Feedback is changing, and although there is news of a hub for reporting malicious or unfair feedback from buyers the biggest complaint appears to be the removal of mutual feedback withdrawal.
This also heralds the end of services such as SquareTrade for whom the last day to file a feedback withdrawal case will be May 12. SquareTrade have done an admirable job of reinventing themselves from a third-party feedback mediation service to a supplier of warranties for products purchased on both eBay and retail websites.
Brian Burke explains . Whilst that may be possible it’s no more likely than it has been previously. If a buyer has left non-positive feedback (apart from cases involving retaliatory feedback from sellers), buyers have always been in a position to blackmail sellers with the promise of withdrawing their feedback. That situation won’t change, but when a buyer leaves feedback in haste and genuinely regrets it they should be able to withdraw or edit the comment and rating.
The one piece of good news to counterbalance the end of mutual withdrawn feedback and mediation services are changes to the interstitial feedback page. Whenever a buyer is about to leave non-positive feedback in the future, they will be presented with three check boxes to tick:
- Have you communicated with the seller?
- Have you allowed enough time?
- Have you kept the feedback factual?
In the past these questions have been displayed but the buyer could simply click ‘continue’ to leave the feedback. Now they will have to manually check the boxes to confirm the three criteria.
Whilst this will in no way deter buyers determined to leave a non-positive comment, it should at least act as a speed bump to buyers who are about to leave feedback in haste. Forcing them to confirm they’ve communicated, allowed sufficient time for delivery, and kept feedback factual should (along with the hotlinks to email the seller or request their contact details) reduce the incidence of avoidable non-positive feedback from decent buyers.
The biggest problem of course will be for sellers suspended under SNP (Seller Non-Performance). With sellers facing an instant 30 day suspension for falling below 95% positive feedback, without feedback withdrawal or mediation services ,they are left with no possible way to improve their feedback to avoid permanent suspension.
2 Responses
hi cris
my point of view is that the only way to improve their feedback is closing open transactions providing the best service possible (and gaining positive feedback and improving DSRs).
open transactions are not live listings, but those ended listings that still need completion (shipping, payment etc…)
+
closing open disputes
do you agree?
I totally agree under normal circumstances Gui, the difficulty comes once suspended that is the ONLY way open to affect your feedback. If you can’t withdraw poor feedback once it’s left and you can’t improve your selling technique to get more good feedback it’s just the 1/90th of a quarters unshiped sales you can affect which won’t be enough to significantly change your score.
Quite frankly there’s little point in suspending a seller for 30 days if there’s nothing they can do in that 30 days to pull their score up 🙁
However the interstitial feedback page may help in not getting some non-positive feedback in the first place which is good for those not already suspended 😀