They have over and over admitted those who leave neutrals now must mean the sale was just that neutral…..yet they have not updated this on buyer dissatisfaction rating criteria.

As for the account standing thing….being good, needs work, etc. there is absolutely no rhyme or reason to it. They need to come up with clear guidelines for what specifies each.

The overall number of “non-positive” feedback hasn’t changed significantly since sellers were blocked from leaving anything other than a positive.

Not so sure. If you go back to this article you wrote in November you stated that the average was 1 non-positive out of 1000 but then it was later revealed that it had become 8 negs out of 1000. A factor of over 8x seems kind of significant to me.

http://www.tamebay.com/2008/11/feedback-revision-now-live-on-ebay-uk.html

If you do the math your negatives and neutrals (at 66%) are less than 2% of your feedback. eBay doesn’t start cracking down on your until 5% so no doubt they consider your buyer satisfaction “good”. I think auctiontrax has a calculator you can use to figure your BDR.

I have 1,500 positives and 36 neutrals and 2 negatives and my buyer satisfaction rating is “good”

Either way if you read the comments on these neutrals, a significant amount of them sound questionable. I just got one today that says “good item”. Well if the item is good, why leave neutral? I had one yesterday where the buyer says “fast shipping”.

The main problem I have is that of technical glitches NOT being posted or communicated to buyers and sellers. Those glitches, when there have been so many – can caused huge problems for any sellers, large or small.

Also, I have issue with the contradiction in information that ebay and Paypal tell you.
I understand what you are saying about the USER Agreement, BUT when an eBay TopSeller Manager ( or any other eBay/Paypal Manager ) tells you one thing and THEN eBay does the opposite – THAT is also where I have an issue. I feel like I was lead along, all the while paying eBay/Paypal fees with reassurances that these tech issues beyond my control and on the eBay/Paypal server side – WOULD NOT AFFECT MY ACCOUNT STANDING.

If I offered up the same lousy, misinformation to my customers, I would be gone in a heartbeat.

Or I paid for 1st class delivery and it took 3 days to arrive?!? They are few and far between but a small seller would only need to be UNLUCKY and get 2 or 3 of these in a row and BANG they’re gone.

The positive and negative rating should be removed completely and just have the stars, I only get pi**ed at negs when they insult my integrity or are out right lies.

The comments are useless also when it comes to INR’s, you receive Fb saying great item, received really fast and paypal won’t even take that into account. They just spout the usual about subjective comments, could have been left in error etc.

The overall number of “non-positive” feedback hasn’t changed significantly since sellers were blocked from leaving anything other than a positive. What has happened is the desired affect that buyers previously leaving neutrals are now leaving negatives.

There are now fewer neutrals and more negatives left by buyers, but the overall number of neutrals and negatives combined left by buyers hasn’t changed.

eBay in the user agreement states that they can get rid of you for any reason they want. Theoretically if they don’t like your last name they can get rid of you so I think your so called “class action lawsuit” would get laughed out of court.

That’s what I read somewhere early last year. I don’t recall the link but I believe it was from a Q&A with eBay. This was using data from back when sellers could leave negatives so I’m sure the real number has changed but I don’t believe the calculation has.

Amazon forces buyers to communicate with sellers before making a claim. My own feedback site requires communication before buyers can leave non-positive feedback. It wouldn’t be difficult at all for eBay to do it.

As for smaller sellers….I agree….I would have to think about that one more. However, I know something could be put in place that would easily stop stuff like that from small sellers. The system as it is…is broken.

However, there has been talk from Griff (he has a thread posted on the EBAY US seller central board) that Ebay will eventually REQUIRE actual and documented communication from a buyer to a seller before they can neg the seller…..however no specifics were provided. He just posted this a few days ago.

The problem with your solutions is that many of the worst sellers on eBay are the extremely low volume, occasional sellers. The kind that wait 2 weeks before shipping your item priority because they have no real attachment to eBay. Then again I like getting good deals off of them since no one else wants to deal with them and bid accordingly.

The other problem is that many times a buyer or seller won’t leave feedback on a slightly negative transaction. Counting it the same as a positive wouldn’t necessarily be right. eBay considers a neutral to be 66% of a negative (supposedly because a buyer is 66% as likely to leave eBay forever after leaving a neutral as compared to a negative) so a better solution might be to determine what weight to give the “no feedback” case.

Again…the 5% is still bigger. I could have 20 feedback and get 1 neg and be at 5% whereas if I had all 5’s and that 1 guy left us a 1 for DSR’s…..we would be nowhere near 4.3….let alone 4.1.

Personally, I think they should exempt anyone who gets less than 50 FB per month from DSR/5% buyer dissatisfaction rating.

Another thing they can do……for the 5% buyer dissatisfaction rating is count it against the total number of SALES in a 30 day period….not total number of feedback received. Why should sellers be penalized for buyers who don’t leave feedback for them? They (Ebay) basically are assuming anyone who does not leave feedback for a seller means the transaction was bad.

to EBAY INC
SAN JOSE,
CA,
USA,

please dont block their plughole!

there ya go its been addressed

T/O eBay last 3 months £100k ish, feedback recieved, around 90, it would be a different story if I was selling items for £5.00, I would have feedback numbers to fall back on, as it stands one bad delivery could wipe us out, eBay I hope are aware of this, we could get suspended today and eBay could loose 25k a year just because of ONE problem. It really needs addressing.

But if you are a little seller it takes hardly any.

Is it just me that thinks that is wrong?

DSR’s are just a number……whereas feedback is a big red mark and a comment. Personally…..suspension wise…..I think sellers should be more worried about the 5% total than the DSR’s standards. It takes ALOT to get under 4.1…..especially if you sell a decent amount. It does NOT take alot to get near 5%…..especially when Ebay counts neutrals.