OT eBay changes... IDIOTS!

Rickc300

The following was taken from the official message from eBay:

Seller Update: Fees, Rewards & Standards
eBay buyers want value and selection from sellers they can trust--and good sellers deserve rewards for delivering great customer service. That's why we're making a number of important changes that may affect you:

Reduced Listing Fees
You asked, we listened. We're reducing Insertion Fees and adjusting Final Value Fees to lower your up-front cost to sell on eBay. You wanted free Gallery, now you've got it--plus more feature discounts.
Lower Insertion Fees
Making Gallery free
Lower fees for Gallery Plus, Picture Pack, and Feature Plus


Rewards for great sellers
There will be discounts and incentives for those who satisfy customers best. Who decides who gets rewarded? Customers do, by giving sellers high Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs).
More search exposure through Best Match
Fee discounts for PowerSellers
Increased protection for PowerSellers


Feedback Changes
Significant changes coming soon will increase buyer confidence and showcase good sellers.
Buyers will only be able to receive positive Feedback.
Positive repeat customer Feedback will count and Feedback more than 12 months old won't.
Negative and neutral Feedback left by the buyer will be removed for transactions in which a buyer doesn't respond to the Unpaid Item (UPI) or if the member is suspended.

The following is from when I clicked one of the links in the above message... Rick

Feedback Changes
The eBay Feedback system was designed to provide a simple, honest, accurate record of member experiences. Focusing on customer service includes doing everything we can to grow customer confidence in our sellers.
Buyers will only be able to receive positive Feedback.
Positive repeat customer Feedback will count (up to 1 Feedback from the same buyer per week.)
Feedback more than 12-months old won't count towards your Feedback percentage.
When a buyer doesn't respond to the Unpaid Item (UPI) process the negative or neutral Feedback they have left for that transaction will be removed.
When a member is suspended, all their negative and neutral Feedback will be removed.
Buyers must wait 3 days before leaving negative or neutral Feedback for sellers with an established track record, to encourage communication.
All Feedback must be left within 60 days (compared to 90 days today) of listing end to encourage timely Feedback and discourage abuse.
Buyers will be held more accountable when sellers report an unpaid item or commit other policy violations.

edited to add all the new changes...

MadMuffin

<< <i>Buyers will only be able to receive positive Feedback. >>





Surely that must be a mistake. If this is correct there is no point in the feedback system whatsoever.

Marcel

cacheman

<< Buyers will only be able to receive positive Feedback. >>

Then my ebay seller days are over...

MadMuffin

I found some other notes regarding the feedback changes. It seems that sellers who leave bad feedback in retaliation is as big a problem as buyers who behave badly.

Quote from Ebay:

Evolving Feedback
The final set of changes I'd like to share with you concern Feedback. There's a lot of passion – in the Community and in the company – around the Feedback system, so I think it's important to remember our ultimate goal: We are evolving in many new areas so that eBay remains a vital, thriving marketplace that buyers will prefer over all the other choices they have on the Internet today.

To give you some background, the original intent of eBay's public feedback system was to provide an honest, accurate record of member experiences. Over the years, we've adjusted the system to add non-public means of providing feedback to try to improve its accuracy. For example, we instituted Unpaid Item Reports in 2006, and that has helped us to hold buyers accountable.

But overall, the current feedback system isn't where it should be. Today, the biggest issue with the system is that buyers are more afraid than ever to leave honest, accurate feedback because of the threat of retaliation. In fact, when buyers have a bad experience on eBay, the final straw for many of them is getting a negative feedback, especially of a retaliatory nature.

Now, we realize that feedback has been a two-way street, but our data shows a disturbing trend, which is that sellers leave retaliatory feedback eight times more frequently than buyers do ... and this figure is up dramatically from only a few years ago.

So we have to put a stop to this and put trust back into the system.

But I think – and I'm sure you'll agree – that the most compelling reason we need to change feedback is so that buyers will regain their confidence on eBay and they will bid and buy more often.

We explored a number of solutions, and talked to eBay's founder Pierre Omidyar, who created the Feedback system. He agrees that bold changes are required to fix Feedback. And that's exactly what we're going to do ... here's the biggest change, starting in May:

Sellers may only leave positive feedback for buyers (at the seller's option).

I know this is a huge change, but we're also putting into place protections that sellers have wanted for years. In addition to holding buyers accountable via non-public seller reporting tools, such as Unpaid Item reports, we are planning a number of other Seller Protections against inaccurate feedback:


We will remove, not just de-score, negative and neutral feedback when a buyer doesn't respond to the Unpaid Item process
We will remove all negative and neutral feedback and comments when a buyer (or seller) is suspended. We will also do this retroactively – which means any negatives and neutrals you've received from members we've ever suspended will be removed.
For sellers with an established track record, we'll prevent negative and neutral feedback within 3 days of listing end to promote communication.
We're going to reduce the number of days a member can leave feedback from 90 to 60 days.
We'll increase block bidder list capacity from 1,000 to 5,000 user IDs.
We'll increase our monitoring, and take action based on seller reports of buyers behaving very badly.
Feedback percentage will be based on the last 12 months, although the total count remains lifetime. This means that any negative or neutral feedback left for you more than 12 months ago will no longer affect your percent positive.
For more details, please see our information page.

End of quote

Seems like they try to protect both sellers and buyers here.

Marcel

CIVITAS

<< <i>Seems like they try to protect both sellers and buyers here. >>



It seems that way, but it's just a ruse. eBay previously had sellers bent incredibly far over a barrel. Now they've just gone ahead and "brought out the gimp."

drjules

We will remove, not just de-score, negative and neutral feedback when a buyer doesn't respond to the Unpaid Item process

But what about when eBay doesn't respond to the unpaid item process. I have reported four items as unpaid in the past, on one the bidder paid, one eBay did credit my listing fee and the other two they did nothing!

Dr J

ccrdragon

ebay seems to think that there is no such thing as a bad bidder on thier site - like the ones who for fun go thru and bid on 'buy it now' auctions and then never complete the deal or deadbeats who don't pay or only pay weeks after the auction because they have received nasty notices from the seller and ebay. now sellers cannot warn the whole community when someone is slow or a deadbeat... guess I am thru with selling over there... not to mention that most of the stuff that I would sell would go for less than the $25 limit where they have jacked the fees once again...

rwyarmch

As one who was considering using Ebay to sell as well as buy, I think I'll just....

fuggetaboutit!!!

drjules

Just one more thought about this "no negs for buyers" would ebay remove a comment that went - " I would not have given positive feedback unless I had too, avoid this deadbeat, lying, cheating buyer at all costs" ?

Dr J

danglen

Two years ago I was running 1,000 listings a week on eBay. Now I am down to under 200, and by the end of the year I plan to have a almost non-existent presence on their site. I made the decision to move my e-commerce traffic to my website and I have never regretted that decision. We now have over 5,000 items on our website and I don't have to answer to anyone but my customers, a move which I believe turned out better for all of us.

ASUtodd

This is the one draw back to capitalism. In our economy we strive to be the biggest and best company but greed usually gets the best of us. Ebay, like most companies, has gotten too big for it's "britches". Once this happen quality control goes out the window. Ebay is more concerned with money rather than keeping quality members that will continue to support their company. Once you alienate your quality customers your profits and business will fail. They are currently catering to the counterfeiters, scammers, and scum of the internet. They need to take a hardline stance against bad bidders, bad sellers, and bab members in general. They fear they will lose money but if they continue like they are they will lose a HUGE portion of their supportive base. Sad really.... I remember back in 98 when I first became a member how much I loved Ebay. Now I shudder when I look on there. It has went from a place where the common man can sell items laying around his house to a collection of power sellers that move nothing but crap. Big businesses have taken over Ebay and ruined for the rest of us. The good part of ebay is that you reach millions of people with your auction. It's quite amazing actually. They have to do something or someone else will come along and push them out of the market.
Todd