Wednesday, February 6th 2008
EBay to Ban Negative/Neutral User Feedback
Most of you surely know how trading on eBay works: the buyer buys something the seller is selling, and they both leave each other feedback based on their experience. If one of them stiffed the other, the feedback will reflect that, providing a nice layer of protection. However, eBay is planning on relinquishing that protection. It would seem as though some pesky buyers abused the system, and left negative feedback where none was necessary. Now, to prevent future problems, eBay is planning on eliminating the negative and neutral feedback altogether. In a quest to be politically correct and universally pleasing, eBay has taken up the mentality "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all". This has left both buyers and sellers in a uproar, claiming that there is very little protection if a sale fails to come through.
Source:
Neowin.net
43 Comments on EBay to Ban Negative/Neutral User Feedback
it would be like me saying bestbuy sucks because a sony tv i bought there only got 1/2 the chanils its sposta get and had a bunch of dead pixles...........its not bestbuys fault, its sony's :)
And ebay isnt bad if you are patient and know how to get a deal.
The only reason I bought it too was because of over 500+ positive feedback and 1 negative on the guy. I KNEW for like 95% I wasn't going to get screwed over.
Having said that though, I left neg feedback for this guy who sent me a P4C800 Dlx when he advertised it as a P4C800-E Dlx. But I left the feedback more because he was being a dick to me than anything else. Hm. That means there's no incentive for me to pay as soon as the auction ends... And I won't get recognition for that... =(
They're banning sellers from leaving Negative or Neutral for sellers, which means if we keep paying for auctions promptly and the seller isn't a dick, we'll still get positive feedback, and it takes away the whole Mexican standoff situation of feedbacks since I doubt sellers will have no reason to hold positive feedback hostage.
Buyers will still be able to leave sellers negative feedback if the transaction goes wrong, and if the buyer doesn't pay up, then a Payment Not Received can be filed with eBay and any user that has very little feedback but has been a member for a while can be assumed to be a "bad buyer".
When you think about it, I think the seller has much more protection and so less need for feedback anyway. The seller is in posession of the item and almost no one dispatches before the funds are received anyway, so in reality all one loses is the time and seller/listing fees, which I think can be claimed back from eBay in the event of nonpayment?
I ended up receiving the item 2 weeks after I purchased it, which was way to late, but he wouldnt refund me once he finally responded 4 days later. And after contacting ebay and telling them about the name, phone, and email all being wrong they didnt even care. To me thats very important, wouldnt you think that the sale was bogus if all the guys contact info is false?
the sale isn't bogus as long as you get what you paid for, and that's all ebay cares about. the details are too much for them to handle
It would seem kind of dodgy that a seller lists fake contact information, but if you can get to them through the eBay messaging service then that's fine. Four days is a long time though. Actually most of the sellers I deal with have an "Email seller" link instead of "Ask the seller a question" link which means they list their email and all messages go straight to them, so I don't often get that problem. And I've never actually tried calling the phone numbers.