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.
————–
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?”
————
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?
————
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
AmberOn 05.24.2008 at 8:00 am Said:
Brews, the SC has been purged of all of the older posts. Nothing exists prior to May 1, 2008 for some reason.
JJHOn 05.24.2008 at 8:28 am Said:
Why does this still say this? This is insulting. Please pass this along to whoever maintains pages and have them put the TRUTH about how feedback works, because this is just plain incorrect.
Feedback scores and stars
Feedback ratings are used to determine each member’s Feedback Score.
+) A positive rating adds one point to the Feedback Score.
0) A neutral rating has no impact on the Feedback Score.
-) A negative rating subtracts one point from the Feedback Score.
Just go to the “Feedback Forum” page, and this is what you’ll see under “How Feedback Works”.
implogOn 05.24.2008 at 8:45 am Said:
If you search on an eBay member’s name using the Discussion Forums “Advanced Search” feature, you should see all posts made.
I’m seeing Seller Central posts prior to May 1, 2008.
I wonder if the scoring topic might not have been discussed in an eBay On Ramp thread, link below.
“Hello Sellers,
You are invited to our monthly Seller OnRamp Brown Bag Q &A - Delight Your Customers and Improve your Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs.)
Bring your questions on creating great DSRs and get your listings reviewed at the online discussion on Thursday, March 27th at 11:00 AM PST.”
http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=1000668050&start=0
Patricia1On 05.24.2008 at 8:59 am Said:
Gee……one can only wonder why LOL When sellers are angry, pulling their posts doesn’t hide the fact that they’re angry - it simply makes then even angrier. There are plenty of other sites where their comments are welcome and published for all to read. The underlying idea might be to try to “rectify” the problems instead of hiding them….just a though! If ebay is intent on stringing along small sellers while they get their business in shape and then they’ll cut them out…well…they shouldn’t expect outright glee! I’m afraid they still have no sense of the harm they’re doing and the bridges they’re burning.
LynnOn 05.24.2008 at 10:55 am Said:
I am a powerseller but low volume and I have been hit hard by the Ebay changes. I have always left feebacks on the day I ship and only neg a buyer if they were non payers so the feedback changes should not have affected me. They did!I first had my percentage lowered due to a nuetral from an international buyer who thought that the custom’s brokerage fee was a shipping COD! Then the buyers started hitting me not in the feedbacks themselves but the dsr’s. Not one had a thing to complain (all gave positive feedbacks) about yet they scored me low, particularly on the shipping dsr’s. One even scored me a 3.0 on shipping time when I had shipped within 2 hours of his payment.It seems that even though I offer both priority mail and ups ground and he went with the cheapest, ups ground, he was upset that it took four days rather than 3 days to get to him.Many buyers just do not read and do not understand what they are rating sellers on.They clearly don’t understand that I have no control over what the carriers charge or how much time they take. The real reason for Ebay doing this has been to raise the rates they collect from us out of sight and then dangle an unattainable carrot of discounts which they make impossible to attain! Since I sell items (used auto parts)that the majority of can’t be shipped flat rate or other cheap methods nor can I offer free shipping. Not only am I going to pay Ebay more but at this point I’m in danger of losing my powerseller standing.I have been a powerseller for over 3 1/2 years and during that time have only had one nuetral and 3 negs,two of which were withdrawn or removed. The only neg I have standing was from a a non payer who decide 30 days later, then with 50% feedback rating, that she needed to get me to agree to withdraw her neg ( she got 2 in one day out of 4 feedbacks total). I refused on a matter of principal. Ebay will drive all of us good sellers off because we can’t afford the increase and can’t meet the standards as long as buyers are rating the way they are and Ebay is doing nothing to help!I have tried everything that TPTB suggested during one of the meetings, and not only didn’t they help I think they backfired and hurt me more. I can understand their need to drive the bad sellers off of Ebay but that will not happen. The bad sellers are the ones making the most profits and can take the hits that us good sellers can’t!Ebay needs to get rid of the DSRs or at least the shipping dsrs since the majority of buyers don’t have an inkling of how shipping works.I know I didn’t before I started selling. I had a UPS agent at the local store explain it to me and it was quite an eyeopener (many of my items are oversize). If I sell a bumper for $70 and they have to pay $120 to have it shipped, I drop my measly $2 handling fee to help them out but they still slam me in the dsrs on shipping cost. Since I always do leave positive feedback when I ship the buyers have no reason to be concerned about retailtory negs from me and I have always gotten good feedback and now these new policies are hurting me big time! Brian needs to get his head out of the place where the sun don’t shine and listen to those sellers who have had good customer service about what the new policies are doing to us. rant over!
LynnOn 05.24.2008 at 12:09 pm Said:
I do have a few more things to add. One as long as Ebay keeps the DSRs they need to make changes to the Ebay message system. To rate how well a seller communicates with the buyers we need to first know that the buyers are seeing our responses. I can’t tell you how many times after sending out the shipping notices with tracking numbers that I get emails from the buyer requesting that I send the tracking number or when am I shipping and it was shipped 4 days before. It seems that many of the Ebay messages end up in buyer’s spam boxes.The seller has no way of knowing if the buyer does not contact us and then gets hit with a low score from a buyer who thinks the seller was not communicating important info.The same goes with the other emails that we sellers send to the buyers. We don’t know if they are receiving them.I have some questions as to whether non payers are receiving emails that we send in an effort to remind and find out why they haven’t paid. Second, the message system needs to be changed to allow several responses back and forth between buyer and seller. Before the message system started, when an email came in with a question only my husband could answer and my husband was at work at his full time job, I would just email them and let them know that he would answer them when he got home that evening. Now I can’t do that since if I answer to tell them that, he then can’t respond a second time so the buyer ends up thinking that we don’t care enough to respond within a reasonable amount of time. I then have to go the long way around to try and contact them and write more to explain who I am and that I’m responding to their previous question. This makes it clear that even the commuication dsr ratings are very questionable. As a previous writer pointed out on the description dsrs, that many buyers just plain don’t read the ads so that is now all four of the dsrs that have been shown to be faulty.A total unfair system that the seller can’t control or correct at all!
DawnOn 05.24.2008 at 12:44 pm Said:
@Brews
The information about neutrals counting as negs was in the origial January 29th announcement. As Amber said, it was hidden, but it was there. I missed it the first few times, then someone posted about it on SC, and I said WTF?? I went back and read all the links again, and found it.
As Amber also said, the threads on SC don’t go back far enough for me to locate a post. But, I did find this post, dated 1/31/08, on another eBay board:
http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=2000507441&tstart=80&mod=1204918111345
TonyOn 05.24.2008 at 5:12 pm Said:
I really can’t fathom what ebay are trying to do. Bad buyer behaviour is up, neuts counting as negs in percentage scores, what on earth is the idea?
Sellers are ebay’s customers, buyers are sellers customers, but the only concept of “The customer is always right” as far as ebay is concerned is with the buyer.
Ebay need to practice what they preach, your customers (The sellers) are unhappy. Show the level of customer service you expect them to show. Fix this mess.
MechelleOn 05.24.2008 at 5:53 pm Said:
@Dawn
Well from the link it appears that someone was able to figure this out- however I don’t know what from
this is the statement from the new policy
The Positive Feedback percentage will be calculated by dividing all positive Feedback earned in the past year by all positive, neutral and negative Feedback.
Again this is not at all explicit - does not detail that the neutral will have a negative effect for public viewing. I read all of this when it was originally published and I had no clue they were now going to use Neutral in the public view.
Well, I guess there are some people who are very talented at reading what is not presented. I’m impressed - sincerely.
Unfortunately, the portion of the exceptionally talented is not reflective of the eBay members as a whole resulting in a massive shock to the vast majority of eBay members.
LisaOn 05.24.2008 at 6:00 pm Said:
Ebay does not want to fix this mess. The plan is going precisely well. One by one, the smaller power seller will leave either out of anger or will be kicked out due to “dangle an unattainable carrot of discounts which they make impossible to attain” as Lynn said and will be kicked off due to poor performance.
As much as I don’t want this to happen, maybe if the smaller mom and pop sellers lose their businesses and even homes, then possibly the media will pick up on the bigger story.
It’s disgusting, for sure. And we all feel the frustration and helplessness. I’m just several negs away from extinction to run my business.
permacrisisOn 05.24.2008 at 6:22 pm Said:
“As much as I don’t want this to happen, maybe if the smaller mom and pop sellers lose their businesses and even homes, then possibly the media will pick up on the bigger story.”
Lisa, I’d thought about that myself too and it occurred to me: Now is the time for ebay to cause massive losses like the ones you describe… and they will be ignored during this overall downturn. They pretty much have carte blanche to do what they please.
It won’t matter at the end. They will flop, and Google will either buy them or jump in.
When (and ONLY when) that happens, I’ll associate myself with Internet Honesty, and sell here once again…
TheBrewsNewsOn 05.24.2008 at 6:24 pm Said:
@Amber
@Dawn
I followed the link to the Comics discussion board (of all places?) and you are 100% correct. There were some geniuses out there and I am thankful for you pointing out the links to me so that I can publicly admit I was wrong and also reflect upon the information to figure out why I missed it.
I remember that when the announcement came out I was in such shock because I had been hearing the news reports about how eBay was going to decrease fees and so for the first time in many years I was excited about the idea of selling on eBay. I was completely taken off guard when eBay made the dramatic announcements on January 29th.
In the days that followed I went through anger, frustration, fear and then determination to survive. I quickly went out and registered my own domains and created more of my own websites (to add those I had already created 10 years ago) and I set up an account with Amazon and furiously began setting up my Amazon store (I don’t sell books or CDs / DVDs so I was pleasantly surprised that I could even sell my type of product on Amazon).
I think that late Jan / early Feb I was just in survival mode and not really taking the time to digest too much of the details of the eBay changes. I was much more focused on developing even more alternate sales channels in case eBay imploded in the coming months which I feared would happen. After I set up my Amazon store and my new ecommerce websites (which I am still working on), I was not really as interested in learning all the details because, frankly, by that time I already had an eBay exit strategy in place and so the immediate fear of survival had subsided.
With the information you provided I can see that eBay must have put out the information in January and I (like a lot of other people) obviously missed it at the time and certainly didn’t find the Comic board discussion even now until you pointed it out to me.
Regarding the neutral = negative issue, I obviously have given eBay an UNDESERVED big red donut in all my postings about that particular issue. If eBay only allowed mutual feedback withdrawal I would certainly use it in this instance. 
Patricia1On 05.24.2008 at 9:51 pm Said:
Regardless of what they intend to do with the site, they could have done it in a more businesslike manner - with less callousness. There’s not much else you can say about it. Businesses have closed and whole factories have left countless people out of work and did it with a lot more taste and kindness then this. Since Jan. I’ve felt unwelcome on the site and that shouldn’t be because all I ever did was try to please my customers! Not whining, not even complaining - just bewildered as to how these people operate. This must be some new class of executive I’m not familiar with and hope never to be familiar with 
ChrisOn 05.25.2008 at 2:41 am Said:
From a buyer’s perspective the changes are making listings look false. You look at an item near the top of the list and they have poor DSRs and you wonder why they are not demoted. You look at an item near the bottom of the list and their DSRs look great, yet they are below the person with the poor stars. Will all buyers realise this is because the 30 day performance, which they can’t see, may be different to 12 month performance or will they just think eBay is unreliable and look elsewhere?
Patricia1On 05.25.2008 at 10:41 am Said:
@ Chris - I don’t think buyers even notice that. Sellers do though and they’re wondering what it is that stinks! Could it be “best match”? As for buyers - where are they? Everyone in the arts categories is complaining of low hits and few bids. I go to seller central and I read the same complaints. Is the site ever going to get its act together? More changes on the way? I can’t wait!!!! We’re there to sell - just in case anyone has lost sight of that simple fact!
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