, according to eBay.

To remedy this, sellers now will only be able to leave a positive rating for buyers. Meanwhile buyers will retain their ability to rate sellers both in general -- positive, neutral or negative -- and in more detailed ways. In addition, eBay is doing away with its "mutual feedback withdrawal" option, which allowed a buyer and a seller to agree to simultaneously remove the ratings they had given each other.

To counterbalance the sellers' loss of power, eBay is instituting several measures, such as removing negative and neutral ratings left by buyers who don't respond to complaints that they didn't pay for their items. Moreover, eBay will from now on -- and retroactively -- remove negative and neutral ratings on sellers from buyers who are suspended from the marketplace.

EBay is also giving sellers new options to proactively block certain buyers from doing business with them, such as those who have a certain number of unpaid-item and policy-violation claims. In addition, eBay is launching a new reporting hub that sellers can use to inform eBay about problematic buyers.

While eBay is to be commended for striving to improve the buying experience, the feedback changes could use further refinement and review, said Jonathan Garriss, executive director of the Professional eBay Sellers Alliance (PESA), a group of large sellers that has often been highly critical of eBay.

 

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