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.

The first change is pretty clear cut and great to see… neutrals are not negatives. (I got this wrong back in May… and was quickly corrected and rightfully so). This will be good news for folks in the same boat as Marcia and Harvey.

Additionally, it’s good to see that changes are going to be made to the current Mutual Feedback Withdrawal system, but it looks like the specifics to those changes are in more of a wait-and-see situation. Buyers will now be able to change their actual feedback rating rather than just withdraw feedback and it looks like we’ll have more info on this in the next couple of months.

Lorrie concludes her AB post with the following:
…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.

It’s very encouraging to see the company listening to its community and responding in a positive manner. Given Lorrie’s closing remarks, it’s clear that this definitely isn’t the end to changes and revisits to policies that have been rolled out over the past few months.

Based on input I’ve received in email and on Ink, I can think of a few other pain-points that it would be great to see us address: the current stringent rules to the Links Policy to name just one.

Finally, even though it’s good to hear that “we have removed more than 60 percent of the negative/neutral feedback left by buyers in an unpaid item (UPI) process”, I’d also like to find out why a buyer, who doesn’t pay for an item, is still able to leave feedback at all (positive, negative or otherwise).

UPDATE: I’ve received a few questions both in email and on the blog and, as I work on getting answers to a number of the questions, I do feel an immediate point of clarification is needed. Moving forward, neutral feedbacks will be neutral across the board. They will not count against people in their feedback percentage nor will they be counted against people in Seller Non-Performance (SNP) ratings.

Cheers,
RBH