Regards,
In 2008 eBay stopped letting Sellers leave less than Positive Feedback for Buyers. That means the Feedback system is unfair and biased towards Buyers. There are numerous Help Pages dedicated to Feedback Abuse, Misuse, Extortion, etc. To me that is an indication that despite the best intentions of the eBay Feedback system it is not very good. It is subjective in the extreme.
One trend I see with newer Buyers is they don't hesitate to slap down a Neg FB for a Seller without any effort in trying to work things out with their "Trading partner" (eBay's term for a Buyer and Seller on a transaction).
I also think NO Feedback should be allowed by EITHER Buyer or Seller on sold items at or below $ 20.00.
@valueaddedresource wrote:If that's the case, while I understand it may be frustrating, it's not like that feedback wasn't already visible to buyers...they just previously had to dig a little more to see it.
Buyers are unlikely to view more than the first page or two of a seller's feedback. Recent feedback is really all that matters anyway -- what happened 1-2-5-10-20yrs ago is likely no longer relevant in any way, shape, or form. Bringing it back to the first page is definitely going to have a negative impact on that seller, by no fault of their own. And this invalid bias may actually drive buyers away, possibly to another seller who still does have issues to work out... just not on their first feedback page.
IMHO, these are changes that could very easily have been slid into the Feb/Mar timeframe, away from the Christmas shopping and into a generally slow sales period. Issues might still have been there (later installation doesn't always more more accurate code or install process, just a later impact on production systems), but the impact would be much less of an issue, and likely to get fixed faster as well.
I've said it before -- eBay needs to pay more attention to when they install changes, announced or unannounced. And the fourth calendar quarter should be locked down, allowing only repairs to processes that are impacting seller's (and therefor eBay's) bottom line. This is practially gospel at other multi-national corporations -- you don't mess with (cash) production systems during their highest impact period. It's just not a bright thing to do.
-Bob.
@vintage_sterling_spoon_rings wrote:"Feedback Enhancements" eh? Now that's funny.
A month ago I was able to:
1 - look at my orders and see immediately if a buyer had left feedback...
2 - click on 'leave feedback'...
3 - post feedback to buyer.
Now I need to:
1 - go to 'Feedback Received' and see who has left feedback...
2 - Remember buyers name...
3 - Go to my orders...
4 - Scroll down to the order...
4 - Click box on buyers item...
5 - Scroll back up...
6 - Find 'Leave Feedback' tab...
7 - Click tab...
8 - Leave feedback.
Question: How is this an improvement?
You need better tools. I click once to bring up a list of orders where the customer has left positive feedback but I have not yet left my feedback. Two more clicks to select all those orders, and then two more to post a specific feedback to those orders - saved feedback text I send to all who leave me positive feedback. Two more clicks after that changes the status (within my application) to a completed/archive status I use to indicate the transaction is now complete: listed, bought, paid, shipped, received, approved, and buyer appreciated.
And I've been doing it this way for years. Similar economies-of-effort are available elsewhere - creating new inventory, posting new inventory, reposting unsold inventory, increasing or decreasing price, and even ending and relisting 'mature' listings.
Direct Message me if you want to know more.
-Bob.
@sapphire_studio wrote:So apparently you could always dig up feedback that was over a year old on desktop but it was not visible in the mobile app. Now it's really easy to see in the mobile app. What makes this the most unfair is that in the mobile app you cannot see the replies that sellers have made to the negative feedback.
eBay's recommendation is to not leave responses to feedback, especially negative feedback, as it may just tick the buyer off more, to the point where they leave the last word and reply to your reply, which is the last response allowed on that transaction. Yep - buyer gets the last word.
-Bob.
@valueaddedresource wrote:
@zobal99 wrote:Sellers are not getting it. Neg. seller feedback gives eBay the reason to tack on extra percentages to your selling fees that they charge you. So it benefits them to leave the neg. feedback and to leave it for 365 days. You can be paying them as high as 25% of your selling price.
@zobal99 feedback is not part of the calculation for Seller Performance or Service Metrics ratings and negative feedback alone will not result in additional fees.
Feedback generates a seller's rating. Ratings are used by buyers to determine which of multiple sellers to consider buying from -- those with higher ratings (a larger percentage of positive feeback) tend to get more views, and view beget sales.
Negative feedback is very often connected to a Return, and Returns ARE used to increase the fees paid by a seller. If your Return Percentage for a given category exceeds a preset level, an additional fee is tacked onto your FVF. So in this way, feedback -does- impact FVF. Might be minor, but 'minor' is still greater than 'does not'.
-Bob.
@wood2550 wrote:The updates that need to be made to feedback should be the situations that happen to sellers not always what happens to buyers. When a seller has done all that is possible and the buyer leaves the seller negative feedback that is not accurate then the negative feedback should be dismissed rather than have eBay tell you that "the buyer was relaying their feeling on the situation". The situation for the negative feedback should be based on what the emails between the seller and the buyer state that are exchanged on eBay. Buyers understand they can run over sellers because of the feedback policy that eBay has and we as sellers have no recourse. eBay will lose more and more sellers because of this.
eBay has never been concerned about losing sellers... there are always more signing up every day.
The fallacy of this is that it's the experienced sellers who are leaving, to be replaced by newbies who haven't got a clue what they are getting into, and then start 'bad-mouthing' eBay when the newbie's own mistakes create problems for them.
I may be unique, but I prefer to purchase from a seller with experience over a seller who just signed up in the last 2-3 months. If it's an inexpensive, easily replaced item, I may go with the newbie. But when I'm buying anything for my vehicles, anything for my computers, anythings for my kids or grandkids.... experience wins out, hands down, every time.
-Bob.
@mr_lincoln wrote:
In 2008 eBay stopped letting Sellers leave less than Positive Feedback for Buyers. That means the Feedback system is unfair and biased towards Buyers. There are numerous Help Pages dedicated to Feedback Abuse, Misuse, Extortion, etc. To me that is an indication that despite the best intentions of the eBay Feedback system it is not very good. It is subjective in the extreme.
One trend I see with newer Buyers is they don't hesitate to slap down a Neg FB for a Seller without any effort in trying to work things out with their "Trading partner" (eBay's term for a Buyer and Seller on a transaction).
I also think NO Feedback should be allowed by EITHER Buyer or Seller on sold items at or below $ 20.00.
I'm not as worried about the dollar amount as I am the number of transactions that newbie buyer has completed. In this case, completed means purchased, paid, received, not returned. If the buyer cancels - it doesn't count. If the buyer doesn't pay, they lose 3 completed points.
Personally, I'd rather do away with feedback altogether and go to a simple rating system of transactions completed, transactions unpaid, transactions returned. Unpaids and returns happen - true. But when the percentage of unpaid or returned exceeds a given threshold, either we are talking about the most unlucky person to be shopping online, or we are talking about a disruptive, abusive buyer.
Has anyone read thru the Shop Safe Act that eBay is trying to get us to help prevent? Interesting piece of consumer protection legislation, at times both overly broad and naively optimistic regarding buyer abuse. But there is one part I find most interesting -- member vetting. Sellers are already vetted on eBay - it takes more than just an email and a credit card to become a seller. But buyers are not vetted at all, meaning there is no meaningful way to stop disruptive and abusive buyers from being expelled and simply creating a new ID to continue on. Vetting of buyers would need to include use of their address information... which would make it harder to create new IDs after expulsion, and would also allow eBay to vet the address the same way sellers have to vet a delivery address (so as to not attempt delivery to an address that does not exist).
Now imagine if online venues were to pool those expelled addresses with USPS reported theft data. How much of an increase in early detection of scammers could we expect? How much more successful prosecution of said scammers would be achieved?
Feedback is outdated and ineffective except for buyer extortion of sellers. Get rid of it and move on to something less 'impression/feeling' and more 'how things ended'. Then eBay can focus on vetting buyers (like Amazon and other venues do) and start working towards a much better balance between buyer protections and seller protections. And while you're at it... how about reducing/eliminating "free returns" like Amazon and other online retailers are doing?
OK... time to take off the rose-colored glasses and stop daydreaming. After all, this is eBay we're talking about, right?
-Bob.
