I sell on both eBay and Amazon.com (much more on eBay). When I was thinking about the recent changes to eBay’s feedback system, I couldn’t help but notice the similarities to Amazon’s current system. It appears that eBay has taken a page out of Amazon’s book when it comes to feedback.

For those of you not familiar with Amazon’s feedback system, here are some of the highlights and differences:

• Ratings are based on a 5 star system (1-2 stars = Negative, 3 stars = Neutral, 4-5 stars = Positive)
• A buyer will see the following information when deciding to buy from you: Average number of stars, feedback percentage for last 12 months (rounded up the nearest whole percentage i.e. 98.5%=99%), number of ratings for last 12 months and number of ratings for lifetime.
• When you dig deeper you will get a grid that looks like this:
  

  Feedback	30 days	90 days	365 days	Lifetime
  Positive:	100%	96%	98%	98%
  Neutral:	0%	1%	1%	1%
  Negative:	0%	2%	1%	1%
  Count:	69	209	3241	3382

As you can see there are much more options to see the reputation of a seller. With the ability to break down feedback into 1 month, 3 months, 12 months, and lifetime percentage you can get a clearer picture of who you are buying from. Only the 12 month percentage is shown on eBay.

Both sites now use neutrals in the calculation of percentage.

Most buyers don’t even know to give feedback on a transactionon Amazon. An email is sent out from Amazon about 2 weeks after the transaction asking sellers to rate the transaction. On eBay, it is much more of a community spirit and everyone (both buyers and sellers) know that feedback is expected from them.

There is no need to leave buyers feedback on Amazon. You do have the ability to, but no one will see it and the buyer doesn’t care (and probably doesn’t even know where to go to look for it).

You will see sellers with a much lower feedback percentage still be successful. There are several sellers with a percentage as low as 92% who sell thousands of items a year. There are hundreds of successful sellers with a 96% rating.

Buyers are much quicker with the neutrals and negatives on Amazon than on eBay. Several times I have gotten a neutral on Amazon saying “Perfect Transaction”. I am not sure if this is because of the 5 star feedback system or lack of buyer education about giving feedback. It seems that buyers on eBay are much more selective when giving neutrals and negatives. Also, Amazon’s main business is built around books, movies, and music. That could also be a contributing factor.

It is yet to be seen if the buyers on eBay will be quicker to leave bad feedback without the fear of retaliation from sellers. My opinion is that you will see a slight increase in neutrals and negatives but it won’t be near the problem that some people fear. I have ALWAYS given positive feedback the same day an item is paid for. My seller’s never had the fear of retaliation and with the exception of a few uneducated buyers I have never had a problem with people being quick to give me a bad feedback without giving me a chance to fix their problem.

Amazon still does have the posibility for buyers to remove a bad feedback (or change the feedback). By taking that option away, I think it will hurt eBay. However, eBay did take some steps to eliminate unjustified negatives from new sellers. Now, when you go to leave a negative feedback, you must manually check these three boxes before you can continue:

• I have contacted or tried to contact the seller to resolve issues
• I have allowed enough time for the item to arrive
• My comment is factual and avoids personal remarks

Amazon’s feedback system seems to work for buyers. EBay’s system did work – it wasn’t broken – we will see if the changes will improve or hurt eBay. My opinionis that seller’s and buyer’s will both adapt to the new system and eBay will remain the leader in online auctions.

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