eBay's New Feedback System

It only affects feedback left by a buyer.

Thanks for the reply, Biscuit!

This is definitely one eBay upgrade that I'm looking forward to. I think that it's important to have feedback scores, but the current system has many weaknesses and has needed an overhaul for a very long time.

Since these customer ratings will not be associated with a specific individual buyer, it will be interesting to see how the semi-anonymous aspect of them will work out.

~Allen2007

Thanks Allen2007, great question. I logged on to find out the exact same info. Thanks for saving me the time. So now that the “new system “has been implemented how have you found the automatic feedback to be working?
Thanks

Hi,

B= buyer S= seller

As a B, I don't plan to purchase from eBay anymore except as a last option.

On eBay discussion boards, other B's are now boycotting eBay! But it's S's who are most irrate. and Ebay has been removing complaining postings at an ever rapid rate!

I'm not against having a star rating system but...

As an S, the star system is detrimental for at least 5 reasons:

1) it is arbitrary depending on the mood of the B (e.g. seller A sends "same day" gets 5 stars, seller B "sends two days" gets 3, Seller C "next day" gets 4 stars)
2)some B's will only give 5 stars to S's offering FREE S&H, thus forcing me to add S&H to the item price to match the competition raising my eBay fees
3) being annonymous it makes me vulnerable to competitors skewing my ratings.
4) since each transaction is unique & I don't know which transaction was downgraded, I don't know where to improve or who is not 100% satisfied to rectify.
5) buyers who return items or don't pay can still evaluate me and I can't get that cleaned up in protest since I don't know who did it.
6) some S's sell massive amounts, so one downgrade won't hurt; for lower volume sellers, a low star rating will hurt me for a good while.

As a B,

1) I don't want my most trusted Sellers even thinking I might be the 2-faced SOB who wrote that s/he's so great, yet rated her/him down in the stars.

2) no privacy in purchasing

I don't like having a list of my purchases shown to the world so blatantly. I've already gotten a message showing my shopping profile on eBay! it gave recommendations of other listings & sellers I might be interested in! "Since you are interested in...., then...."!! Somehow this message arrived outside ebay which means someone has my email address, profiled my interests and is spamming me! this could be someone I purchased from who has my email address or got it by some other means.

As a B, what i paid for an item is easily determined even tho it isn't shown on my feedback list. For small purchases this is no big deal, but for more expensive items home security concerns me. I DO have a PO box, but many sellers will not ship to a post office box especially high end $$ items.

It used to be too time consuming to develop a customer profile, but now, each customer can be profiled in seconds. If i buy an expensive item, my email address is not too difficult to get and I can hounded outside eBay.

As an S,

I don't like the $$ amount customers paid for an item being shown in a blatant list. Sometimes I list items as a "loss leader" to generate people to my store. Or I run clearance sales. Prices are going up for similar items, yet when customers see how low an item sold for earlier, they more than likely won't purchase as they feel I'm charging too much.

All in all the so-called benefits of the new rating system are low to detrimental to me as a S; while as a B, I won't go by star ratings due to the arbitrary/annonymous nature.

As I do purchasing on Amazon, I will use the % feedback as my guide. I see S's at Amazon with low 90%'s & all five stars, AND I've seen 100% positive S's with 4.- stars. Therefore, I go by the positive percent score.

Good points! Is there a forum on eBay where you can post this? Better yet, post it on several forums. I don't think they'd delete it since it voices legit concerns (rather than just slamming eBay).

The more times they hear it, the better the chance of some changes coming to pass.

2purrcats

Totally agree Spunkychk I have the same concerns..
And there are a lot of people on the forums in ebay who dont like the new fb system

Interesting. I state in my listings and invoices that I can generally ship within one day of receiving cleared payment. I actually usually ship same-day, unless I receive the payment after the post office is closed, then I ship the next day. I also use calculated shipping. And yet, my feedback scores on shipping time and shipping cost and less than 5! As much as I'd like to just beam the packages to the buyer, it can't be done! Geez. This is NOT a reliable feedback system!

2purrcats

I sell mostly books, VHS and DVDs. Most of my buyers choose Media Mail, which can be slow. While I ship within 2 days of payment, delivery time may take 1-3 weeks. So far I have gotten good star ratings, but I know the "Shipping time" one will be effected by buyers who think their item arrived too slowly because they don't understand how slow Media Mail can be. (sigh).

I really dislike the new feedback system.

I just really don't see that the new fb system is a benefit to anyone. It just contains way toooooo much information. At some point, no matter how hard we try to please, someone is not going to be statisfied, just the nature of the beast I guess. But what do I know, I'm just the "new alien" on the block - Dawn a/k/a msalien1

new system can be described in one word "SUCKS"