eBay Australia Feedback Changes | The Aussie Wholesaler Blog

How Are You Finding The New Changes To eBay Feedback?

Published in June 11th, 2008

Almost a month ago, eBay Australia implemented some changes to the feedback system, preventing sellers from leaving negative or neutral feedback for buyers. In a nutshell, sellers can only leave positive feedback for a buyer now, regardless of what happened in the transaction.

The buyer can however still leave positive, neutral or negative feedback for the seller. The idea behind it, is giving buyers the confidence to leave 100% honest feedback about a seller without fear of receiving possibly unfair negative or neutral feedback in retaliation.

The only protection for eBay sellers in the new feedback system is that any negative or neutral feedback left by a buyer who doesn’t respond to the unpaid item process or is suspended will be removed, & if there is any evidence of blackmail/extortion from a buyer threatening to use negative feedback to get what they want, eBay will apparently take action against the buyer. The mutual feedback withdrawal process has also been removed.

Personally, I’m not too keen on the new changes, as I still think it leaves things too open for abuse from some uncooperative/unreasonable buyers…but when buying on eBay, the changes do definitely encourage you to leave more honest feedback.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I purchased a DVD for my brother-in-law on eBay. The seller’s feedback was just over 98% - I usually will only buy from sellers with over 99% feedback - so I was half expecting some problems. I told my brother-in-law about my concerns & that maybe we should wait for a seller with better feedback, but he was determined to go ahead with it as he wanted the DVD yesterday!

The DVD did eventually arrive, but it wasn’t posted until 1 week after payment was made through PayPal, so didn’t arrive until almost 2 weeks after payment! I was tempted to leave neutral feedback as I reckon that’s pretty bad - when I was selling on eBay, if I didn’t post an item within 24 hours of payment (for whatever reason), I would always send the product by express post at my expense which I think is more than reasonable.

I did end up leaving positive feedback, but I didn’t say anything too nice & told everyone how long it took them to post it. I probably would have thought twice about being so honest, if I knew they could still leave me neutral or negative feedback.

So what’s to best way to protect yourself, as a seller, from the new feedback changes?

Along with the feedback changes, eBay has improved the buyer requirements options for sellers. As a seller, you can now choose to block:

Buyers with a recent unpaid item strike (new timing feature)
Buyers registered in a country to which the seller doesn’t post
Buyers with a recent eBay policy violation (new)
Buyers who have bid on or bought several of a seller’s items in the last 10 days

Next time you list an item, make sure you take a close look at what buyer requirements you want to set. It could help protect you from dealing with a not so nice buyer & copping some unfair negative feedback.

How are you finding the new eBay Australia feedback changes?

Click here to visit eBay & learn more about the feedback changes.

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4 users responded in " How Are You Finding The New Changes To eBay Feedback? "

carly65 said, in June 13th, 2008 at 4:51 pm

So far I haven’t had any problems but I’m not selling very many items each week (only about 10), so when things build up later this year it will be interesting to see what happens.

falcon27 said, in June 13th, 2008 at 10:30 pm

When I was first notified of the feedback changes I wasn’t too concerned until I noticed my feedback percentage which was 94.7% It had dropped from just under 100%. Naturally I found this very disturbing and contacted live help. It was explained to me that neutral comments were now taken into account and all feedbacks over the last 12 months were averaged out and not over a lifetime which it had been previously. Being a power seller, many of you would know that one of the requirements to aquire that status is that feedback must be over 98% I voiced my concern but was assured that it would be okay because a 60 day grace period was being given by ebay to power sellers to allow the pecentage to build back up. Another requirement is a minimum monetary amount each month. I put up a scenario to the online helper. What if I sold $100,000 worth of items in a month (very very unlikely!) and all of the buyers were first time and had no knowledge of the feedback process? Great for the minimum amount required for the month but where does that leave my feedback score? It remains on 94.7% and I lose my power seller status. The online helper could not give me an answer but assured me that I would build my score up in the 60 day grace period. Assurance?? How could the operator assure me? Was he going to supply all of the feedback required? The whold scenario stinks along with the paypal farce. How can the new feedback system encourage positive comments? If a buyer isn’t satisified with a product or the service, he/she is not going to leave a positive comment. What a load of rubbish! I’ll be operating my store until the end of the grace period then when my feedback isn’t over 98% and my power seller status is taken away I can have an early retirement and join the 1000’s of other former ebay sellers thanks to the greed of ebay.

crystal*phil* said, in June 13th, 2008 at 11:40 pm

Hi there,
Havent sold a lot of items on Ebay.When I purchase items I get really peed off by sellers who threaten to give negative feed back if I dont give them possitive feed back first. I have only dealt with two sellers who did this and as you would expect they were selling a dud product of virtually no monetary value. But not wishing neg feedback I let it swing.

When a customer buys from me I leave positive feed back as soon as I recieve the payment.

I believe the new system will give the rubbish buyers an edge.Who can be bothered with the slowness of the Ebay and Paypal process?

jtatters said, in June 16th, 2008 at 12:31 am

Hi There,
I for one am very concerned about the new feedback system. As a buyer and seller I believe that everyone should have a right of response. A few months ago I had a nasty first time buyer who thought she could get away with all sorts of things. She left negative feedback and I was at least allowed to leave a response in my defence. I also contacted a couple of other sellers that sold to her and was told the same thing. She said she had paid and never got the items. She also said that we ALL had our account details when pressed a bit further and said the payments had bounced and as she thought it was our fault she still wanted the goods. The sellers and I couldn’t all have got it so wrong surely. I had over 200 people use the same details with no issues. The feedback she left for all of us was very nasty. Without being able to respond it would have been unfair. I am still sitting on 99.6% because of her and that was last September. The only negative I have ever received. Oh and by the way she has a negative feedback listed next to her. (-2). So to cut a very very long story short, both buyer and seller should still be able to leave honest feedback whether that be positive or negative.

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