For Community Team-- Product Reviews/Feedback Question
@devon@ebay
Yesterday, on the ebay for business podcast, Griff stated that an announcement would be posted today about the new "product review" feature that is gradually rolling out. So far, I haven't seen the Announcement.
Has ebay decided not to roll out this feature? Could you check the status of this?
26 comments
ten_o_nine
·2 years ago@my-cottage-books-and-antiques
Griff stated that an announcement would be posted today
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Would doesn't mean will.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
OP2 years ago@ten_o_nine My mistake. It wasn't Griff, it was @kayomi@ebay who said:
"Kayomi: Thanks for that update Jessica. You can find more about this new item review feature in the seller news announcement that should be live to site tomorrow, Wednesday, April 24th."
So, the word was "should" be live tomorrow. Which indicates the intention, but following through on such things has not always been an ebay hallmark, so regardless of word choice, my question remains: Have they changed their mind about this feature's release, or is the announcement going to be posted soon (although perhaps not today)?
chapeau-noir
·2 years agoI ran into this "feature" when I tried to leave feedback for a new set of paints I had purchased. I could not leave feedback for the sale without leaving feedback for the product. Since I hadn't used the product and couldn't decouple the product FB from the seller FB, I did not leave feedback.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
OP2 years ago@chapeau-noir Yes, I've seen others saying they will simply stop leaving feedback unless the two things are uncoupled.
tsme35
·2 years agoSame here, won't leave feedback if I have to review the product. Sad part, only 20% buyers leave FB as it is, only gonna get worse.
ittybitnot
·2 years agoYes, I've seen others saying they will simply stop leaving feedback unless the two things are uncoupled.
@my-cottage-books-and-antiques
Makes sense. What sort of review do you give on a 100 year old book?
"Might be a good story, don't have time to read it yet"
or a DVD
"This movie is really stupid".
or a broken radio
"Bought broken radio, it is still broken".
Does anyone know if this is just for NEW merchandise? FWIW, I had feedback to leave (all were vintage items) so I went to look just now, and that requirement was not present. I know maybe I will be forced to comply as it "rolls out" or something, but right now I don't have it.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
OP2 years ago@ittybitnot
For now, it is only select new commodity type items. They intend to expand it as time goes on.
"Jessica: Currently we are testing the ability to leave a product review inside of the normal seller feedback intake form. So that means that for items eligible for product review, buyers will be able to give the item a star rating for the first time and item feedback along with the existing seller feedback already.
Griff: So a product review is different than normal feedback?
Jessica: Yeah, product reviews have been around for a long time. So on eBay, some items that are sold by multiple sellers have a product review page on eBay which collects reviews for that item across all sellers who sell it. These are items like an iPhone or a Dyson vacuum. They're often things that are mass manufactured or have a barcode. And in product reviews buyers also have the ability to leave a star rating for the item as well. So that is why we are bringing it into our feedback form.
Griff: This is something we see on a lot of other marketplaces. Why is eBay adding this to the feedback form?
Jessica: This is a step in the direction we wanna help more buyers discover eBay sellers online. We've had past research show that item specific feedback is something potential buyers are really looking for to make a purchase decision. And we just haven't really highlighted that as much on eBay. What's more item reviews and item star ratings are super important to search engines like Google. So if you google an item, the sites that show the item star rating and item review are the results that are prioritized in search results these days. You'll see like those pop up absolutely at the top.
Griff: That is important.
Jessica: Yes, that's absolutely what buyers are looking for and that's what's driving buyers to those sites the most By encouraging more star ratings for items on eBay. We hope this will help in turn help our eBay sellers get discovered by more potential buyers in the future.
Griff: I look at those every time I'm shopping and I'm on Google shopping or if I'm on another marketplace where it says, you know, you can sort by reviews. I want to know the one that gets the highest review.
Jessica: Yes. We want our eBay sellers to be prioritized in search results. We want them to be found. This is the first step.
Griff: When you say first step, are there other steps coming in the future?
Jessica: We do wanna be able to allow item star ratings for more items across eBay but one step at a time.
Griff: It's probably more relevant if it's something like a barcoded item which or skuable item.
Jessica: Yeah, yeah, that was a a first step.
Griff: I know there'll be a seller news announcement. I've seen the draft. It has some screenshots about what this experience will look like. So if you're interested, if you sell these kind of products and you're interested to know what buyers you're gonna see, keep an eye out on the announcement board and in coming weeks we'll talk more about it and if you have questions, of course you can send them to podcast@ebay.com. Jessica, thank you. It's always a pleasure.
Jessica: Thank you so much.
Kayomi: Thanks for that update Jessica. You can find more about this new item review feature in the seller news announcement that should be live to site tomorrow, Wednesday, April 24th.
Griff: Right. So just check out the announcement board at community.ebay.com.
toomuchstuffagain35
·2 years agoAnd if I should want to read product reviews, I'll STILL go to AMZ to read them.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
OP2 years ago@toomuchstuffagain35 My impression, from the podcast discussion, is the main reason for this change is because apparently Google (and I'm guessing other search engines) have been giving better search results placement to products that have product reviews. ebay has millions of products, but very few have reviews.
So, I'd guess ebay doesn't really care if you read the reviews, the reviews are really just a way to get better placement in Google.
And for that reason, I think it's a good idea, but implementation seems flawed.
lotzofuniquegoodies
·2 years ago@my-cottage-books-and-antiques
The elephant in the room is IF a review is left will it be 100 % truthful? Majority of what I see I take with a very large grain of salt. Then will there be the need or the want to have "inaccurate" reviews removed and will it be possible? Like trying to compare Used item A to Used item B to Used item C. Subjectively impossible.
-Lotzofuniquegoodies
chapeau-noir
·2 years agoThis feature is already live, at least in my experience. I still haven't left FB for that transaction.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
OP2 years ago@chapeau-noir Yes, I think it is live, but there's been no actual Announcement....so people who are seeing it are largely in the dark about just what ebay is doing. An Announcement with more information would be helpful. Supposedly, the podcast will be providing more info in the coming weeks as well.
chapeau-noir
·2 years agoeBay has for years had serious problems with their communication, and I don't know why.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
OP2 years ago@chapeau-noir
It is a mystery. I've never understood it either.
chapeau-noir
·2 years agoI suspect Corporate just doesn't see it as important (just overhead, no doubt). I was in the documentation business for almost my entire career and OK, it's not bright and shiny, but it is essential. But the C-suite likes bright and shiny.
a_c_green
·2 years agoI see it as two general problems, and only one is self-inflicted.
Dealing with the general public can be a great effort with a minimal reward, and a lot of the usual processes don't scale very well to accommodate their huge user base. For example, Tech Support in my company was a handful of people, experts in their respective areas of our software products, dealing with an under-contract user base in the hundreds, which was not as bad as it sounds because on any given day, only a few customers would be calling in about something. If there was a product problem, we'd take it to Engineering (via our problem tracking system), follow up as needed, and notify the customer when a new release fix was available.
eBay, on the other hand, has a user base in the millions (give or take a bit), so a lot of the human contact you'd take for granted at other companies can't be easily supported here... especially for users with complicated problems or, ah, less-than-capable problem-solving abilities or communication skills. We here in the Community groups can choose to ignore posts that are simply rants, clueless, or just plain incoherent for whatever reason, whereas eBay Customer Support has to deal with every person who contacts them. No wonder they're trying to bring AI chats up to speed instead.
So that problem of theirs is at least partly due to their own success, being too big to easily support their user base. (It doesn't help that they have way too much reliance on cheap and undertrained CS staff.) But the second part is entirely of their own creation: a near-zero level of communication between eBay employees and the outside world.
By "communication" I mean actual two-way dialogue, and I'm also including intra-company communication as well. It's all very well to sit and listen to a podcast between two or more department heads, but when one says "We'll have an announcement tomorrow about it," and tomorrow comes and goes with no announcement, and no one else seems to have any idea about it either, that's a problem. Our Community contacts here will cheerfully refer problem reports to this team or that team, but they seem to never hear anything back in reply, certainly nothing quick in terms of an acknowledgement (e.g. "Thanks, we have reproduced the problem, and are working on it as ALERT12345.")
Similarly, if something does get fixed, no one ever gets an update about it. The fix or change is eventually discovered by someone here. Customer Service has no idea. No one from the Engineering side posts anything about it.
New changes or enhancements also go unannounced. They're sometimes described as a "test," but the results of the test are never discussed. Again, no one saw the changes coming, and no one from the group who instigated the changes wants to talk about them. They're just... there... for some users... and then maybe they're not... or they come and go depending on whether you cleared cookies 'n' cache... but (as I have said several times in the past) there's never anyone stepping forward to say, "I'm the project manager, and here's why we made this change, and here's why we think it's a good idea." No one within eBay seems to want to take responsibility for anything, and as a result the bad ideas stick around as long as the good ones; there is no effective way of pushing back against the bad decisions, or having any kind of meaningful dialogue about how they could be improved.
For example, the Feedback pages were recently changed to offer what was called "Most Relevant" ordering as an alternative to the usual Most Recent. However, there was no clear explanation of what the code thought was most "relevant" about this comment vs. that comment, and, adding insult to injury, the Most Relevant setting was hard-wired as the default choice, requiring users to switch back to Most Recent every single time they needed that ordering restored. No one has come forward to defend their design, or even to explain why they are not able to code the ordering choice as a sticky value that will be saved for the user.
That clampdown on communication between eBay employees and the outside world is not helpful for either side. It leads to the sort of coding chaos that occurs whenever eBay tries to change something that ends up breaking seven other things. A lot of us out here are coding, QA and testing professionals who would be more than happy to lend our expertise, but eBay seems determined to blunder on in their own unfocused way.
chapeau-noir
·2 years ago@a_c_green- that's an excellent summary of the situation.
The CS piece and the internal/external communication are separate but related - the management culture affects both and, yes, it's becoming more opaque.
ten_o_nine
·2 years ago@chapeau-noir
How do we know the announcement is about this feature?