Feedback 2.0 is live and I already hate it

Feedback 2.0 has been enabled on many eBay sites around the world and buyers and sellers are exploring with interest, although by no means with universal approval. In fact this is one of the most hated changes on eBay I’ve ever known!.

The detested Detailed Seller Ratings are of course enabled, time will tell how many buyers leave them, and whether in general they prove to differentiate sellers. I still suspect buyers will in time start to leave four out of five – anyone that’s filled out ranking surveys will recognise that it’s not the norm to leave the highest score available.

The page is particularly badly laid out, in fact it just looks a mess with new sections squeezed in. It’s a shame they didn’t get the guys that designed the new eBay.co.uk home page to lay out the new feedback view. Useful links to About Me, Trading Assistant, reviews and guides and ID History being hidden on a drop down menu. Strangely they’ve added a “View Item” link, but haven’t bothered to make the item title or number clickable. The page is also much longer as each feedback now takes two lines instead of one. Finally some of the fonts on the page have been reduced in size, and the detailed seller rating box dwarfs the size of the recent feedback ratings.

Of course Cobb also promised it would be “introduced, monitored, tweaked and only when running smoothly and any ill effects ironed out introduced on the North American site“. In other words he doesn’t care less about International markets. Feedback was the one thing that set eBay apart from other sites, now eBay have trashed it we might as well be selling on Amazon for those that know what a joke feedback there is.

It’s a sad day for eBay, in trying to improve something that was working they’ve ruined the one unique feature that set the site apart.

11 Responses on "Feedback 2.0 is live and I already hate it"

1. 1
   Sue Bailey says:

   March 6, 2007 at 9:04 pm

   I particularly hate having the item titles on display: it’s going to be hell for knicker and dildo sellers, that one
2. 2
   Uncle Sam says:

   March 7, 2007 at 1:51 pm

   I especially dislike the way that users can only see an overall score for the Detailed Seller Ratings & not what ratings have been left for each transaction. When reviewing a sellers’ feedback profile with the old system, someone can decide for themself whether each neg has been left fairly or unfairly (eg is it abusive in tone or was it left in response to one already left by the seller, say for non-payment).

   Also, since leaving Detailed Seller Ratings is optional, the final score will inevitably be skewed. If, say, only 40% of satisfied customers go to the trouble of leaving Detailed Seller Ratings compared with, for the sake of argument, 80% of disatisfied customers, then the figures are not going to accurately represent overall buyer satisfaction for transactions with that seller.

   My experience on Amazon is that I tend to only go to the trouble of leaving feedback if I am very dissatisfied with a sellers’ service, as I take good service for granted. I predict that a disproportionate number of eBayers using Detailed Seller Ratings will have axes to grind as well.
3. 3
   Chris Dawson says:

   March 7, 2007 at 2:58 pm

   Sam it’s even worse than that – when someone makes multiple purchases do you really think they’re going to bother to leave detailed ratings for each. If someone buyers one printer from me they probably will, but if they buy 10 JetDirect cards from ten different listings are they going to waste time leaving ten sets of Detailed Seller Ratings if they’re happy? On the other hand if they are unhappy they probably will have the incentive to leave ten rankings!

   To be honest I’m going to take my normal attitude with feedback, totally ignore it and largely pretend it doesn’t exist. If eBay think it will help sellers improve they’re in cloud cuckoo land. If they think sellers need Detailed Seller Ratings to inform them what they do well and what could be improved they have a poor opinion of sellers.

   If eBay think it’ll help buyers they’re sadly mistaken as I foresee the average Detailed Seller Rating settling down at about 4 out of 5 in the long term and everyone will end up the same – just an indistinguishable statistic similar to most sellers having a 99.7% to 99.9% feedback score. Differentiation between sellers is what they state buyers have been asking for, and that’s the one thing that they’re not going to get!
4. 4
   TameBay : Buying e-books to boost feedback is poor advice says:

   March 8, 2007 at 10:14 am

   [...] One of the few good side effects of Feedback 2.0 is that it instantly shows a seller who has artificially boosted their feedback with buying. Buying cheap e-books may boost your feedback score but Feedback 2.0 instantly shows this ruse for what it is. Unfortunately the guys organising Comic Relief on eBay didn’t realise that no feedback is worse than inflated feedback and boosted their score in this manner. The first account, comicrelief-rednoseday2007, purchased several e-books to give their feedback a start. eBay have taken the unprecedented step of removing the feedback to clear the account – with such high profile auctions a feedback score of zero really isn’t a problem – obviously someone advising Comic Relief thinks feedback is more important than it actually is! Currently although the feedback score is zero you can see 14 feedback for the last month but the comments have been removed. [...]
5. 5
   eds-dvds says:

   March 9, 2007 at 2:26 pm

   I’ve had just about 20 positives left since this was introduced.

   My detailed ratings are not available yet.

   To me this means that at least 1 in 2 of satisfied customers cannot be arsed to leave them.

   The results are going to be very skewed.
6. 6
   ukpostcards says:

   March 9, 2007 at 9:17 pm

   The gentleman with global responsibilty for Feedback 2.0 ( bburke@ebay.com ) is currently posting on the UK Q&A forum at

   http://forums.ebay.co.uk/thread.jspa?threadID=1100074814&start=40
7. 7
   Sue Bailey says:

   March 10, 2007 at 9:09 am

   Thanks, Postcards – interesting post from Mr Burke there.
8. 8
   TameBay : Buyers eye: Hooked on eBay says:

   March 11, 2007 at 10:37 pm

   [...] The weekend was an important reminder to me, buyers are the most important people on eBay. Without buyers sellers would have no one to buy their goods. It’s not surprising eBay spend so much of their time advertising for new buyers and doing everything in their power to hook them into the site. The controversial Feedback 2.0 is intended to appeal to buyers and allow them to differentiate between sellers. Recent advertisements have aimed to attract new buyers and get them to sell a few items. [...]
9. 9
   TameBay : PayPal eCheques will ruin Feedback 2.0 Detailed Seller Rating says:

   March 14, 2007 at 2:48 pm

   [...] Finally with the introduction of Feedback 2.0 I wonder just what ranking someone who’s waited ten days and is still no where near getting their item dispatched will give? Detailed Seller Ranking for “Dispatch time” is not going to look good! Well thanks for nothing PayPal – Your eCheques are worse than useless! [...]
10. 10
    Josordoni says:

    February 14, 2008 at 10:36 am

    Chris, nearly a year on in, what are your thoughts now?
11. 11
    Chris Dawson says:

    February 14, 2008 at 10:53 am

    Ermmm…. am I allowed to admit it’s worked out a lot better than I ever imagined and I’m a little more blasé about such changes these days?

    I still feel that the average buyer leaving four stars across the board is (in their eyes) saying “Hey this was a good seller”. Five out of five is unrealistic in anyone’s eyes. That’s not gonna change anything though and I seem to be surviving so far so I’ll not complain too much