Off The Cuff

eBay Tweaking It’s Feedback System. Sellers Unhappy

Posted by: From Arkansas in Are You Kidding Me?, Odds And Ends on Jan 30 2008

Welcome back!

For years, eBay has had a feedback system that allowed buyers and sellers the ability to give ratings based on the level of cooperation with the transaction. Some years ago, the sellers started holding the good feedback hostage so that the buyer would give good feedback first. If they did not like any portion of the transaction and gave bad feedback, the seller would in turn give bad feedback to the buyer, even if the buyer paid promptly.

Now eBay is in the process of tweaking the feedback system so that although the buyer can give honest feedback, including the bad feedback that some sellers do deserve, the sellers cannot give bad feedback to the buyers anymore. It is an interesting twist in an already failing system at eBay. For many years, the auction site has been rolling along with awesome results due to the huge numbers of buyers and sellers. However, in the last couple of years, things have changed dramatically there. More and more of the sellers are leaving due to high eBay fees and Paypal feeds that go with the transactions in many cases. eBay owns Paypal.

I was a seller on eBay for a while and I did have to stop selling there due to the fees as well as the lack of product. Others I know have also all but left eBay for similar reasons. It is much harder now to make a living on that auction site. It costs more than the buyers want to pay since they are used to buying cheaply there and still expect a bargain. The bargains are no longer as good now. Not only are the sellers abandoning the site but the buyers as well.

There are a few sellers that I still go to when I want to buy something because I have dealt with them before and I know that they are honest. However, it is harder and harder to tell if one is honest now. Therefore, I do buy elsewhere. And frankly, the other place I go is many times cheaper than eBay is now. That is a sad state of affairs, indeed.

As for the new changes, I suspect it will drive the sellers away much faster than before. The buyers have been leaving in droves as it is. When a seller cannot tell others about his buyer who may actually be taking advantage of the eBay system that does not really care if the buyer actually pays up or not, then he is at a disadvantage, for sure.

Actually, I do not care for the practice that the sellers use by keeping the feedback hostage until the buyer gives out good feedback, sometimes when the buyer gets poor service. I have had that happen. I told the seller that I was not happy. They simply threatened me with bad feedback even though I had paid them within moments of the auction closing. I had done my part. They had not. But I would get bad feedback in a system where even a couple of bad marks against you can keep the seller from allowing you to bid on their product.

Well, I do not know the answer for the dilemma but I do know that changing the feedback system so that the sellers cannot give out bad feedback will likely drive more good sellers away than have already left. And then they go down.

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