Wednesday, May 7th, 2008

Accountability: The Evolution of the eBay Feedback System

Yesterday I sat down with Brian Burke, Director of Global Feedback Policy, to get a full run-down of all the changes being applied to eBay’s Feedback system. During our discussion, I was able to get the rationale and reasoning behind the changes as well as ask some of the questions that had been provided by Ink readers over the past few days.

Before I jump into the overview, interview and presentation, I wanted to give my two cents. The overarching theme coming out of these changes seems to be a trade of transparency for accountability (hence the title of my post). I’ve received a few emails stating that this is very “un-eBay”. However, I get the impression that eBay’s public feedback system was always intended to provide transparency and accountability but that over time, the transparency of the feedback system has taken us away from the accountability goal. So, with these changes, eBay should return to a more healthy balance of the two.

NOTE: I’ve just checked out the AB post about the changes and in retrospect, I am definitely toeing the company line on this one.

Here is a breakdown of what is being introduced this month:

1. In order to encourage repeat transactions and reward good service, eBay will provide credit for similar repeat transactions going back to when the system was introduced in 1996.

2. In May, sellers will no longer be able to leave negative or neutral Feedback for buyers.

3. eBay will remove negative and neutral Feedback left by members who are suspended or who fail to respond to the Unpaid Item (UPI) Process.

4. Positive Feedback percentage will be based on the past 12 months of Feedback, rather than lifetime on the site.

5. Restrictions on when Feedback can be left:
- Buyers must wait seven days before leaving negative or neutral Feedback for active PowerSellers who have been registered for at least 12 months.
- Members must leave Feedback within 60 days of the transaction closing (today members have up to 90 days).

6. eBay is removing Mutual Feedback Withdrawal.

This is a global eBay site-wide initiative which will start to roll-out in May, 2008.
5/12 Australia
5/15 UK, Ireland
5/19 US, Canada, Canada.FR
5/20 France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Belgium.FR, Belgium.NL
5/21 HongKong, Singapore, India, Malaysia, Phillipines
5/22 Germany, Austria, Switzerland

Additionally, he provided me with the presentation that summarizes the evolution of the feedback system:

eBay Feedback Transformation - Upload a doc

Q&A with Brian

Can you please explain how the 2004 and 2007 ratio of retaliatory feedback numbers (shown on slide 5) was determined?

We used a really simple definition when determining exactly what constituted retaliatory negative feedback. It was strictly a user who received a negative feedback and subsequently left a negative feedback. That second negative feedback was counted as being retaliatory. There wasn’t anything that we did to go back and look to see if that negative was justified rather we observed how behavior changed in the marketplace over time. We saw that 4 years ago sellers would do that two times as more frequently than a buyer and today it is eight times more likely.

It’s basically how our members interpret retaliatory negative feedback so we wanted to keep it simple; getting a negative after receiving a negative constitutes retaliatory feedback.

A week or two ago the eBay developer blog announced “We will base the Positive Feedback Percentage on the past 12 months of activity (and will include neutral feedback in the calculation.” Is the above quote still accurate? If so, why are neutrals now going to count as negatives?

The above quote is accurate. As for neutrals, they’re not counted as negatives but they’re going to not count as positives either. When we first introduced the feedback percentage we had, within our feedback system, something that was called NARU neutrals. Basically, what had happened up through 1999, whenever a member got suspended we took any feedback that they had left (whether it was negative, positive or neutral) and we converted it to Neutral. The majority of feedback that was left for users was predominantly positive so we didn’t think it was fair back then to include NARU neutrals in the overall feedback percentage so we chose to count only positives and negatives in calculating the feedback percentage (although ideally we would have liked to track all). Now we’re going to a 12-month window, we no longer have to worry about NARU neutrals unfairly affecting an overall feedback score. So what we can do is make the Positive Feedback Percentage be exactly that. What’s the percentage of positives that a seller has received over all of the feedback they have received? Which is really what sellers should be measured against.

How is eBay going to protect the sellers? How is eBay protecting the sellers from bad buyers? How can I truly block an eBay bidder given that anyone can create a new disposable eBay ID at any time to circumvent my blocked bidder list?

First, what is good for the buyers is ultimately going to be good for the sellers in our Marketplace and we’ve already seen a lot of sellers changing behavior and focusing on what’s most important to the buyers just by the announced changes we’ve made.

When we made this change we understood clearly that we were taking away both a real and a perceived protection. For the seller who had never left a negative – it was just a perceived protection that they had. We needed to make sure there was a balance to the system. The goal behind the changes was not to enable buyers to just leave negatives. Rather it was to go back to the original intent of the feedback system - to make sure that both buyers AND sellers are held accountable for their actions in the marketplace. We’re going to hold sellers accountable through a public reputation system, leveraging our buyers. The way we’re going to hold buyers accountable is through private reporting from sellers; through enhancing the tools that we’ve given sellers to help protect them from buyers. We’re going to rely on sellers to let us know when a buyer has violated policy.

Why is my blocked bidder list no longer alphabetized and why are some seller’s blocked bidder lists disappearing all together? How can I truly block an eBay bidder given that anyone can create a new disposable eBay ID?

We haven’t made any changes to the blocked bidder list system so I’m not sure why someone would be experiencing that. I’ll have to look into that further. I haven’t heard about blocked bidder lists disappearing all together so if you could get me an example I will get that to the product team to find out why that is happening. In the case of a bidder circumventing a seller’s blocked bidder list with a new ID, that is against the rules and there has been no change in policy here at all. If that buyer is identified, he/she is suspended from the site.

I rechecked Feedback criteria today and it seems that the reason eBay couldn’t censor feedback was due to potential legal liability to eBay if they did. How do the shifts in feedback procedures pan out legally? Does the shift in policy constitute censorship?

In the United States only, eBay is given protections as a hosting service for the comments and content that another person puts on our site. As we don’t actually edit the comments or make changes to the comments – there is no difference in how we’re protected. All we’ve changed is how a user is rated in the marketplace. We’ve always had rules in place that allow us to remove negative feedback or positive feedback and the comments – but we won’t go in and edit the comments. Under the US law we can’t do that. To be clear though, we don’t get those same protections outside of the US but we still have a very similar set of rules so even if that law was to go away in the US we probably wouldn’t make changes to the system because we’re trying to design a system that instills trust within the marketplace, not one that is in place because of a US law.

What steps did eBay take to educate the users, both buyers and sellers, during the 3-year period that showed a trend in retaliatory feedback?

Well, the focus on retaliatory negatives didn’t just happen overnight. We examined a number of other alternatives before coming to the conclusion that the feedback system needed to change. The one thing we learned was that when a buyer gets a negative feedback in the eBay marketplace, they discontinue participating in the marketplace and it’s not healthy for anyone. All of the alternatives we examined still didn’t address one of the leading reasons why buyers were not comfortable continuing to participate in our marketplace.

There’s been a lot of focus on buyers but what are the changes we’re making to protect sellers?

One is basing the feedback system on a 12-month window rather than a lifetime window. For example, in the past, a seller’s feedback score has been negatively impacted by a negative left 7 years ago even though it doesn’t necessarily accurately reflect the seller’s participation in the marketplace today. So they’ll no longer be dragged down by old feedback and it’s more relative information for the buyer.

Second, if the buyer receives an Unpaid Item Strike and fails to respond (and that occurs more than 70% of the time today) we’re now going to remove the rating and the comment (in the past we just removed the rating). In the future, if a buyer responds in a manner that doesn’t fault the seller, we’re going to take a look at what buyers are saying in the UPI console and remove it if it is arbitrary.

We’re going to remove all negative and neutral feedback when a member gets suspended.

We’re going to prevent negatives and neutrals being left for PowerSellers that have been on the site for more than 12 months (within 7 days of the transaction end). This is a big deal for us because we’ve always felt that we shouldn’t be able to prevent a buyer from leaving a negative feedback but we feel that PowerSellers who have been on the site for 12-months are pretty safe. We’re going to start with that group of sellers so that if a buyer tries to leave a negative or neutral within 7 days of the transaction end, we’re going to provide a link that encourages communication between the buyer and the seller to see if the buyer has given the seller enough time to deliver on the transaction.

In order to cut down on potential extortion situations we’re reducing the number of days someone can leave feedback from 90 to 60 days.

For Cross Border Trade we’re going to include messaging in the leave feedback flow to remind the buyer that it was a CBT transaction.

When a buyer goes to leave a negative or a neutral – and very single buyer will see this, every single time they leave a negative or neutral – we’re going to ask them three key questions:

1. Have you communicated with the seller?
2. Have you allowed enough time?
3. Have you kept the feedback factual?

The big difference between then and now is that before, buyers saw the above questions but moving forward, they will have to check each question before proceeding. So it is creating a speed bump for buyers in leaving a negative or neutral and we hope that it will educate buyers, the first time they go to leave a negative or a neutral, that it is important to communicate, it is important to allow time for shipping, and that it is important to be factual.

When satisfied buyers attempt to leave DSR ratings of all 5’s they are prompted with the following message: “Are you sure? Remember, the ratings left by you are anonymous and can’t be seen by the seller.”
Why does eBay feel they need to doubt the satisfied buyer’s desire to leave 5-star DSR ratings?

The short answer is we don’t do it just for those with 5. We do it for anyone who is leaving detailed seller ratings. Whether someone intends to leave a 1 or intends to leave a 5, they’re going to get that message. This isn’t about us doubting someone whose desire is to leave a 5. Rather, it was an effort by us last Summer to address an issue we saw arise when we first introduced detailed seller ratings. Our conventional feedback system is a public system that is transparent to the marketplace and we wanted to communicate to the buyers that DSRs were designed to be more anonymous with the ultimate goal to obtain more accurate, honest feedback from buyers.

Since eBay has made such a point that DSRs are anonymous, what faith do we as sellers have that eBay is accurately reporting the ratings that our buyers are actually leaving for us? While still protecting individual’s anonymity, why not provide to me some DSR information of value? For example, what is my DSR rating from international customers versus domestic buyers for each DSR?

To answer the first part of the question… it really is in eBay’s best interest to accurately represent how buyers are reporting on sellers because that will favor those sellers that are performing best which is exactly what we want.

With regard to seller reports and information, I absolutely believe this is an area in which we can dramatically improve. We’re introducing the Seller Dashboard that provides basic information to the seller about their DSRs but we’ve heard from a lot of sellers that they would like to slice and dice that information so we’re working on a separate project right now that will enable them to either create their own reports or for us to provide a much more robust reporting structure that our sellers can take advantage of. All I can say on that is to stay tuned; it’s not something folks are going to see in the next couple of months but it is something we’re working on.

Brian, thanks very much for taking the time to provide answers to Ink readers. It is greatly appreciated and we look forward to having you back on the blog soon.

My pleasure. Anytime.

Tagged: brian+burke, buyers, detailed+seller+rationgs, dsr, ebay, ebay.com, ecommerce, feedback, Marketplace, online+marketplace, sellers

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177 Responses on this post. Click to add yours.

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MistyOn 05.07.2008 at 11:02 pm Said:

http://pages.ebay.com/services/forum/new.html

Just found this on the upcoming changes to feedback page.
?

MistyOn 05.07.2008 at 11:03 pm Said:

Go figure now it shows up

MistyOn 05.07.2008 at 11:08 pm Said:

@Richard

Why did I just get a pop up asking for my eBay ID and password in attempting to post? I asked this question in my 2nd post that has the (?) but my question did not appear with it.

china714On 05.08.2008 at 12:07 am Said:

Hello Richard, I wanted to say thank you for trying to answer some tough questions, no one wants to shoot the messenger, “We” the posters you see here are very disturbed by ebays changes and have a difficult time seeing them “productive in any form” You see Richard, We are sellers and buyers for years here on ebay, and this outlet is the first of its kind, unfortunately, when ebay has added insult to injury for so long by not taking into account how we see these changes Prior to releasing them, You get people with true concerns for Their business on ebay.
I actually heard somewhere that ebay feels “We owe ebay because they are bringing us the buyers” they have made so many public one sided judgmental statements or comments just picking us all apart, whether it be powersellers, and the new seller, or the good sellers and bad sellers, or the buyers who are at risk of retaliatory feedback, and the list goes on, they have segregated their own site, what business does that?
you see the boards ebay? they are congested with powersellers, new sellers, new buyers, old buyers, all arguing the systems you are putting into place. its really sad.
I have 30 years experience in custom relations work, I have seen irate buyers, “the customer is always right” No just a myth, out of 100’s of wonderful buyers you get a couple that may be difficult to please or just downright don’t want to be pleased, but rather to vent on someone, or get a better deal, ect..these customers in a store setting you take to the side to work it out if possible if not they leave, and like Carries on. Being we are internet sellers a Feedback system is good, but why did it have to be complicated?
I have been a seller and buyer now for 5 years, sold over 3000 items, bought quite abit too, Do you think I needed your help with feedback? I was well able to carry myself, I had a couple negs, gave a couple of neg, part of business, but each buyer or seller could see it out in the open, and judge who was in the wrong or right.
the problems started when ebay went public and had stock holders, they have to keep the buyers coming back, but also have new buyers, Ill tell you a good way to do that…go back to what works, as soon as you tell a buyer in a bubble when they go to leave a dsr score, that “your feedback wont be seen” you could be honest” you are creating mistrust immediately. thats sneaky and damaging to your site, get rid of bad sellers, I had to report someone for excessive handling over 50 times before they were canned, selling a fake bracelet with a handling fee of 250.00, and yes 250.00 do you not think that 8 of the buyers that received that bracelet felt cheated? well they did, but their was no help for them, the buyer should be able to get out of an auction when it should never have been allowed on ebay in the first place. thus why I personally have no faith in your systems.

The ColonelOn 05.08.2008 at 12:28 am Said:

Here is a post on the eBay Feedback Discussion Board that sounds reasonable assuming there is some sort of a returns policy instituted by ebay.

I never post in forums but this is a matter of saving peoples years of hard work on Ebay from being destroyed. Sellers are not happy and for very good reason. They have been bound and gagged from protecting themselves. Blinded with no visible access to DSRs, Gagged without the ability to show the community their side of a story to alert other sellers of a bad buyer and left at the mercy of Ebay that to the present day shows no support of the seller’s terms and conditions when a buyer doesn’t abide by them.

Here are the problems…
1. The buyer needs protection against unfair retaliatory negatives from a seller.
2. The seller needs protection from the same.
3. Ebay is deathly afraid of loosing buyers which they feel is ruining they’re bottom line.
4. The community needs a fair feedback system to rate both sellers AND buyers or else what the hell good is it?
5. The seller is tired of having their own seller terms and conditions ignored or overlooked.
6. The system with the new changes the way it is now is VERY unfair and quite impractical.

OK, there we are! Now, I have the solution to these problems. And like all beautiful things, it is very, very simple!
A. Policy change with a seller not able to give a buyer a negative remains.
B. Ebay needs to COMMIT to standing behind a seller’s TERMS and CONDITIONS.
C. Buyer’s are REQUIRED to read the seller’s T & C or they are considered to have broken Ebay policy if they don’t. There are several ways Ebay can set this up.
Option 1. Require the buyer to go through a link that forces them to see the seller’s T & C.
Option 2. Seller is required to have T & C on the page that the buyer makes the purchase from.
In either case, Ebay needs to simply enforce these seller’s terms & conditions if a dispute arises. Currently even though this policy already exists, Ebay has NOT enforced it! This is a problem in itself that needs correcting by Ebay.
D. A seller’s T & C must be limited to a certain number of characters, about 3,000, in order to enable the seller to list all the information needed to protect themselves, but not an unlimited amount creating an unreasonable requirement for the buyer to read.
E. The seller’s T & C MUST meet Ebay policies or it will not be submisible in a dispute.
F. The buyer alone has the right to leave a negative feedback but NOW will be bound by the idea that if what they are complaining about is in contradiction of a seller’s T & C, and the seller reports this to Ebay, Ebay has the right to revert, not just remove, that negative BACK to the buyer’s account.

How does the new policy stop the bleeding? Let me explain…

First let me say that Ebay sets rules for the community to follow, seller and buyer alike! It is unfair for either side to take the responsibility for the other. In other words, a buyer should be held just as accountable to read BUYER regulations on this site as a seller is bound by the SELLER regulations. EVERYONE should be held responsible when they break the site’s polices. Buyers should not be immune to following a seller’s terms and conditions if they are set within Ebay policy. The seller will NEVER be happy if this continues! Everyone needs to understand that a seller, especially one with all the serious responsibilities of running a business, has their own ideas on how they want to run their own business. And while a buyer may not always agree to the seller’s T & C, it is up to the buyer to steer clear of that seller’s items if they don’t. It is just plain stupid to hold a seller responsible for a buyer’s complaint when the seller CLEARLY stipulated what his or her terms and conditions were before the buyer ever made the purchase!

I would like to address Ebay’s biggest concern, loosing buyers because of a bad buying experience. If a buyer holds up his or her end of the transaction by READING seller guidelines, then that buyer has NOTHING to be upset or worried about. Any buyer that tries to undermine the seller’s T & C is a buyer that the Ebay community doesn’t want or need! The policy makers at Ebay need to recognize this! And the selling community needs to be able to see if any given buyer has a history of negative issues. NEVER penalizing a buyer is just plain ridiculous! EVERYONE can see this. With the way MY idea works, the buyer’s will wind up policing themselves with the understanding that they will have a falsely handed out negative given RIGHT back to them if they have broken a seller’s Terms and conditions. How great is that?! Ebay would only be required to investigate the user’s complaint & verify that the seller’s T & C were followed to see who is at fault and hand down their decision. With my policy idea in place, I suspect that once the buyers know the consequence for giving a false negative to a seller, that they will think twice before doing so. At the same time, Ebay gets back the confidence and trust from it’s reputable sellers that will feel good about knowing that their own seller terms and conditions will not be ignored! And by keeping the NO NEGATIVE policy in place, the buyer NEVER needs to worry about a retaliatory negative to their account! Have I missed anything? You tell me. And if you agree with this new policy idea, then PLEASE start promoting it so that Ebay’s policy makers ACT on it!

This is still in my opinion another bandaid, but it appears to be workable.

Any comments?

SandiOn 05.08.2008 at 12:43 am Said:

@The Colonel

Unforunately I even see the flaws in the suggestion. I have read many, many terms on auctions that simply are not enforceable - in particular - no refunds or returns. Government laws offer protection to buyers because they are buying sight unseen, paypal will refund more often than not to avoid a chargeback.

Additioanlly, I can even see the impractical economic expectations for ebay in policing terms of sale in every single listing.

Personally, I’d rather see ebay using such “staff time” policing the fradulent listings and really making the site safer.

One of the side-effects ebay failed to recognize with all this junk is who the community members who donated hours of time reporting hundreds/thousands of listings that were fradulent in nature - it wasn’t the powersellers (although some did), but the casual seller who cared about the betterment of the community - you know, the ones ebay keeps kicking.

The fraud will only rise if ebay does not expend the resources for things they use to get for free.

Dispolsable IDS for psycho neggingOn 05.08.2008 at 1:36 am Said:

Still waiting………….NO answer on Buyers creating disposable IDS for MORE LEVERAGE. NADA…. NANKA.. NONE.

MARK MY WORDS… THIS WILL BE A HUGE PROBLEM

Mark ClassicOn 05.08.2008 at 1:49 am Said:

Hello Richard

Whilst on the subject of feedback, can you ask Brian Burke to answer one simple question for me please?

If I am to deal with any seller that has a lot of negatives, I like to know what sort of problems they have.

So I check the negatives by clicking on the link in the feedback rating box.

Why is it that I cannot click on the negative feedback on the BUY seller account?

Is this a special arrangement they have so that their negatives cannot be accessed via the normal means?

Or is this a dishonest manufacturing of high feedback on a high rated politically sensitive account?

I do not submit this as an accusation, but as a question.

Because if that is the case, then the whole validity of the Ebay feedback system is all a puff of smoke in the wind.

If Ebay are engaging in this type of dishonesty, it will ultimately come back on them in a very embarrasing way.

Or is this merely an oversight on Ebay’s part?

Mark

CAMOn 05.08.2008 at 3:19 am Said:

@Richard

I have a question. Does this new powerseller policy constitute a barrier to entry?

CAMOn 05.08.2008 at 3:29 am Said:

Starting again (sorry for the duplication. Have no idea how I hit the submit button before I was finished

@Richard

I have a question. Does this new powerseller policy constitute a barrier to entry? And what about seasonal sellers who cannot enjoy PS benefits because they sell for a few months each year (but most definately qualify PS, they just are not onsite long enough each year to qualify)? And what about new sellers? Do they become targets with no protection? Do you guys not want new sellers?

I stopped selling on eBay, in a nutshell, because you are an unreliable business partner. I have in my inventory almost a million items that I will not sell on eBay until you guys get it together and stop making daily changes. I can’t plan anything, certainly cannot write a business plan, can’t determine policy, can’t determine where to ship and so on.. and got really tired of re-doing my work. (Seller since ‘96, any guesses as to how many times I had to do the same thing over and over and over cause of a policy change?). I think, okay, I will sell on eBay when the grow up and stabalize. Its not happened, so I just buy. Now, when I do go back to selling..I have a three month window where feedback to me is treated differently, where I pay a different price and many other things that NOW become an additional barrier to entry (other than the weekly experiment at my expense) Its just one more item to contend with before I sell again).

CAM

TheBrewsNewsOn 05.08.2008 at 7:39 am Said:

QUOTE: “eBay will remove negative and neutral Feedback left by members who are suspended or who fail to respond to the Unpaid Item (UPI) Process.”

I am guessing that eBay has what they consider to be valid reasons for still allowing a buyer to leave negative feedback EVEN IF they do not pay for an item.

Example: Seller lists shipping as $5 but then sends the buyer an invoice for $15 shipping and refuses to honor the shipping as quoted. In this case, the buyer would not pay and would want the ability to leave negative feedback since the terms were changed after the fact.

Example: Seller offers the item for sale on auction but then when the item doesn’t reach the desired level, the seller claims the item was lost or broken and thus not available for sale and tells the buyer not to pay since they no longer have the item to ship.

Example: Seller dropships items and finds out after a buyer purchases an item that their supplier is sold out of the item. Seller refunds the buyer and files an UPI to recoup their final value fees.

You get the point. Allowing buyers to leave negative feedback in these scenarios is one way of handling the issues as described above.

implogOn 05.08.2008 at 8:07 am Said:

@ THEBREWSNEWS

Your first example, terms were changed after the fact, would seem to justify the neg.

The second example, the seller claims the item was lost or broken, implies intent on the part of the seller to keep a sold item from an auction winner. While that may occur, it seems it would be hard to get into the brain of the seller to determine motivation to justify a neg.

What is the mystery to all this? What prevents Ms. Norrington from clarifying her statement?

Richard was with her in New Orleans at PESA. From what we have seen, Richard probably asked her to clarify her statement in NOLA if not before. Dodging the question is beginning to say more about Ms. Norrington’s statement than her confusing, convoluted words.

Below copied from Lorrie Norrington’s March 20, eBay Announce Board post:

“What we have determined is that if the buyer does not specifically call out poor seller performance, item condition or transaction problems during the UPI process, eBay will remove the seller’s negative or neutral feedback — retroactively.”

JJHOn 05.08.2008 at 10:02 am Said:

I wrote to ebay years ago with this suggestion, and I even sent it to their suggestion box numerous times over the past ten years. I felt this was an honest answer to feedback problems and retaliation in the case of where a seller did not get paid.

Keep the following in mind: If you are not paid, there was NO transaction. If there was no transaction, there can be NO feedback since feedback is transaction based.

My suggestion was that if a user did not pay, and you went through the reporting process, that at the point where you got your credit, and the buyer got their strike, ANY feedback left by the seller or buyer (assuming any had been left) was removed, and an “Administrative feedback comment” (it could be a negative or it could just be a non value entry) would be left in the BUYERS feedback list, IN RED indicating the buyer defaulted on an auction and did not pay. There could be no retaliation on EITHER parties part since there was NO TRANSACTION. The comment would be left by ebay, clearly indicated as being an administrative comment where a user violated policy. The statement left would be the user didn’t pay, no lies, no hostility, no reasons, just the simple truth.

Administrative strike: User did not pay seller for item won.

A strike against a user is a strike. This no different than the seller saying he wasn’t paid (which many times is peppered with hostile tone).

Heck, I thought it was a good idea. Still do.

On several occasion I got canned “Thank You” replies. Once, and only once, I got a hand written email from an ebay employee saying that this was a great idea, and it would be placed in a queue of valid user suggestions. It’s obvious it never went anywhere.

TheBrewsNewsOn 05.08.2008 at 10:18 am Said:

The problem with allowing buyers who do not pay to leave a negative means that the “burden of proof” is on the seller to PROVE that the buyer did NOT have a valid reason for nonpayment. Buyer wins but doesn’t pay… why? The AUTOMATIC assumption is that it is the seller’s fault and the seller must jump through many hoops to prove otherwise.

If the buyer did not pay, shouldn’t the “burden of proof” be on the buyer to report the reason why he / she did not pay?

Better yet, why not allow “private” reporting by the buyer to let eBay know that there was a good reason that they didn’t pay the seller?

What percentage of buyers actually have a valid reason for nonpayment? How about some eBay “statistics” to give us a better understanding of eBay’s desire to protect this group of eBay buyers who NEED the ability to leave negative feedback for a seller that never received payment.