Christmas is coming, piles of packing slips are getting fat… and what better place to do your shopping than on eBay.com, where eBay have finally reversed their silly decision to show item titles on buyer’s feedback.
eBay’s justification for showing item titles on buyers’ feedback was that “buyers want this” – I heard Brian Burke at Live utter that exact phrase – but the buyers I’ve spoken to range from feeling utterly indifferent, to absolutely hating it, depending on what they buy.
When the change was introduced, sellers of naughty lingerie immediately began reporting buyers asking them not to leave feedback, and drops in their own feedback received, presumably relating to buyers who didn’t want reciprocal feedback left. Buying sneaky presents for family or friends who know your ID became an impossibility. Buyers who bought to resell, or to make things to resell, were suddenly asking for no feedback to be left because they didn’t want their own customers to see their suppliers. Of course, search by buyer has always been available on the site, but putting a list of purchases in someone’s feedback just made it all too obvious.
eBay have now finally changed their tune on this silly development. From Brian Burke’s announcement:
Buyers viewed this as an invasion of privacy… Sellers complained because they feared buyers would not bid/buy, since no other e-commerce site includes buyer purchase history so prevalently. … We surveyed buyers and over a third of them were concerned or extremely concerned with the visibility of this information on the “Feedback as a Buyer” page. So, effective today, we will be removing the item title from this page.
And it’s gone… from eBay.com. On eBay UK, however, all purchases are still visible. I find myself complaining yet again that good changes are implemented on .com first: so please, eBay UK, get this sorted for us too, before Christmas.
4 Responses
Meanwhile, on eBay India, the announcement reads that effective immediately, they are removing feedback as a buyer – oh great!!! Just what ever seller needs to help them assess a buyer’s trading history 🙁
However, I’m sure it’s meant to imply what Sue put in her post as having happened on dot com. 😉
Here’s the announcement on eBay India; it’s all about the item title, they are not removing all buyer feedback.
Have an American buyer, looked them up to see if they do multi-buys as normal and have full list of their bought items. I’m looking at .co.uk and just assume their on .com.
Logged onto .com and all I get is numbers not titles, so my advice to Merkians is to look up their OH’s ID’s on .co.uk to see what they’re getting at Chrimbo.
Swan, norty!! Bah humbug to you too 😀