Friday, May 16th, 2008

Feedback on Feedback to Feedback

All,
Thanks again for your kind words and emails. Sorry for the delay in getting this to you. As promised, I managed to spend time with Brian Burke this week and he tackled a lot of the follow-up questions that came through from the “Accountability” post written last week.

The following follow-up questions and answers are shown in no particular order. The questions, and the prior comments by Brian they refer to, are indented and shaded below. The new answers follow each shaded box.

I realize there were more questions asked but I wanted to get at least some addressed sooner rather than later. Thanks to Brian for taking the time to sit down with me again to discuss questions raised here on Ink.

Cheers,
RBH

Please re-round the circle squared by eBay President Lorrie Norrington on the eBay Announcement Board on March 20, 2008 titled “Update For Sellers”.

Norrington seems to be attempting to address the concerns of sellers who fear a neg from a non paying bidder. She attempts to mitigate the new “neg sellers only” policy by writing:

“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.”

This makes no sense. Sellers do not send items won in auctions before receiving payment. How can a buyer who leaves a neg be justified by claiming a problem with “item condition” for an item never sent, received nor seen? Again, sellers DO NOT send items without first receiving payment.

While Norrington’s “solution” may be boss pleasing “disruptive innovation”, it flat out makes no sense in the real world of selling on eBay.

This policy is designed to address a specific issue raised at the eCommerce Forum in January. Specifically, sellers complained that the current protections for sellers with the UPI process - the buyer must fail to respond completely - was inadequate, since all a buyer had to do was enter a single character or comment that they had no intention of paying, and any negative or neutral FB left by the buyer would remain.

Sellers shouldn’t send items prior to receiving payment. But if a buyer is complaining about the product condition in the UPI process, it’s a good indication that the buyer did pay.

Buyers who respond and respond in a manner that clearly indicates the seller was not at fault, such as “I found another one” or “my spouse is in the hospital so I can’t pay” shouldn’t be negatively impacted by a buyer’s negative Feedback.

However, if the buyer states, “I refuse to pay via Western Union” or “I just sent payment” or “I paid” (NOTE, some sellers file false claims, those caught are suspended) or “I did a charge back because you refused to send me a refund for the damaged product” would result in negative or neutral Feedback remaining.

A buyer who is referencing product condition, not receiving the product, etc. is a very good indicator that the buyer sent money.

We will continue to evaluate this policy.

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.

Severely flawed research error. The definition of retaliatory feedback” is based on an assumption not a fact.

With millions and millions of transactions happening we have to study behavior over time in order to identify trends and to determine whether or not a specific trend needs addressing. The fact is that 4 years ago, sellers would leave a negative after a buyer had left a negative twice as frequently than a buyer would and today it is eight times as frequently. That is a significant change in behavior and one that needed to be addressed. Again, we examined a lot of alternatives before coming to the conclusion that the feedback system needed to change. We learned 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.

In January we mentioned that we’d block buyers from leaving negative or neutral Feedback for 3 days for sellers “with a track record.” Since January, we’ve made the decision to increase the wait period to 7 days and define “track record” as active PowerSellers who have been on eBay for at least 12 months.

What about NON-Powersellers? Does this mean the buyer could leave us a negative IMMEDIATELY? Or does it mean they can do it within 3 days, and only PS get the 7 day protection? This needs immediate clarification. Richard, PLEASE get a clarification on this.
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Why does the cooling off period, given it is so short a timeframe, only apply to PS? Why not to those who have been on the site for years? Why not to everyone?

Right now only PowerSellers get the 7-day protection. This has replaced the 3-day block rule introduced back in January. Suspension types and frequencies of suspensions were analyzed and it was determined that PowerSellers were the safest population of users to single out for this protection. If safety issues arise we could restrict this beyond the 12-month, PowerSeller distinction and, conversely, if we see positive results and gain confidence in the 7-day protection model, we could expand to other sellers. I don’t see this happening in the next 6 months though.

Richard, while you’re at it, can you please get an explanation as to how a waiting period adversely affects buyers anyway? Sellers have to give buyers 7 days to pay before they can file a UID. Why not give ALL sellers the same 7 day “benefit of the doubt?”

Essentially, we’re trying to balance marketplace safety with seller satisfaction. We want buyers to know immediately about a potentially bad or fraudulent buyer experience to better avoid repeat occurrences.

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.

What enhancements? Here’s the thing — the only thing that I’ve ever found helpful on feedback left for buyers is utilizing their feedback received when someone is slow in paying (ie, I’m not sure if they will follow through). If they have negs for non-payment, I’ll file a UPI a bit faster. If they don’t, I give them a lot more time/leeway. Will sellers have access to info on whether UPI reports have been made against buyers?
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What enhancements to which tools?

Sellers will not have direct access to info on whether UPI reports have been made against buyers. However, there is a buyer requirement tool that will allow sellers to block buyers with a UPI track record of 2 or more items. We’ve also introduced a seller reporting hub.

We’re going to take a look at what buyers are saying in the UPI console and remove it if it is arbitrary.
Who is going to be doing this? What will be the guidelines as to what is “arbitrary?”
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Will the process of reporting a buyer be reviewed by an actual person or a bot? Will we receive canned answers?

Customer support representatives will be reviewing all reports. There will be canned answers associated with general issues raised for the hundreds and hundreds of cases reported. Reports will be handled on a case by case basis and will be deemed arbitrary if there is no mention of dissatisfaction with the seller or an unwillingness to complete the transaction with the seller.

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 definitely 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?
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Do you see a place for the small time seller on eBay in the future? I would love to stay but I am being pushed away with every calculated change and it seems many others are also. Is this what eBay is counting on?

These changes don’t have anything to do with the size of the seller. They are focused on the buying experience. With regard to DSRs and feedback, smaller sellers are actually the folks in a position to take an advantage of the new changes because they already provide a more personalized, attentive service to the individual buyer… helping ensure positive feedback after a transaction is completed.

We want all sellers to feel welcome on eBay and the new PowerSeller policy should not be seen as a barrier to entry, rather it should be seen as another incentive to sell more on eBay.

Will anything be done to ensure the 12-month period does not backfire on anyone?

There will inevitably be a small group of folks that are negatively effected by the 12-month window but again, we think that recent performance and activity is a much better indicator of what a buyer can expect to experience than a performance rating from 7-8 years ago.

A couple of months ago I received an email saying that a positive feedback had been removed because a buyer had been NARU’d after a relatively short time on Ebay.

On the Australian site my feedback now reads 99.9% for the last 12 months in spite of the fact that I have not received a neutral or neg for about 8 years, and I have been on a full 100% for about 6 or 7 years. I have never entered into mutually withdrawn feedback.

Please ask Mr Burke whether feedback that has been completely removed by Ebay is being counted as “non positive” feedback. If not, can you please ask him to review my feedback and clarify why it is calculated at 99.9% for the last 12 months on the Australian site. I am not asking for any adjustment to my feedback, only a clarification (you know, accountability) - I can supply a friends user ID with no neutrals or neg’s in the last 12 months and 4.9 dsr’s that currently rates at 99.5% if he would like to review that as well.

This is likely a data anomaly - with over 7 billion Feedback we occasionally have these come up. But since the seller is in US, I would ask that they wait until we update the US site next week. If it is still inaccurate, I can have a database engineer look into it - but I bet it’s accurate next week.

EBay is accepting the unverified opinion of buyers a fact, seller’s loose status based on the unverified feedback and DSR”s that buyers leave. Will eBay accept the reports of extortion and buyer bad behavior from sellers as fact without verifying those reports? Or will they only count against the buyer after being reviewed? A public system of accountability for sellers with no review of the facts and private backdoor accountability systems for buyers with a review of facts is not an equal and just system. So ask Brian if seller reports about buyers will be reviewed. Will sellers need to provide proof of extortion?

Sellers reports of buyers will be reviewed thoroughly. Extortion is very difficult to prove so the more proof a seller can provide, the better off we’ll all be. It will be easier to take action against buyers that have a pattern of behavior rather than a single instance of reported extortion - again because it is very difficult to prove a single instance of extortion.

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.
*How* does this cut down on potential extortion situations?

The window of time in which a buyer could resort to extortion has been shortened. For example, in the past a buyer could wait until 85 days after a transaction to practice extortion. The longer the time period; the longer the opportunity. We’ve reduced that window of opportunity considerably.

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.

We need any information regarding potential fraud to be public, and to be public fast. With regard to statistical information, Brian indicated that he would get UPI stats for me to share on the blog.

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

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