Seeing as eBay is such a large part of our hobby for both game enthusiasts and those trying to make a dollar, I thought I'd bring an interesting new policy to light that greatly changes the whole eBay experience.
As many of you may or may not know, that
starting in May, eBay will no longer allow negative feedback from sellers to buyers. According to eBay's own statistics, sellers are
8 times more likely to respond to negative feedback with retaliatory feedback of their own.
The President of eBay North America Bill Cobb, said in a community forum post: "
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."
Although I can certainly understand their concerns, taking this away from sellers isn't going to solve the problem. In fact I can see many potential problems popping up and eBay hurting it's own growth with this. It's poorly conceived ideas like this that are making sites like
Craigslist and others more popular every day.
I freely admit that I've swallowed my own neutral or possibly negative feedback a few times because of this retaliation threat. I mean really, who going to suffer more, a buyer with a few dozen feedbacks but one negative, or a seller with one negative amongst a thousand positives that month, and thousands more positives to their credit? Surely there has to be a better way to handle this trend?
In any case, if you read through the source article and check out the eBay forums, you see the growing animosity from sellers. Talk of work stoppages and protests, sellers switching to other services and auction sites. So as much as this may help buyers in some ways, it also hurts because many Powersellers are taking their wares elsewhere where buyers may not be able to access them.
In their own defense, eBay has instituted a few more seller protection policies to offset this inability for feedback. If a buyer fails to complete the transaction or have their account suspended, negative/neutral feedback will be removed. Also, buyers will have a shorter window for leaving feedback and a 3 day delay after the transaction is completed. Small comfort for either side I'm sure.
So what's your take on all of this? I know here at RFGen we have many sellers and buyers who will be greatly affected by this. Do you think it's fair? Is there a better solution?
Original source article:
http://arstechnica.com/ne...icy-no-real-feedback.html
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Awesome picture... LOL
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I don't really see this as a huge problem. As a buyer, I've always feared retaliation if I ever leave negative feedback for a seller, due to being unsatisfied with the service/product, whatever. Most sellers aren't interested in fair play, and will just respond with a negative feedback of their own, even if the buyer paid promptly and correctly. So while some sellers may see this as unfair, shouldn't sellers be more responsible/careful in the first place? I haven't sold a lot on Ebay, but what I have sold, I always made sure that a Paypal payment has been received and cleared before shipping anything out. I've never had to look at a buyer's feedback before.
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I think the picture says more than just ebay shafting sellers. What happens at the end of bull fights?
There are also the changes to payment options for certain sections. "Options" meaning you can only use Paypal. So sellers are being shafted even more with extra fees if they normally only use other payments.
I haven't used ebay for a long time. Prices are going up and up because of sellers compensating for fees and buyers putting a little bit more into each sale. The "going rate" then gets higher so people think that's what it's worth. Then they put a little more into it because 50p or so doesn't hurt. And so it goes on.
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@James:
Well in this case the bull wins the fight but loses the war. Paypal steps in and uses the sword to hack both into bits. 
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@Kimoosabi:
"So while some sellers may see this as unfair, shouldn't sellers be more responsible/careful in the first place?"
This is sort of the way I feel about it.
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Also buyers can be unfair ahd an dispute with a seller, keep spamming cause he thought shippoing was to high. and later on he start bidding to give negative feedback.
Anyway why don't they do some really innovative things for sellers. I think for sellers a system like yahoo japan auctions has which extends auction with x minutes when there is a bid in the last x minutes will sellers get higher prices and buyers a fairer chance against snipe bidding bids filled by computersystems for the last seconds.
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@sharp:
"Also buyers can be unfair ahd an dispute with a seller, keep spamming cause he thought shippoing was to high. and later on he start bidding to give negative feedback."
While this is all true, and I agree with you, all of this can be done by buyers already. I'm not saying it's right, because it definitely isn't, however the new changes don't make this situation worse, or better.
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Something definitely has to be done.
In a way, I see this as a good thing having been ripped off big time by sellers, but didn't leave negative feedback so my 100% feedback score over all the years I've used eBay doesn't get screwed over. It's all really tricky as eBay has been built on a honesty system in the past as far as feedbacks go hoping everyone plays fair.
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http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140205210628
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Ebay should just make it so the buyer and seller don't see the other persons feedback untiil both parties leave their feedback. Then the seller won't know if the buyer left him a negative until he posts his own feedback. This seems like such an obvious and easy solution, I don't uderstand why Ebay wouldn't do it.
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That is brilliant Jared!
It'll fix all the feedback BS. There is nothing worse than dodgy sellers who don't even leave feedback after you've already done your bit for being a good buyer, instead they wait for your feedback holding you at ransom, waiting for your feedback 1st.
Great link James, every word that user had to say is just so true. The combination of eBay & PayPal will screw you up faster than you can imagine. Although I have probably already told everyone of my experience with trying to fight PayPal, I'll try to recap as quickly as possible.
Sell an item on eBay for around $600 to a guy in Italy, shipping is via sea and takes 2 - 3 months to arrive. A week later I get a complaint they haven't received their item yet. Another week, a PayPal claim is made. I tell them it's not even meant to arrive until 2 - 3 months. After 1 month is up PayPal demand I pay them the money as they have already taken the liberty of taking the funds out of my PayPal account leaving me -$600. I spent probably around a year trying to fight them until eventually they resorted to a collection agency to get the money, so I had no choice but to pay them for steeling my item.
Oh, but at least the buyer gave me positive feedback! 
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