Feedback is not a major method of judging seller performance in the opinion of the internet marketplaces which have a seller feedback process.
Less than a third of Ebay transaction result in seller feedback because buyers know they will be refunded if they follow the relevant processes. Why waste time on feedback when you can make an appropriate claim and accomplish something.
Other sites have FB in the low single digits because those sites are thought of in the same way as retail stores. And FB was not invented on those sites, as it was on Ebay.
This is not like the early days of Ebay when Ebay was entertainment as well as shopping, and this is not the days of rampant seller fraud as it was in the early days of Ebay.
A negative FB is as likely to appear on an honest, ethical seller's account as it will on a slimeball's account. If the buyer is unhappy he leaves a negative, whether anyone else would be unhappy or not.
Product reviews on other marketplaces are as unreliable as FB. Amazon's Rufus bot answers questions about products. When asked many questions the response by Rufus is that there are buyers who say one thing and other buyers who say another. Like "is it reliable?" "Some buyers say yes, and some say no?
Some sellers add value to what they sell by how they prepare the item for sale, and how they handle the transactions. They may point to their feedback as proof they are offering superior service. The buyers who did not leave FB may not have seen any value in the seller's service, and they are the majority of buyers on the internet.
The automatic FB is neutral in its content and has the value of showing just how many orders the seller has shipped, which puts the positive FB in an appropriate context as a minority opinion, and often makes the negatives seem like a rounding error.
Not all sellers need external validation, and not all buyers need the opinions of strangers to make a buying decision.
Ebay made a decision which it knew would disturb the minority who think FB is useful.
