Why I'm Annoyed with Ebay

I’ve been selling stuff on ebay since October in an effort to supplement Marcus’ income since I am no longer working full time. Overall it’s been a really good experience, and has taken a lot of the financial worry out of me not working. A few months ago ebay increased seller fees, this ate into my profits, but I figured they have the right to dictate how much their service costs. Not a big deal. But.......on Monday ebay made sweeping changes to their feedback system. Some of the changes were announced in March and some were a surprise.

Change 1. Sellers can only leave positive feedback for buyers. (this was announced in March) The goal was to end sellers leaving negative feedback for buyers just because the buyer left deserved negative feedback for the seller. This is a problem, but as a buyer your feedback score really doesn’t matter that much. As a seller, I only look at a buyer’s feedback if they ask for something special like a longer time before paying or shipping to another address. (Which I can no longer do because every buyer will have 100% positive feedback) It was obvious by the comments when a buyer received negative feedback that was retaliatory and undeserved.

With this change I can no longer leave negative feedback for a non paying bidder, (so far I have had 8 people never pay), but they can leave me negative feedback for that item if they want to, thereby lowering my percentage. (Which is very damaging to sellers as buyers often use the percentage to decide what kind of seller they are, and if you're a power seller your seller fees are partially determined by the percentage).


Change 2. Neutrals now bring down your percentage on ebay just as much as negatives do. This was a surprise. It is also retroactive. The only neutral I’ve ever received was 3 months ago before the changes took effect. The person stated in her neutral post that she did not read the auction. Now my feedback percentage is 99.7% instead of 100%.

This is especially bad because most buyers don’t know about this change since ebay says that a neutral won’t affect the feedback score at all. Technically this is true, the score is the number next to the user name that indicates how many feedbacks that person has received. The percentage is next to the score, and is now calculated differently to equate a neutral with a negative. There is really no way for a buyer to know about this.

There are other changes as well, but those are the main two. I am annoyed because in an attempt to solve the problem of retaliatory feedback ebay has created a system in which buyer feedback doesn’t tell a seller anything, making it meaningless, allows unethical people to tank an honest seller’s feedback percentage, and maybe the worst thing, makes it possible for a good buyer to tank a seller’s percentage without intending to or realizing it.

If you are an ebay member you can sign a petition against these policies at: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/ebay-buyers-concerned-re-feedback-changes

You can also email the CEO, John Donahoe at jdonahoe@ebay.com