Just when you thought they’d finished messing about with feedback… Numerous UK sellers are reporting that negative feedback left for non-paying bidders is being “descored” by eBay: i.e. though the comment remains, the -1 score and the nasty red dot are being automatically removed. It has been the case for several months now that non-paying bidders who did not respond to the unpaid item dispute lost their right to leave feedback, and feedback of any kind that they left for the seller was descored. Now it seems that this process has been extended to the feedback sellers leave for their non-paying buyers too.
One seller who queried this with eBay support was told that
any feedback rating they leave for you will be de-scored automatically by our system as will any feedback left for them by you as the transaction was never completed
If this really is a policy change, and not just a glitch on top of the introduction of Feedback 2.0, sellers might be forgiven for feeling that this is one step too far towards an Amazon-style system where feedback is *only* given from buyers to sellers. The feedback system has worked – and has brought eBay much of its success – because both parties have an interest in participating. The more it moves away from this, to a simple record of buyer satisfaction, the less incentive happy buyers have to use it, and the more it will become just a public record of grievences. That can do neither eBay nor their sellers any good at all.
Updated to add: Latest news from eBay Towers is that this is a glitch, and they are “baffled” by it… despite Support’s insistance earlier that this was correct. It seems that once again, the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.
One Response
CORRECT !
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