eBay Changes Feedback System - Some Sellers Fuming

I think the feedback change is a good thing. There are sellers selling useless wholesale lists and they have 100% feedback, isn't suspicious to anyone? The only thing a seller should care about is if he gets paid or not. Most buyers are honest and they pay so it's all good. Few don't pay and very very very few are scammers. In those cases, you can always report to eBay. You can blacklist them. You should automatically blacklist buyers with 0 feedback in the first place. If the buyer is really bad, you can even submit their ID's to www.rottenbidders.com - a site where sellers share their bidder blacklists.

Sellers rating buyers absolutely does happen outside of eBay, and has been happening for years. Many retail stores and hotels have sophisticated tracking systems that allow them to monitor "bad buyer behavior" trends (excessive complaints, excessive refunds, etc.) and even ban certain customers, when possible. I've worked with three such systems. When casinos find cheaters, they publish their names in a black book, and they usually immediately phone all other casinos in the area to warn them that the cheater may be on the way to their establishment. And I can remember my local stores used to rate buyers before the advent of such technology. Before Telecheck came along, stores would post signs saying "Don't take checks from these people!" next to each cash register. Word would get around town, and those deadbeats weren't welcome many places -- and rightly so. There is nothing "quaint" about networking with other merchants and tracking trends to ensure you do business with as few scammers as possible.

A highly recommended site is elfingo.com for online auctions. They are the new ebay. Many smaller sites like this offer buyers far better deals than ebay ever could. Buyser also save a ton because this site charges little or nothing depending on the day. One more reaso I like elfingo.com is because they don't take a part of the sale at all. No commissions or final value fees. A+++ http://www.elfingo.com ...

That really sucks. I have sold many items on ebay and most buyers are really rude and impatient. It seems that ebay power sellers will REALLY have to step their game up! http://www.squidoo.com/littleguynetworking ...

After reading the various comments, I am more concerned that ever that seller?s will not be in a position to leave neutral or negative feedback for the buyer. It is quite obvious from the comments made that there are some very vindictive people out there who can?t wait for the new rules to take place. SELLERS?S PLEASE TAKE NOTE OF THE FOLLOWING: Now there is a website where you can leave neutral or negative feedback for those buyer?s who warrant it. WWW.VOX-POPULI-ONLINE.COM is a site where you can list your feedback about the buyer. It?s a very clean looking site, easy to navigate and it is a free service. So stop worrying about buyer?s holding you to ransom and take a look. We are currently looking for moderators who would like and help and monitor the site to keep it fresh and to stop abuse. If you are interested, login and contact us through the contact us link.

Try www.swapblaster.com . This site has a unique approach to selling and it costs only 7c after coming out from its beta state. For the next 6 months the buying and selling will be free. The approach may be strange in the beginning but you will get a feel of it, trust me. Go through the wiki pages and spread this word around. I believe this will be an integrated solution for all your day to day needs, material and non-material. Let us make this movement successful and find some NIRVANA in the sphere of online transactions. Good LUCK and God BLESS AMERICA.

Rebecca thanks for that point of view. It's easy to forget that not all eBay sellers are in it strictly as a business. Drew, I did not know that BestBuy labeled their customers as such. How do they accomplish that? Anyway, thanks and keep those comments coming!

MANY of the sellers on eBay are not Power Sellers with huge inventories that make their living selling there and use eBay as a "storefront" site. A HUGE chunk of them are folks like myself, that use eBay to clean out the attic, dispose of one's parents accumulated years of things when they move into retirement homes, or clothes that the kids have outgrown or toys they no longer play with, etc. I am not a store. I use the site, when I am selling, as a garage sale with a wider market than if I stuck the stuff out in my yard to get rid of it, in the hopes that the saying "one man's junk is another man's treasure" will hold true. It is AN AUCTION SITE. Not a brick and mortar store. At auctions of any kind, online or not, buyers can NOT back out of an auction they have placed a winning bid on in the same way they can change their mind at the cash register. It is not the same ball of wax folks, and some of the comments I'm reading show a complete lack of recognition of that fact. In case you were not aware, auction houses DO forbid non-paying bidders from coming back to their auctions. If you ever attend an estate auction, and either don't pay for what you've won, or bounce your check and never make good on it, you won't be issued a bidding number card at another auction held by that auction company. . . . That said, when someone bids on an auction, and does not pay for it, it costs money for the seller to relist, and take the chance that the other folks who had previously bid, but not won the auction, might be back again. I have a good rating which is made up of about 2/3 buying, and 1/3 selling, and I know that when I do sell, people are going to look at that rating and judge my buying and selling record to make a determination as to whether or not they want to take a chance bidding on one of my auctions. When I buy, I look closely at the seller rating, and if there are some negatives I look closely at the nature of the negatives and make a determination as to whether there is a recurring theme (slow to ship, poor communications, etc.) or if the person complaining is actually the problem. Many of the people who do leave negatives tend to be people with an extremely low rating themselves. And quite frankly, the ONLY time I personally have had problems with non-paying bidders, is when they had a rating of less than 5, which ultimately forced me to decide to block buyers with a very low rating, or a negative one. Conversely, the only time I had issues with a seller was when they had a low rating, too. No surprise there. There are a LOT of flaky people who bid on online auctions with no intention of ever paying. Then there are the ones who do not thoroughly read the auction description, or change their minds, or have buyer's remorse, or discover that they can't squash their size 14 body into that size 4 dress and want to make it the seller's fault it doesn't fit and feel this is adequate reason to give the seller a negative. OF COURSE the seller is going to respond with a negative. While it is true I have seen some sellers leave horrific feedback comments (please note that I won't buy from someone who does this since it illustrates poor character and makes me suspect of whatever it is that he or she is selling) I usually see the reverse - buyers who leave unwarranted negatives. I DO NOT agree with eBay taking away the ability for sellers to negatively rate the droves of deadbeat bidders out there. Overstock.com, Amazon.com, etc. are NOT auction sites. They are online stores. Some of you are trying to compare apples to oranges.

You people need to wake up. There a lot of losers out their that I don't want to sell to. Best Buy has gone so far as to label some of it's customers 'Devil Shoppers', and has even blacklisted some of them. It's sad ebay is making this change. Just another reason to abandon ebay and go to CraigsList. You get bad service their too, but at least it doesn't cost you anything.

Eric, it looks like a tidal wave of unhappy sellers!

Have you seen the comments from longime sellers on CNN money? http://fsbfeatures.blogs.fsb.cnn.com/2008/01/31/ebay-fee-hike-sparks-seller-rebellion/ Whoa, wonder what is going to happen to the stock after all the changes go into effect in May. Time to sell my ebay stock for 2008 while it is up? Looks like the momentum, and fury of the sellers no confidence, could really hurt them more than expected.

I agree that having sellers rate buyers doesn't really reflect the real world at all and seems to only exist on eBay. It was 'quaint' when eBay was in its formative years, but maybe now it's time that eBay grew up and started reflecting the real world of online ecommerce. Thanks for your comments!

I think they did the right thing, or at least half way. They are correct in their assumption of buyers having no choice but to leave positive feedback for sellers. I have made many purchases on eBay and have even had a few sellers that would wait until I left my feedback before they left their?s. Of course, you know if you leave bad feedback, then the same will come back to you. So, actually the system that they have had has been very flawed and one sided for the sellers. In any store where you shop, the store doesn't rate you as a customer before you leave! I know that it's different because it is online, but it's the same principle. Sellers have their stores, there just online. Buyers can sell or back out at the last minute just as you can at the checkout of your local retailer. They don't give you a demerit and forbid you to come back. They either want your money or not. I say way to go eBay, now just finish the changes. Allowing sellers to only leave positive feedback is no good, and it should be removed.