Hello everyone - It's been less than a month since I saw many of you at eBay Live!, and already I have more news to share. In Chicago, I provided progress updates on many of the changes we've made over the past six months; early indications tell us that we're getting a lot of things right, as evidenced by more sellers improving their DSRs and fewer top buyers reporting bad experiences.
Many of you told me personally that you believed the changes were for the better, but we also heard concerns from Community members around the world about Feedback. As I said at eBay Live!, we are listening. Open, constructive discussion about what's working and what's not is a strength of our Community, and essential to the collective good of eBay. When we get something wrong, we want to make it right. And when you have ideas that benefit the collective good, we want to make them happen. To that end, we are making the following changes based on your input.
Recalculating Feedback percentages without neutrals: Effective in late August, neutrals will no longer be counted as part of the Feedback percentage. This means we will be recalculating Feedback percentages retroactively for users worldwide. In the interim, no one will lose their PowerSeller status as a result of neutrals being included in their Feedback percentage.
Helping you resolve issues and satisfy buyers: By the end of October, we will roll out a new process to help you resolve issues with buyers, even after the buyer has left negative feedback. Everybody makes mistakes – buyers and sellers alike, and buyers should have a mechanism to change feedback if they make a mistake or if the seller rectifies an issue in a timely manner. Unlike with our previous Mutual Feedback Withdrawal system, our new process will enable buyers to change their feedback of the seller, not just withdraw the rating. We'll provide more details of this new process in the fall.
This is part of our overall effort to improve the customer experience, especially for sellers. In fact, we're already making progress in addressing one of your biggest pain points -- removing negative and neutral feedback left by buyers who violate our policies. For example, since we debuted the new Feedback system in May, we have removed more than 60 percent of the negative/neutral feedback left by buyers in an unpaid item (UPI) process. Looking ahead, you will see us continue to take the steps needed to protect your reputation on eBay. In the meantime, you can also protect yourself by following some well-defined best practices in using Feedback. I encourage you to check them out.
Finally, we're working to resolve other important issues that eBay sellers have raised over the past several months. I hope what I've shared with you today demonstrates our commitment to listening and responding quickly with solutions. We want to make eBay a great place for you to do business, but it's going to take all of us -- together -- to get it right for the collective good. I want to thank you for your patience, your business and your continued commitment to eBay.
Sincerely,
Lorrie Norrington
President, eBay Global Marketplace Operations
Does this mean it's safe to go back in the eBay water? Fraid I'm fresh out of Buyer-Shark repellent.
