Updated to add: eBay have confirmed that this was a test run in the UK. It has now ended and feedback visibility is restored.
We all love eBay Feedback, it’s a mark of how experienced a seller or buyer we are and more importantly how reliable our trading partners are.
One thing that sellers love to do is when they get a dodgy buyer to confirm how many other sellers they’ve left dodgy feedback for. If you see a host of “Item never received” comments left for other sellers then you know that there’s a good chance the item they supposedly didn’t receive from you probably isn’t actually missing.
It’s not unusual for sellers to contact other sellers and discuss buyer behaviour with them – this probably drives a truck through legislation such as data privacy laws, but nothing is as tenacious as an eBay seller that thinks they’re being ripped off by a buyer.
So with the love of feedback and the investigative opportunities it brings, naturally there’s an outcry that eBay are hiding the Feedback “Left for Others” tab.
Here’s what feedback used to look like…
…and here’s what many eBay users are seeing today.
Note the all important missing tab, you can now only see what other’s have said about your buyer. You can’t see what your buyer said about others.
Of course as is often the cases with tests on eBay, this is a UK only test. Should you wish to see what feedback your buyers have left about other sellers then you only need to log into eBay.com and the feedback left for others tab returns.
41 Responses
I’m more of a buyer than a seller so I always look at the sellers feedback to check whether or not they return ‘positive’ feedback once it’s been left by the buyers.
I think it’s the buyers place to leave feedback first but If it’s blatantly obvious that the sellers can’t be bothered to reciprocate I will not send any to them in the first place.
Therefore if eBay continues to hide ‘Feedback left for others’ I won’t be leaving any (unless I’m already familiar with the sellers I’m dealing with).
https://feedback.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=XXXXXXXX&ftab=FeedbackLeftForOthers&searchInterval=30
Replace XXXXXX with USER ID.
B-)
Seems to work for now.
Saw this change take place right in front of my eyes last night, I always like to look at the feedback buyers have left if they’ve made a larger purchase from me.
https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Seller-Central/SHAME-ON-YOU-EBAY-Have-you-removed-buyer-feedback-in-the-hope-of/m-p/4934443#M322769
================
Hi,
I’ve noticed the exact same thing today, and I too am very worried.
However, good news… there is a workaround.
When you click on the buyers feedback page, the URL at the top of the screen starts with:
feedback.ebay.co.uk/
Just go to the address bar and change the .co.uk part to .com or .de
to temporarily go to the US version of EBAY, and the feedback left for other is
there for all to see. It’s only blocked in the UK, and not the USA or GERMANY for example.
(ebay HQ meetings)
good morning team! looking for more ways to make this the best place in the world to be a scumbag scammer, how can we make ebay even less trustworthy?
I know, lets remove the last remaining means of identifying the scumbags!
great idea Sandra, lets get on that straight away.
I always view the ‘feedback left for others’ as it’s a very important feature. Why on earth would they want rid of that! You’re losing the plot again eBay.
…because they still get paid if you’ve sent the goods out to some thieving pig commonly found on ebay. They wouldn’t want you changing your mind about completing would they?
Ebay cant be any unfair to sellers even if they try.
Someone needs to involve the media and kick fuss. Ebay have only done this so they can keep the scammer buyers happy, hell with the sellers, again.
We use this extensively when we’re investigating negative feedback and suspicious claims. It’s a very bad idea to remove visibility. eBay is about trust and this visibility is important.
Indeed — I’d like to see if go the other way. A “grumpiness / unluckiness” score for buyers calculated and published. Ooh look — this chap leaves 50% negative feedback, I’d like to block him, thanks.
There is no point in sellers leaving buyers feedback as you can only leave positive feedback , which means that every buyer on ebay has 100% feedback , so there is no point in it what so ever. They should just do away with buyer feedback and only have seller feedback. I do think you should be able to see what feedback a buyer leaves all its sellers though as this is a much better indicator about the buyer than the 100% feedback they all have from sellers.
as a seller
if a buyer claims item not recieved , i normally send a replacement recorded and leave a follow up comment on the buyers ebay feedback page saying , ITEM NOT RECIEVED , REPLACEMENT POSTED RECORDED , it is the truth so it is not being negative , buyers may disagree
What next eBay? might as well flash the banner on site stating:
“Come on buyers, scam the sellers with all sorts of claims, and run riot, have a field day and you will find us on your side. Make as many claims as you like and blackmail sellers and we will protect you and not only that, no one will know as we wont allow anyone to see what you are up to. Want a freebie, returning empty boxes, claiming item not described, intimidating abusing sellers? then eBay is the safest place for you! and sellers, keep paying us, and stop nagging, its not our job to protect you”
If enough sellers closed their accounts and walked away, Ebay would HAVE to listen.
It’s easy to close your account – just find the latest update email from Ebay and click on the link for questions or if you are not happy with the changes.
You will be taken to the close your account page automatically.
I spoke to Custard Support earlier and spoke to a rep who had worked on the ‘trust and safety’ section.
I was calling with regard to a neg I had received where I had noticed that there were instances of revised feedback left for others. I had contacted one seller who had feedback revised who said that the buyer was a scammer. Armed with this, I spoke to CS who said that sellers were contacting each other to protect their own accounts, but eBay weren’t getting to hear about it because sellers simply weren’t reporting buyers.
I said that this new system will not work unless eBay plans to crack down on buyers. The CS rep said that is exactly what they are up to. By making feedback invisible, and I’m reading between the lines here, sellers can’t compare notes, but this means that eBay can quickly spot a pattern (sellers can’t gang up on a buyer with the same report if nobody knows what the buyer has been up to). Essentially, CS will now expect reports from aggrieved sellers, but a pattern, or modus operandi, should be much more obvious, and reliable when taking action.
I have my misgivings about this because it is a case of eBay protecting their image at the expense of individual eBay sellers trying to protect their own businesses.
One can only hope that they are serious. I rarely come across a scam seller these days as buyers are so well protected, but scam buyers have had free reign. Perhaps eBay are doing something about it. One can only hope.
So, it’s a complete coincidence that ebay hit on the idea of doing this a few days after The Telegraph publishes a story about buyer fraud on their site?
Funny, I’ve asked eBay via Twitter @AskeBay and they’re adamant that I’m wrong, that the tab hasn’t been removed and I need to clear my cache and cookies and/or use a different browser or device.
I’ve explained that I’m in the UK and they’ve ‘reached out to their UK counterparts’ and that I’m still wrong and the tab hasn’t been removed.
Their own agents are saying different things too.
How hard is it for a company to tell their employees first what’s going on, then their customers?
Tamebay should start a wall of shame for scam eBay buyers.
I can still see the tab. For now.
It seems to have come back.
It wasn’t a programming glitch. The CS rep I spoke to definitely knew the reason for it, and its existence. One can only assume it was released early before an announcement. It is a sign of things to come.
The tab’s back everyone. The tab’s back.
My tab is there still. I think it is important that is there. The seller protection is does not exist on eBay, unless you are a national or multi. I asked about getting my own logo above the feedback only TESCOs and Argos are allowed that, so much for supporting small business.
I always get concerned when I see a new account and a whole bunch of purchases from similar sellers, then sudden INR claims, just had it. You also have serial idiots who just leave bad feedback or claim not received (I tend to get tracking and then block them, and I only know that if someone has auto FB on and checking FB as well as what is getting left).
If I had as many items not received as some of these people I would not be shopping online. I sell on multiple marketplaces these days and apart from one merchant sale on Amazon 5 years ago, EVERY issue has been on eBay and mostly on eBay UK sales (the UK is by far the worst for INR)
The tab disappeared for me last night, but has reappeared this morning. I hope it stays as it is the only available indicator of buyer behaviour.
Everyone has the odd problem buying once in a while, but the record of some buyers suggest they are fraudsters, or at best, a customer who is impossible to please.
I had an enquiry from a buyer a week ago, checked the left for others feedback, found a small sprinkling of negative and neutrals, plus every third or fourth feedback was a false positive with words like ‘a right con’. This guy had a few hundred feedback so must have felt like he was conned an awful lot.
Suffice to say I blocked him straight away, better no sale than a bad one. The way things are on E-Bay these days, I am getting to have a hair trigger in regards to the blocked list !
There’s an eBay staff post on the UK powerseller board that says this was a test run.
Yeah right.
Test run to test what? Seller’s patience?
Just to add…. one thing i do is to always follow up any feedback received or left relating to “problem” buyers with comments. So although Sellers can’t leave neg feedback you can tell from my follow up comments what has happened and if the buyer could be dodgy.
If more Sellers did this it would help others.
Follow up feedback received –
https://feedback.ebay.com/ws/BayISAPI.dll?PersonalizedFeedbacklogin
Follow up feedback left for others –
https://feedback.ebay.com/ws/BayISAPI.dll?ReviewFeedbackLeft
Ebay learned early on they could do what they liked to sellers.
When they first started messing with the Buyer/Seller balance in the early 2000’s, if the sellers had vanished, they would have backtracked.
Instead, they realised no matter how unfair or unreasonable they are to sellers, there will be another tide of sellers to replace any who leave.
And that has been the pattern.
Don’t like what we’re doing? Close your account. That has been the Ebay mantra and still is.
Everything since then has just been an extension of that.
Even now, you hear people on these boards saying, no, wait!, Ebay has changed, they REALLY care about sellers now and Mr Wenig is saying how important they are.
Yeah, right.
Use Ebay and Amazon to learn how to sell.
Then move your business gradually to a freestanding website, using social media to the full and you’ll be free.
Defects? Negative Feedback? Delivery Metrics?
All just a bad dream in the past.
I came across an interesting thing today; a buyer (from the US) who ” has decided to make his/her Feedback comments private”. Doesn’t that contradict the idea of feedback? I know I can still see the scores, but since sellers can only leave positive feedback the scores are not very meaningful.