Hot off the presses… eBay to “retract” some of their new feedback policies:

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.

I was a supporter of their feedback changes in May except for a few little issues. This is one of the issues I had a problem with. Neutrals were being counted as negatives. It just didn’t make sense to me. Neutral had always meant neither positive nor negative. I am glad to see this being changed back.

Secondly, eBay announced a plan change for the fall:

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.

This is also another issue I had with their feedback policy and I am glad to see it getting reversed. However, this change does bring eBay another step closer to having the same feedback policy as Amazon (Click Here to see my original post on how eBay’s feedback is becoming more like Amazon’s). I wonder if eBay is intentionally becoming more like Amazon or if Amazon had it right in the first place and eBay is just taking longer to get there.

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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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In a recent post, I had come to the conclusion that the eBay feedback changes wouldn’t affect me very much… I was wrong. One thing I left out in my conclusion of the new changes is that neutral feedback will count as much as negative feedback when it comes to calculating feedback percentage.

Here is how the feedback change has affected me:

Previous Feedback Score – 34780
New Feedback Score – 38430

Previous Feedback Percentage – 99.3%
New Feedback Percentage – 98.4%

In the overall scheme of things, the 4,000 added to my score is not that big of a deal. Sellers with 34k and 38k are held in nearly the same regard by buyers. However, the second one is a BIG difference. I know that some of my potential customers will notice that I am well below 99% and want to know why. They may even decide to shop elsewhere.

However, once I got over the initial shock of my percentage going so much lower, I can see how this will be a good move for eBay and will make it a stronger marketplace. Bidders are the backbone of eBay. Without bidders, you will have no one to buy your wares. This change will make sellers pay more attention to customer service. I know that I have already taken several measures to ensure my customer service is much better in order to get my percentage higher. I have no doubt that this was a kick in the butt to make my customer service much better because I will have no other choice. This, in turn will make the buyers happy, which in turn will bring more bids and sales to my eBay business.

So, if you are down about the feedback changes, just look at it as an opportunity to improve on some things you have been wanting to improve on for a while. Sure, eBay changed the rules of the game, but the rules were changed for everyone. This is your chance to improve your business practices and possibly move ahead of your competition who is feeling the same pain in the feedback change as you!

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I noticed today that eBay is really pushing the idea that sellers can no longer leave buyers neutral or negative feedback. I was about to leave feedback as a buyer today and a pop-up appeared reminding me that the seller can no longer leave me negative in retaliation of me leaving bad feedback for the seller. I can’t remember ever seeing a pop-up on eBay like that so for whatever reason, they want buyers to be VERY aware of this change.

Later in the day, there was a message before I logged into my Seller Account reminding me of the new feedback changes. Most of the feedback changes occurred in February, but there were a few that take effect in May. May the what??? I cannot get an answer for the exact date. I doubt they know at this point but since the month is well over half way complete, it will be soon.

Here is the changes that will be taking place in May:

• Feedback back left by the same person on different weeks will be retroactively calculated back to when the feedback system started. So, for sellers like me with many repeat customers, my total feedback score will go up substantially.
• Sellers will no longer give negative or netural feedback to buyers. I don’t mind this rule so much. I feel if you are an honest seller, you have nothing to fear. I have been giving positive feedback the day a customer pays ever since I started been selling on eBay. I never had problems with negative being left when I didn’t at least somewhat deserve it.
• Neutral and Negatives left by suspended members or buyers who do not respond to the Unpaid Item Process will be removed from your feedback record
• Positive feedback percent will be based on the previous 12 months instead of the lifetime of a seller.
• Buyers must wait 7 days to leave neutral or negative against Powersellers who have been registered at least 12 months
• You now only have 60 days to leave feedback instead of 90 days
• You can no longer request negatives be removed through the mutual feedback withdrawal process. This one I don’t like so well. I have many customers leave negative before contacting me. When I fix it to their satisfaction, they really want to take back the negative. Now, there will be no way for them to do so.

Overall, I like the changes and am curious to see how it affects trading on eBay. My feedback score will go way up… The number of negatives I receive may slightly go up if buyers think they can leave negatives before trying to work out a resolution… Other than that, not much will change for me.

Here is the link to the official explanations of all the new feedback rules… http://pages.ebay.com/services/forum/new.html

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