Over the last few days I’ve been looking a little more closely at marketplace feedback and there are some surprising differences between eBay feedback and Amazon feedback.
Amazon have two types of feedback – Seller Feedback and Product Reviews. If you want to comment on a product which you’ve purchased from Amazon you can leave a product review, but this doesn’t impact any individual seller.
When an Amazon buyer leaves feedback for a seller it should be entirely related to the service that they provided. Any product focused feedback left for the seller will impact their overall seller reputation, but is always eligible for removal.
eBay’s feedback is different and largely these days is focused on the actual product. Whilst the Positive, Neutral, Negative rating and comment is open for the buyer to use as they see fit, the Detailed Seller Ratings are more specific. However increasingly Detailed Seller Ratings are left by eBay and not the buyer.
Currently if a buyer doesn’t contact the seller then there’s an automatic five star rating for communications. If you ship with free post you’ll get an automatic five star rating for P&P charges. In the States it’s also possible to get an automatic five star for despatch time, so long as the seller ships promptly and enters tracking information into eBay – that just leaves the product Description DSR open for the buyer to rate.
As Amazon is catalogue based it makes it easier for them to separate the product rating from the service rating, but service is what eBay have been trying to improve over the past few years and yet eBay feedback is focused more and more towards the product. As largely eBay products aren’t catalogued it’s reasonable that buyers be able to rate the product, but should eBay separate product feedback from service feedback?
As a seller would you prefer feedback to be product focused or service focused? Personally I think service focused feedback is a more valuable indicator for buyers as most sellers have a wide range of inventory and one buyer being unhappy with one product doesn’t mean the seller’s service standards aren’t stellar. On eBay however feedback is slanted towards product comments and stars, sellers giving poor service can still have great detailed seller ratings simply by ensuring that they qualify for automatic five stars whenever possible.
8 Responses
I would like to see a simple set of questions asked to the customer with a yes/no answer. no stars, just a factual question or 2 with a yes/no answer.
I think the problem with feedback no matter what way you do it people always abuse it! Product feedback is ok but if you receive what you believe to be an unjustified comment it can kill a product dead on amazon. Often some of these reviews are because the customer has not read the description on the size details, they buy what they think they see, even if its nothing like the actual product.
I’m really not sure there is ever going to be a good way to manage this!
Product feedback you always get some nutcase who thinks the whole world has ended because there is one stitch out of place on a garment they bought and paid Primark prices for. I dont give a toss about them anymore, i just get on with making money (oh Im at 100% on ebay and amazon).
Hi,
I have set up independent product review on the top of Ebay feedback so when a customer complain about a product, I can always offer a product review separate from service comment, but doesn’t always worked.
The big problem on ebay is customer can rate one of service with low rate but have a positive overall feedback so it is hard to ameliorate the customer service
Feedback should be for the service received from the seller.
However, on eBay we’ve found this can be frustrating at Christmas because of bank holidays (non delivery days etc) and bad weather, customers will get frustrated that they haven’t received their order in time for Christmas, despite the fact that as a seller we have dispatched orders within the time frame specified.
eBay doesn’t take this in to consideration and customers can leave us very low ratings for dispatch time, which often affects our Platinum seller rating.
I like the idea that eBay US employ – if the seller dispatches quickly they get an automatic 5 stars.
Sellers worry far more about feedback than buyers ever do. Unless your feedback is really awful it won’t make any difference to sales.