Recent feedback changes highly offensive and unfair to the best sellers

[vssoutlet]

It started with Concierge Sellers losing their four complimentary feedbacks per quarter.  I know that buyers love to complain about having their feedback removed, but Concierge Sellers represent the best sellers on eBay; the sellers that have a long history of providing excellent customer service. We NEVER went through our complimentary feedback removal quota, but it was a very useful features to eliminate feedback that was, for lack of a better term "crazy." This includes people leaving negative or neutral feedback without reaching out to the seller for a resolution (we ALWAYS provide resolutions for our buyers), leaving feedback because they have had a bad day at work, or leaving feedback that has nothing whatsoever to do with the transaction. NONE of these are strict policy violations. And now, sellers can do nothing about them.

Next, eBay "automated" the feedback review system. No longer could we talk to a representative to make what is often a complex case. Here is a good example: a buyer left us a Neutral feedback - in Korean - which said "sorry for the late feedback." In other words, feedback that had nothing to do with the product or the transaction. Whenever I receive a negative or neutral, I always do two things:

1) Reach out to the buyer to see if there is an unresolved problem. In this case (and in almost every case where people leave Negative or Neutral feedback without communication), I got no response. If the buyer does not respond, they get blocked from shopping at our store. And we ALWAYS try to resolve their issue (if there is one) BEFORE asking for a feedback revision.

2) Look at the feedback they left for other sellers. In this case, buyer left 13 feedbacks: 2 positive, 1 negative and 10 NEUTRAL. This means that he left feedback other than positive more than 80% of the time. When I contacted eBay about this, they said that there was nothing they could do because the buyer didn't violate any policies. Either this is the unluckiest buyer on eBay, they don't understand the purpose of feedback, or they simply like to crap on the lawns of good sellers (I researched the sellers as well)

eBay REALLY needs to take a good hard look at the fairness to sellers of the feedback system. Here are some ideas:

1) Get rid of automated feedback review. Let a seller make their case to a human.

2) Deny the buyer the ability to leave Neutral or Negative feedback unless they have reached out to the seller with their problem, opened a return or a case. Good sellers deserve the chance to make things right before feedback is left.  We ALWAYS do, and in 26 years on eBay, I can count on the fingers of one hand the times where we were not able to make a buyer happy. 

3) Remove the N/N "Frequent Flyers" from the platform. They are people, like this buyer, who routinely leave negative and neutral feedback for no good reason.  Pretty much anyone who sells to people like this buyer are going to get Neutral or Negative feedback.

4) Expand the definition of "Feedback Abuse" to include irrelevant feedback.

5) Require feedback on ebay.com to be left in English (or translated to English). Readers who see Negative or Neutral feedback, can infer the worst from feedback that they cannot read. Feedback that cannot be translated should be rejected by the system.

The objective is to create a FAIR feedback system for everyone. These fixes would do that. 

After all, eBay is all about transparency, right?

[vssoutlet]

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@mam98031 wrote:

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@fern*wood wrote:

I'm not new and have received my fair share of good, bad & ugly feedback.   Some qualified for removal, but my beef is the "complimentary" removals you speak of for some big time sellers or "best sellers" as you put it.   Possibly this practice has spoiled it for everyone.  The highly offensive and unfairness seems to me what some sellers are experiencing now in situations where their bad feedbacks appear to qualify for removal, but now aren't being removed.   A recent poster with a buyer requested cancellation received a negative that wasn't removed---that seems wrong.

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I agree.  And it is even more insulting to the rest of us when sellers with this benefit holds themselves out to be the Best of the best sellers on the site.  They have had the complimentary removal of negative FB, I have not.  If I had that benefit, I too would have no negatives.

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I certainly do not claim that everyone in Concierge is "one of the best sellers." I believe we are. We have near-perfect stats for timely shipping, no unresolved cases, consistent excellent feedback, adhering to all eBay rules. I believe that Concierge should provide an elevated level of service to those who meet these very strict levels of quality and customer service. It is not a matter of "holding themselves out." The statistics don't lie.

[vssoutlet]

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@mam98031 wrote:

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@vssoutlet wrote:

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@fern*wood wrote:

I'm not new and have received my fair share of good, bad & ugly feedback.   Some qualified for removal, but my beef is the "complimentary" removals you speak of for some big time sellers or "best sellers" as you put it.   Possibly this practice has spoiled it for everyone.  The highly offensive and unfairness seems to me what some sellers are experiencing now in situations where their bad feedbacks appear to qualify for removal, but now aren't being removed.   A recent poster with a buyer requested cancellation received a negative that wasn't removed---that seems wrong.

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A good reason to deny people who cancel the ability to leave feedback. Feedback should be reserved for completed transactions, not buyer-initiated cancellations.

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Not all cancellations are by the buyer's request.  Some sellers that find the need to cancel a transaction will cancel it using the reason that the buyer asked for the cancellation to avoid a defect, when the buyer never asked.

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You are correct. The cancellations I am referring to are buyer initiated. And you should never cancel a transaction for any reason without notifying the buyer and obtaining their consent. It is bad business.

[vssoutlet]

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@lacemaker3 wrote:

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@vssoutlet wrote:

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@fern*wood wrote:

I'm not new and have received my fair share of good, bad & ugly feedback.   Some qualified for removal, but my beef is the "complimentary" removals you speak of for some big time sellers or "best sellers" as you put it.   Possibly this practice has spoiled it for everyone.  The highly offensive and unfairness seems to me what some sellers are experiencing now in situations where their bad feedbacks appear to qualify for removal, but now aren't being removed.   A recent poster with a buyer requested cancellation received a negative that wasn't removed---that seems wrong.

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A good reason to deny people who cancel the ability to leave feedback. Feedback should be reserved for completed transactions, not buyer-initiated cancellations.

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The big issue with that is:  many, or most sellers (not to say all sellers) will request that the buyer cancel the transaction because they can't fulfill it, and then cancel with the reason "buyer requested" even though and despite the fact that the buyer replied and said, quote, "No, I don't want to cancel, I want to receive the item I bought and paid for".

Been there, done that.

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If the buyer says that, I believe that the seller is ethically required to either fulfill the order or do an "at fault" cancel. I do have to say that the "at fault" cancel threshold is so incredibly low (for losing TRS status) that it incentivizes sellers to never use it, or to ship another item that the buyer did not order into order to avoid using it. A seller with thousands of sales might require only 2 "at fault" cancellations to knock them out of TRS status. That seems unfair.

[fern*wood]

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@vssoutlet wrote:

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... And you should never cancel a transaction for any reason without notifying the buyer and obtaining their consent. It is bad business.

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That sounds uncomfortably close to a seller initiated cancellation.  If a buyer requests to cancel, why would a seller need to get their consent?  

[vintagecraze50]

You do not need to get their consent in a message sent to them at all if THEY cancel. 

[vintagecraze50]

The seller at fault cancel IS incredibly low, and that is to keep you on your toes to prevent that from happening in the first place. I hate that it is so low but it also is a metric to slash your ebay discounts as well which gives ebay extra cash if you screw up. SOOO keep track of your inventory. I do this at least once a week or more depending on how much inventory I have accumulated.

[fern*wood]

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@vintagecraze50 wrote:

You do not need to get their consent in a message sent to them at all if THEY cancel. 

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Exactly my point.

[vintagecraze50]

The whole complimentary if it is indeed COMPLIMENTARY WITH NO QUESTIONS ASKED thing, probably started when very high volume sellers were screaming about the high numbers of what you call irrelevant feedback. That definition irrelevant is really sketchy. What the heck does irrelevant mean anyway to you to ebay to the customer. It might be irrelevant to you, but NOT to the buyer. You cannot just assume that what someone wanted to say is irrelevant without a EBAY definition oF what THAT means. It’s completely UNCLEAR. 

If SOMEONE WOULD LEAVE US AN UNCLEAR SKETCHY looking feedback, I would reply under it to clarify it. If they leaves a totally false depiction of what that transaction involved the same clarification for what transpired. 

[mam98031]

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@vintagecraze50 wrote:

The seller at fault cancel IS incredibly low, and that is to keep you on your toes to prevent that from happening in the first place. I hate that it is so low but it also is a metric to slash your ebay discounts as well which gives ebay extra cash if you screw up. SOOO keep track of your inventory. I do this at least once a week or more depending on how much inventory I have accumulated.

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Where did you learn that seller initiated cancellations are low?  Why would you "hate that it is so low"?  I'm certainly missing something and I'm just trying to understand.

[mam98031]

If the buyer says that, I believe that the seller is ethically required to either fulfill the order or do an "at fault" cancel. I do have to say that the "at fault" cancel threshold is so incredibly low (for losing TRS status) that it incentivizes sellers to never use it, or to ship another item that the buyer did not order into order to avoid using it. A seller with thousands of sales might require only 2 "at fault" cancellations to knock them out of TRS status. That seems unfair.

I would argue that for some Sellers, being TRS doesn't matter, have a low at fault cancellation because they misuse the cancellation process and call it a  buyer requested cancellation when it is not.  I've seen many instances of this on the threads over the years and Ebay is cracking down on sellers that abuse this process.  It is easy for Ebay to tell if the buyer requested the cancellation or if they didn't.

You're allowed up to 2% of transactions with defects within an evaluation period.

You'll only be evaluated as Below Standard if your transaction defects are associated with more than 4 different buyers.

https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/selling-policies/seller-performance-policy?id=4347#defects

[carlmarxx]

Ebay  doesn't  know  if in fact  buyer did request  the seller to do cancellation  for valid reason  Vs.  a problem seller  that is abusing the system to avoid  getting a strike  on their  account  . I have seen and read  thread about problem  sellers that do false cancellations over not getting enough  money  on auctions final bid  from the winning buyer.   I have had happen  on auctions I won  and gotten some funny phony reason from  sellers  canceled sale's .

[mam98031]

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@carlmarxx wrote:

Ebay  doesn't  know  if in fact  buyer did request  the seller to do cancellation  for valid reason  Vs.  a problem seller  that is abusing the system to avoid  getting a strike  on their  account  . I have seen and read  thread about problem  sellers that do false cancellations over not getting enough  money  on auctions final bid  from the winning buyer.   I have had happen  on auctions I won  and gotten some funny phony reason from  sellers  canceled sale's .

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I'm not sure "valid reason" is part of the requirement at all.  And yes Ebay can know if the buyer actually requested the cancellation for whatever reason they have via the emails in Ebay.  

[brightlightbookseller]

They can't automate that (well), though, and they want everything to be automated now. So it likely will never happen.

[mam98031]

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@brightlightbookseller wrote:

They can't automate that (well), though, and they want everything to be automated now. So it likely will never happen.

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I didn't suggest that they were, but with that said, with the assistance of AI they can get close.  You may not feel they are taking an interest in finding sellers that abuse the cancellation system, but sometime last year at one of the Monthly Chat [I think] they told us they were cracking down on it and that they encouraged buyers to report sellers that abuse it.  

Some sellers may not be aware, but when they cancel a transaction an email is sent to the buyer and it states the reason the seller selected for the cancellation.

[brightlightbookseller]

I just recently asked a seller to cancel a transaction (on my personal buying account) and got that email, yep.  But corroborating between messages and a seller's chosen reason to cancel is probably just beyond what they want to try to program for.